It is common to hear the term “landing page” when looking into digital marketing. So what exactly is a “landing page on a website,” and how is it different from your current website? A landing page is any page that visitors can land on or arrive at in its purest meaning. It is a separate web page created for one purpose.
Your landing page should not have global navigation that ties it to your main website. This is done to limit your visitors’ options and help you guide them towards your conversion goal.
Although landing pages can look very similar to regular homepages, significant differences will make them useful in your digital marketing campaign.
Landing pages have different goals, purposes, and traffic sources than homepages. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that both are optimized for their intended purpose. Understanding the differences between them in four areas is key to understanding how you can optimize each.
1. Audience
Your audience is the first thing that distinguishes your landing pages from your home page. Landing pages look the same as they sound. It is a page that a user “lands on” after clicking one of your ads.
You can target specific demographics with digital ads. They are more likely than others to convert.
Your landing page must be tailored for this audience. They are less likely to be just browsing your site as organic traffic, so your landing pages should focus on the content and information that will help them convert.
While you want to avoid making your visitors feel overwhelmed, landing pages can be a lot easier than your homepage.
2. Links
The aim of landing pages is to convert traffic, while homepages can do many things.
You will see a navigation bar near the top of a typical homepage. Your footer may also contain links to other sites or social media. To help your visitors navigate to your site or allow them to interact with it in the best way possible, you will need all these links.
However, you shouldn’t include these links on your landing pages. Your main goal is to keep viewers on your landing pages until they convert. You should therefore try to avoid any distractions.
You must find ways to communicate the information you need to your audience without taking them from the page. You can display your social media following count on the page or a scroll bar to take them to the appropriate area of your landing page.
If you require visitors to link to another page, use a light box function or open the link in a new tab or window. Limiting the options on landing pages will increase the chances of your page converting.
3. Content
You might reuse some of the information from your homepage, but a landing page should contain only the content relevant to the product you are trying to promote.
Your visitors come to your landing pages via search terms or ads. Therefore, you should tailor your landing page to the search terms and ads.
Let’s say, for example, that you own a company that sells all kinds of creative writing services. A user searches for “content writing” and clicks your advertisement. Instead of redirecting them to your home page, where you showcase the variety of content writing services you offer, point these ads to a landing page devoted to content writing.
Ideal landing pages should be set up so that anyone clicking on your ad arrives on the page and says, “Yes:” this is what I was looking for!”
4. Call-to-Action
The most significant difference between a website’s homepage and a landing page is that the landing page must be action-oriented. A landing page should include a Call-to-Action that encourages visitors to convert.
CTAs could be anything from filling out a form, calling a telephone number, or simply buying your product. Whatever your CTA, however, it must be straightforward. CTAs can be as simple as “Get Your Free Evaluation!” or “Call Us Now!”
It is often that a CTA offers a specific discount. This can help increase conversions. You can try something different than “Call Us Today”: “Call Today to Get 30% off”. This will make your audience feel valued and motivate them to act immediately.
Your homepage may not have a strong, prominent CTA. This is because it is mainly used as an information resource. But landing pages need to be different. They should visually and verbally drive your visitors to convert.
Different Types of Landing Pages
There are two ways to categorize landing pages: Click Through and Lead Generation, also known as Lead Capture or Lead Gen pages.
Click-through Landing Pages
The purpose of click-through landing pages is to reassure visitors to click through to other pages. They are often used in eCommerce funnels to provide enough detail to help visitors purchase a product.
Lead Generation Landing Pages
Lead generation landing pages can collect user data such as email addresses and names. The page’s sole purpose is to gather the information that you can use to market to the prospect and connect with them later. A lead capture page will include a form and a description of the benefits you will receive in return for your data.
Conclusion for What is a Landing Page on a Website?
Perhaps you can say that focus is the key to success. Your homepage is full of information. It has many sources, many links, and lots of data. A company site serves to provide potential customers with lots of information.
A landing page has a particular message and contains relevant content. Its purpose, however, is to convert. A landing page, in other words, is a simplified and shorter version of a homepage with a specific calling-to-action.
While homepages serve many essential purposes, the landing page capitalizes on the audience targeting options and conversion tracking opportunities available through paid searches. This makes them an integral part of pay-per-click (or other digital advertising methods).
If you are interested in creating a landing page for your website or having someone create high-converting landing pages for your company, then take action and start converting.
Now it’s your turn. What can landing pages do to improve your online presence and visibility? Do they work well for your website?
Mark
CEO and Founder of The Retired Affiliates
11 thoughts on “What is a Landing Page on a Website?”
So according to my understanding, I have a landing page. I am sure that there are a lot of other people here at wealthy affiliate who have a landing page. Thank you for such a lovely article. I will be sure to share it with my friends and family. I am sure that they will appreciate it
Hi Daniel,
I am glad we could help.
Mark
A landing page is the most important page for me, as it has to be responsive and load fast while catching my audience with a great headline and short paragraph. I like to use my landing page as a free offer of a report to capture the audience’s email and return for a free report. Some use it by showing a video to capture their audience and email. Your description of the Landing Page was very helpful and I will be sharing your website with my social media followers.
Thanks for your comment Janette.
So, according to my understanding, a landing page is what draws the audience’s attention. It’s something that, in a way, hooks them. I don’t have a landing page yet, but I will make one soon. Thank you for writing this article. This is definitely going to help me understand what a landing page is and why they are important. I was always aware of them but had no idea what they were. Thank you once more.
Hi Mark, thanks so much for this really informative post. Lays it out clearly and concisely for even the newest of newbie 🙂
Quick question … do you know of a good geo-targeting plugin for wordpress that I could use to target my landing page traffic?
I’m thinking of using a more generic landing page to send less targeted traffic to and would like to show geo-focused page elements to visitors.
Hi Rohan,
So glad you liked the post.
There are a few good ones around but I have found GeoTargeting Pro the best one I have used so far.
I like that you can target you users in 3 different ways based solely on their location.
I started with the free version initially but it is pretty basic which is why I took up the Pro version.
You can also Geo Target Pop Ups with the Pro!
Hope this helps and hit me up if you have any other questions.
Mark
I thought that a landing page was the page where all our posts were. But I have recently learned that we can create special pages to encourage conversions and these are typically called landing pages. Now, this is quite intimidating for me. How do I build my landing page? And once I have built it, how do I test it to see if it converts well?
Hi Abel,
There is some great training within Wealthy Affiliate in regards to building a landing page.
To test how well it converts would all be done through your Google Analytics set-up.
Mark
Hey thanks for this article!
I didn’t know anything at all about landing page and how important they can be. I am going to consider adding one on my current site and the go from there! I thinking bookmarking this page will definitely be pretty useful.
The click through landing page is probably going to be my main focus here so guess I need to look into that in more detail!
Hi Sariyah,
Sounds like a good plan. If you ever get stuck with creating a landing page for your website hit me up.
Mark