Landing pages and sales pages are vital to the success of your sales funnel. These two types of web pages are used by thousands of companies to traffic audiences further within a website to ultimately present a solution or product.
What Is The Difference Between A Landing Page And Sales Page?
Although many marketers have differing opinions on what is a sales page or landing page, the general rule of thumb is that a landing page provides a call-to-action that funnels users deeper into a website. Oftentimes, sales pages branch off from a landing page.
What Is A Landing Page?
Users that are aware of their needs, but may not be entirely certain on a solution tend to find themselves on landing pages. Traditionally, landing pages are search engine optimized for actionable keywords that are highly trafficked. Generally speaking, landing pages are short, to the point, and identify with multiple needs at once. Copy and content on these pages is not necessarily written to sell (although it can be—more on that later.) Instead, content is normally focused on capturing a searcher’s attention and redirecting it further into the site.
Is A Homepage The Same As A Landing Page?
In short, this question really depends on who you ask. Some may argue that yes homepages further direct audiences and are highly trafficked making them landing pages. Others consider home pages to be a realm of their own, even though the general strategies used in webpage development are relatively the same.
What Is A Sales Page?
Whereas landing pages are more concerned with user intent, sales pages operate as the name suggests—to sell things. Sales pages identify with specific consumer pain points and provide a solution to these challenges. As users read through a sales page they often feel as though a product or service will solve their problem which drives them to buy. The more pain points identified, the more likely a user will choose to do business through your website. This sort of structure lends itself to longer form content which is generally 1500-3000 words depending on the product being sold. Even though a site visitor may not necessarily read all of the content on a sales page, long form content opens SEO opportunities for specific keywords that are easy to rank for.
Can A Sales Page Be A Landing Page?
Perhaps you have a relatively small site and don’t need multiple layers to your site structure. In these cases, it is perfectly sensible to combine both a landing page and sales page into one. If the product or service offered is best sold as a general package, then combining landing and sales page content would improve the overall user experience of your website. Commonly, service-based businesses implement this type of site structure as users who visit a service page expect to see both content that influences them to buy and provides a call-to-action for the next steps.
Does It Matter Which Page Type You Use?
As long as the objective of a page has been established, then it really does not matter how that page is labeled. Content will lend itself to the goals established whether or not it is believed to be a sales page or landing page. Always think of the user who will be interacting on the website over the marketing tactics behind it. You’ll find that a seamless user experience often trumps marketing “best practices”, which results in improved SERP rankings and conversions.
