How To Build An Effective Landing Page For Ecommerce (With Examples)
For any ecommerce brand, the words “landing page” can sound magical and be a stress trigger all at once. Don’t get too caught up in the headache, though: Building out a high-quality and well-performing landing page for ecommerce doesn’t need to be complicated, but it is crucial.
A landing page might be the most important investment in your customer acquisition strategy. After all, the priority weighs heavily when you consider building what will be many customers’ first-ever introduction to your brand.
In this article, I’ll explain what a landing page for ecommerce is, why landing pages matter, and how they work, and we’ll show off some of our favorite ecommerce landing page examples.
What is a Landing Page for Ecommerce?
An ecommerce landing page is a web page designed specifically to capture potential customers from a certain source (social media, paid ads, email, through an influencer, for example) or incite them to take a specific action (email sign-up, conversion, or place a pre-order) with your brand.
Most often, landing pages are found only through the platform they’re promoted on and are not easy to access from your homepage. That said, a landing page can look similar to your main website but have simplified CTAs or messaging featured at the top to accomplish a specific goal.
Visuals can help out here, so keep reading to check out some examples of different types of landing page designs.
What’s the Difference Between a Product Page and a Landing Page for Ecommerce?
Product pages, or PDPs (product description pages), are as simple as their name. PDPs are built to describe and sell a certain product on your online store. They’ll often include the most thorough product attributes for a specific product a visitor can find, like specs, pricing, size guides, reviews, and anything else important to know when making a purchase.
A PDP might even include related products or links to different product categories. They are general in their messaging since a user has already proven qualified by clicking on the PDP.
Conversely, a landing page is crafted with a marketing purpose other than just an order. A landing page is built to drive one action: Collecting email addresses or other customer data, converting using a discount or promotion, driving giveaway entries, or filtering leads around a focused marketing campaign. You can even build a landing page for SEO purposes.
A well-built landing page will include limited calls to action to focus click-through only on the places your brand wants the visitor’s attention.
Why You Need a Landing Page for Your Ecommerce Marketing Strategy
Regardless of the category, from skincare to sporting goods, your ecommerce brand needs to include landing pages as part of your overall marketing plan.
A landing page is one of the most effective ways to capture new leads, filter traffic to a certain page, and, ideally, reach your conversion goal and drive those sales. It’ll ensure the brand messaging that captures an initial click stays consistent once the first-time customer clicks through. With a focus, you’ll see a better return on investment for each campaign.
The best ecommerce landing pages will also be optimized for the person clicking on your content based on where they came from and even why they clicked. While they navigate to other places on your ecommerce store, the initial referral source will always be tagged with that landing page tag, and you can track the behaviors throughout the whole experience. You’ll then gain insights into what this target audience is into and what gets them to add to the shopping cart and checkout.
Love A/B testing? Just another reason to add landing pages to your marketing mix. You can easily try out different types of messaging, CTAs, product images, variations in limited-time offers, or segmentation without making changes to your entire website.
The highest converting option will shine right away. And it doesn’t take long to iterate on a page once you build a template.
4 Types of Landing Pages for Ecommerce
When it comes to landing pages, there are a few ways to do it. What are the types of landing pages to know?
1. Top-of-funnel landing pages
Top-of-funnel landing pages will capture new visitor traffic. They should have the basics of your brand, like your brand story and why it came to be, what pain points your products solve, credibility through social proof like brand reviews and press hits, FAQs, and your core values.
You can use this landing page for lookalike campaigns with audience segments similar to your current customer who may not have heard about you. The conversion rates for top-of-funnel landing pages are low, so the CTA should be focused on getting their email address to send them further down the marketing lifecycle.
2. Mid-funnel landing pages
These pages will get traffic from qualified leads who haven’t yet pulled the trigger on a purchase on your ecommerce website. The content here will be focused on getting that conversion.
You can use messaging like you would for abandoned carts with a sense of urgency (examples include “Still thinking about it?”, “This offer expires tomorrow!”, or even include a discount code in a pop-up), and more social proof. The CTAs on this page should make checking out a breeze, and they can be as simple as “Buy now!”
3. Bottom-of-funnel landing pages
Bottom-of-funnel landing pages are for users who are even closer to buying than mid-funnel but are still non-purchasers.
Maybe they’ve left a full cart or browsed actively but bounced before completing the sale. You can retarget users here after they spend time on your site, and remember your goal is to upsell. Dangle high-value bundled offers, related products for cross-selling opportunities, and something to sweeten the deal, like a discount code and free shipping on their order if they complete it today.
4. Repeat purchase landing pages
Last but not least: Repeat purchase landing pages. The name of the game here is retention and re-engagement.
You’ll build this one out with repeat purchasers and returning customers in mind. Brand copy, CTAs, and potential offers should support increasing LTV (lifetime value) and retention rates through loyalty incentives, access to new products or variations, content or products related to their previous purchases, and opportunities to earn future incentives through customer referrals.
This landing page is less focused on sales and more on nurturing an established relationship.
Best Examples of Effective Landing Pages for Ecommerce
The best landing pages are concise, free of clutter, have clear CTA buttons, pare down your main website experience to focus on the essentials, including social proof, and are highly visual while being mobile-friendly.
Let’s take a look at some of our favorites:
1. Thistle
This mobile-optimized page from Thistle shows off a clean, responsive design highlighting the brand’s value proposition with a clear focus on the health-minded customer. The use of white space breaks up the blocks of text to still focus on readability.
2. Infinite Moon (Everpillow)
Infinite Moon fits a lot of copy on one landing page while also including strong customer testimonials. The “Shop Now” CTA above the fold on the top of the page is hard to miss, and if a qualified customer keeps scrolling, they’ll see the brand values visualized above a product breakdown, then a handful of 5-star customer reviews at the bottom of the page.
3. Coffee Curators (formerly The Coffee Network)
This thorough landing page from Coffee Curators utilizes a few highly visual tactics: infographics, step-by-step instructions with product images, and even a short video for the customers qualified enough to reach the bottom.
Seeing real-world examples can help take best practices to the next level. We love the galleries and case studies from Unbounce, Shogun, and Hubspot for further inspiration.
Let’s Start Building!
Ready to get rolling on building out your own product landing page?
You can start with landing page builders on Leadpages, Unbounce, or Canva. For our Shopify friends, check out the vast selection of landing page builders in the Shopify App Store.
Want some more tips for your growing ecommerce business? Look no further: Here’s some direction on measuring the success of your website and tips for tracking KPIs once the customer moves down the sales funnel after that first landing page visit.
Do you have some of your own best practices for landing pages? Share them below or along with this article through social media! Don’t miss another opportunity to optimize your ecommerce brand and subscribe to The Ecomm Manager newsletter here.
More from ECM:
- 9 Proven Ecommerce Marketing Strategies And Best Practices
- 10 Marketing Dashboard Examples & What They Track
- 10 Best Ecommerce Marketing Tools
- 20 Best Ecommerce Platforms (check this out to see which ones have marketing built-in)