Last updated on August 7th, 2024 at 02:23 am
Every company that has a website has a homepage.
But you also need at least one landing page if you are serious about growing your business!
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a web page that has a single conversion goal.
Landing Page Conversion Goals
In theory, that goal can be anything, but in practice, the vast majority of landing pages fall into one of these two categories:
- Lead generation landing pages are designed to persuade potential customers to provide their contact details.
- Sales landing pages are designed to persuade the potential customer to buy a specific product or service.
Other possible conversion goals include persuading the visitor to share a particular piece of content on their social media, filling out a survey, leaving a review, etc. These conversion goals are extremely rare, though.
Landing Page Types
There are three types of landing pages:
- Short-form landing pages aka squeeze pages – This is the most basic type of landing page that is characterized by only being one screen long. Squeeze pages are used exclusively for lead generation.
- Medium-length landing pages are longer landing pages that are several screens long and require scrolling to reach the bottom of the page – They are used as both lead generation pages and as sales pages.
- Long-form landing pages are the longest landing pages that seemingly go on forever – They are almost exclusively used as sales pages, the one exception being “FREE + Shipping” lead magnets where people can get a physical product for free provided that they cover the shipping costs.
Common Usage of the Term “Landing Page”
While the term “landing page” is an umbrella term that includes all web pages that have a single conversion goal, when online marketers use it, they are typically referring specifically to lead generation landing pages.
Meanwhile, when online marketers talk about sales landing pages, they usually refer to them as “sales pages”.
When Should You Use Landing Pages?
Now let’s talk about how you can use landing pages to grow your business.
The Value Ladder Sales Funnel
Landing pages don’t exist in isolation.
They should always be viewed in the context of your overall sales funnel.
That’s why we recommend designing your sales funnel first – once you understand the big picture, it will be much easier to create landing pages that convert.
But there are several popular sales funnel models out there. Which one should you choose for your business?
We believe that the most effective way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.
It was created by our co-founder Russell Brunson who then used it to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).
This sales funnel has four stages:
- Bait – You offer the potential customer your lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
- Frontend – You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service.
- Middle – You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product or service.
- Backend – You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product or service.
Ideally, you also offer a continuity program of some sort, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.
We also recommend adding downsells, upsells, and cross sells to these core offers in order to maximize your revenue.
The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:
- Start the relationship with that person by offering free value
- Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email
- Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage
Here’s how Russell explains it:
Lead Generation Landing Pages
The first stage of the Value Ladder sales funnel – the Bait stage – is also known as the lead generation funnel.
Here’s how it works:
- You create a lead magnet
- You create a landing page for that lead magnet
- You drive traffic to that landing page
Once the potential customer gives you their email address, they enter your sales funnel and become a lead.
The lead generation funnel is the fastest way to build an email list, especially if you use paid advertising to drive traffic to it.
Sales Landing Pages
Okay, so you have the potential customer’s email address, now what?
We don’t recommend hitting them with a sales pitch right away. Send them this six-email welcome sequence instead:
- Email #1: Who Are You? – Introduce yourself to the new subscriber.
- Email #2: Where Did You Come From? – Share your origin story. How did you come to do what you do now?
- Email #3: What Do You Do? – Explain in more detail what it is that you do.
- Email #4: How Did You Gain This Expertise? – Explain what makes you qualified to do what you do.
- Email #5: Who Do You Do This For? – Explain who are your dream customers + share a case study on how you helped such a person get the results that they wanted.
- Email #6: How Can You Do It For Me? – Pitch your frontend offer and link to its sales page.
So the main idea here is that you use a landing page to get your dream customers’ email addresses, then use email marketing to build trust, and then drive traffic from your email list to the sales page of your frontend offer.
After the welcome sequence, you should continue with the same strategy: provide value, build trust, and drive traffic from your email list to the sales pages of your offers.
Do Not Make This Mistake!
Here’s an extremely common mistake that we see entrepreneurs make all the time:
Instead of driving paid traffic to their landing page, they drive traffic directly to their sales page. This is a terrible approach. Why?
Because it’s the online equivalent of walking up to a complete stranger and saying “Yo, here’s my product, now buy it”.
They don’t know who you are. You haven’t provided any value. You haven’t earned their trust. For all they know, you’re just another grifter.
So why would you expect them to buy from you??
This approach makes no sense when you think about it.
So do yourself a favor, build a proper Value Ladder sales funnel for your business, and drive traffic to it via your landing page!
What is a Homepage?
A homepage is a web page that is linked to a website’s domain name.
Say, our domain name is clickfunnels.com. If you go there, you’ll see our homepage:
When Should You Use Homepages?
In theory, you could use a landing page as your homepage, but in practice, that may not be the optimal approach. Why?
Because of the UX design principle called Jakob’s Law:
“Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.”
If other companies in your industry have traditional websites, using a landing page as your homepage might confuse potential customers.
Say, in our case, the vast majority of SaaS companies have traditional websites where the homepage features a navigation bar.
The navigation bar contents vary from company to company but the “Pricing” tab is always there.
And it’s probably safe to say that whenever people decided to check out an app by going to its homepage, they immediately look for that “Pricing” tab to learn how much it costs.
That’s why we have a navigation bar on our homepage. It makes it easy for people interested in our product to find pricing information.
It’s important to know what the expectations of your potential customers are and ensure that your website meets them.
Be careful when it comes to innovative website design because it can backfire. Never forget Jakob’s Law!
Hybrid Approach: Can You Get the Best of Both Worlds?
Is there a way to combine:
- A traditional homepage
- A traditional landing page
…to get the best of both worlds?
Yes, there is. In fact, that’s what we did on our homepage. You know that saying “All roads lead to Rome?”
Well, if you go to clickfunnels.com and start clicking around, you’ll see that all roads lead to our free trial.
Our homepage isn’t a landing page because landing pages don’t have any clickable elements other than call to action buttons.
But that doesn’t matter because everything you click is going to eventually lead to our free trial call to action button anyway!
Okay, technically, that’s not true because we do have a bunch of links in the footer, including some that lead to pages with different calls to action:
But in practice, that doesn’t matter because a potential customer interested in our software is not going to scroll all the way down to the footer and click on the “Careers” link to see the open positions at our company.
This “All roads lead to Rome” approach is completely different from the way most SaaS companies design their homepages.
It’s common to feature links to blog articles, social media profiles, etc. on the homepage. But that only distracts the potential customer from the call to action!
Fortunately, just because everyone else is putting all kinds of random stuff on their homepages, doesn’t mean that you have to.
Your website should be designed to guide the potential customer toward your call to action. So be intentional with your homepage!
Build Landing Pages that CONVERT With ClickFunnels!
ClickFunnels has everything that you need to create landing pages that convert:
- Proven landing page and Value Ladder sales funnel templates
- Visual editor that you can use to customize those templates
- A/B testing functionality that you can use to optimize your landing pages
And we offer a free trial which means that you can check out our software without any risk!