Imagine someone who’s about to travel and is looking for a great backpack for laptops. They’d search “laptop backpacks”, “laptop bags”, or something more specific such as “Laptop for 16 inch Macbook Pro”.
As a result, your ads could show up on Google Shopping (image + description). Let’s just assume that scenario for now.
What happens after the user clicks on the ad? In most cases, the click leads users straight to an eCommerce site product page with the product advertised (images, description, price) ready for users to checkout.
Assume that you also sweeten the deal with a 30% discount code, valid only for up to a week.
Users might buy. Or might not.
As an eCommerce brand, you want to maximize your chances, improve conversions, and ensure that you have another chance (Just in case) if users decide “not to buy” or take any action after viewing the product (s).
Using landing pages helps you achieve laser-like focus, continuation of the story (the one that started with the ad), message-matching, and more chances for you (as a brand) to convince potential buyers to take action (sign up, buy, avail discount codes, and more).
Using landing pages for eCommerce allows you to create dedicated sales funnels to help you maximize eCommerce conversions and sales.
Here are some specific use cases pertaining to using landing pages for eCommerce:
In the above example, we mentioned a Google Shopping ad which shows up when users specifically search for a particular product. What happens when users aren’t “searching” but just browsing social media (as they normally do)?
That’s where social ads kick in. With a plethora of choices available, you can launch social PPC (Pay Per Click) ads on Instagram, Meta (Facebook), Twitter, Pinterest, and elsewhere.
In all cases, the ads are clicked on and users checkout your products. A better way (and a much more intuitive experience minus the clutter) is to use landing pages as the destination for users after they click on these ads.
If users want to buy a GoPro 11 Black, they’ll often also want GoPro accessories (GoPro Sticks, GoPro mounts, and Micro-SD storage cards. When users go shopping for DSLR cameras, they’ll often also want a microphone, tripods, or monopods.
Selling products as bundles taps into the user psyche of “wanting more for less”.
Float one-time specials, bundle discounts, and more to sweeten the deal. Or you could use the opportunity to upsell or cross-sell products by using landing pages (since ads themselves don’t give you the real estate or space to provide all this information).
Take the example of Booking.com -- the hotel booking giant uses dedicated landing pages (by showcasing only relevant hotels, B&B, and Hostels on each page) for each place users look to travel to.
Hotels in San Francisco? Booking.com will show you an ad when you type in “Hotels in San Francisco”. Click on the ad and the site automatically lists out all the popular hotels available in San Francisco.
In this case, Booking.com uses multiple landing pages for each search query to deliver exactly what users need.
If you have multiple products (and hence multiple possible search queries), you could use landing pages for specific eCommerce search queries as well.
You can personalize landing pages based on search intent, visitor referrer source or marketing channels (more below), or even for deep personalization by adding customer names (or locations) to landing pages.
Using scripts, features that help with personalization of landing pages at scale, and more, landing pages can be made to look as if these were particularly built for the visitor who’s looking at the page at any given moment.
Additionally, if you have an army of affiliates or partners promoting your products for you, consider getting each of your top performing affiliates co-branded landing pages. Or, pick channel partners that you have a great relationship with and create personalized landing pages for them.
Seasonal promotions are a big draw for eCommerce brands and for users alike. Take BFCM as a recent example (campaigns, ongoing as we write this). This year 2022, sales on Shopify stores peaked US $3.5 million in a single minute (Nov, 2022) reaching a total of $7.5 Billion in total sales (compared $6.9 million in 2021).
This is not even counting other holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year (and other special occasions, holidays, and others).
Running campaigns during these seasonal events or any specific marketing campaign rollouts require dedicated sales funnels and marketing flows.
Landing pages are a crucial part of these sales funnels and marketing workflows that help you tap into surging demands and streamline marketing efforts leading to better conversions, more sales, and extended brand reach.
Landing pages instantly improve campaign performance, across the board. Using landing pages helps boost conversion scores and hence results such as sign ups, purchases, cart additions, and reduces shopping cart abandonment.
With landing pages, you can measure campaign level performance, down to landing page performance as well.
Over time -- along with other features such as A/B testing and the ability to change elements on landing pages quickly -- you get ways to reach your campaign champions -- as in a collection of ads, landing pages, and email marketing campaigns that work best for each campaign.
If you have promotions running on Google, you can make your landing pages address visitors from Google. Or, you could give out customized coupons for visitors from Instagram or Meta (Facebook).
If you run regular live streaming sessions on YouTube, you could build personalized landing pages for YouTube alone -- as a specific marketing channel that you’d want to treat as a special doorway for regular audiences.
Finally, create dedicated landing pages for regular or existing customers. Or, make landing pages built in a way that also makes it easier for checkout.
Shopify “Shop Pay”, for instance, automatically tracks the history of a customer to allow for not only a splendid landing page experience but also accelerated and customized checkout for each customer.
How do you use landing pages? What other use cases can you think of, in terms of eCommerce, conversion rate optimization, marketing, and more?
