Why Do You Need Landing Pages For eCommerce Sites? 

Anything that gives too many choices, is uncluttered or disorganized, and doesn’t help with “this or nothing” -- as far as eCommerce is concerned is a lost case. 

When presented with too many choices, it’s hard for people to make choices at all, especially online. 

It’s called the “Paradox of Choice” and you know that. 

TL;DR

• Landing pages -- unlike regular pages -- help convert better. Use them generously for all campaigns. 
• eCommerce conversions -- along with sign ups with tracking pixels happen on landing pages. Sales happen on eCommerce product pages. All of this is tracked. 
• Landing pages/product pages connect with email marketing software -- allowing you to nurture subscribers or customers. 
• Use advanced email workflows such as retargeting emails, personalized and segmented emails, and more  -- depending on the status of customers, follow up with email marketing to close sales. 

As such, if you manage to get traffic to your eCommerce store, you’d still lose a huge chunk of those people visiting since they have no concrete reason to stay there and “sign up” for something you’d want them to sign up for. 

To allow for a more concentrated, well-planned, and orchestrated workflow, you’d need landing pages as a part of your eCommerce marketing strategy and campaigns. 

Landing pages are focused, concentrated, and purpose-built web pages designed to invoke action on the part of prospective customers visiting your store. 

A typical eCommerce product page converts less than 50% half as good as if there were to convert on a custom landing page (for the product).

ECommerce Landing Pages: How Do They Work? What Do They Look Like? 

Landing pages are built with a singular purpose -- To make people click through to your store (with an intent to buy) or sign up a casual visitor to your store into a qualified lead (by giving away something like a coupon or an offer). 

On a landing page then, all that you’ll see are a few branding elements (like logos, brand colors, and proprietary images of products or images of people using the product) with a single call-to-action. 

The call to action would be something like “Buy now”, “sign up”, “Stay Notified”, or something similar. 

The rules: 

1. One landing page per campaign. 
2. One call-to-action per landing page 
3. Test landing page offers, test design elements, test copy, and so on to help boost conversions. 

Take the example of HeyDey - a Los Angeles and New York based skincare company. With due credit to Unbounce, they launched a campaign to announce a new store opening at Silver Lake. This is how they built a specific landing page for that purpose alone. 

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In the case a of a direct product-centric landing page (where the focus is on the product itself), here’s an example of a landing page by Ascent Footwear -- a click-through landing page where interested visitors “click through” using the button, onto the eCommerce store to make a purchase. 

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Notice what happens on the landing page, and how it’s fundamentally different from a regular product page: 

• The focus is squarely on the product itself -- with an expandable image to delve deeper into the technical aspects and features of the motion control shoe (lateral stability, forefoot flexibility, durability, and more).  
• The offer is clear, front and center. 
• The copy (or the text) is written in a more appealing way (designed to help nudge the visitor or a prospective customer) to take action. 
• An explainer video is included. 
• The single column-layout makes it easy to read up on actual information needed (and not lead to overwhelm). 

Here’s an another example of a landing page that does something different (compared to the two examples above): 

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This landing page from MyObvi does a lot of things right: 

• The image of a woman looking in the direction (directional cues) of the main headline (with an offer) -- you won’t miss that offer. 
• Clicking on the green call-to-action button leads you to another section of the landing page presenting Obvi Super Collagen Protein Powder -- 30-day supply or 60-day supply. Giving you only two choices is also a smart thing to do. 
• The page stays on brand -- colors, fonts, and more. 
• Use of “social proof” by using the “recognized by” and some “name dropping” -- it’s fair in marketing. 
• The “Get 20% Off Now” button repeats itself on various sections of the landing page, as you scroll. 
• Sections containing explanations, graphs, and tabular comparisons are compelling. 
• Great idea to use real testimonials (from previous customers) with their faces on.  
• The page ends with an FAQ, which is a nice touch. 

Landing pages help visitors stay focused, take requisite action (that’s beneficial to your eCommerce brand -- such as to click through and buy or to sign up as a lead). 

Landing Pages + eCommerce Stores: How The Marriage Stays Intact 

Instead of leading visitors to an “almost always cluttered” eCommerce store (way too much to do there), making prospects visit a landing page is a much more organized, cleaner, and scientifically-proven way to boost eCommerce conversions. 

If the average conversion rate of a product page (and also poorly designed landing pages without the benefit of complete eCommerce workflows) is 2.5%, the aim is to work on your campaigns and landing pages to help inch forward and improve the landing page. 

Further, working with landing pages has more benefits that we give them credit for: 

• You can use multiple landing pages, launched for several different campaigns and then segment email subscribers, leads, and even click-throughs into segments for email marketing, or as separate audiences for retargeting. 
• Create as many landing pages -- for as many campaigns or even multiple landing pages per campaign -- by using drag-and-drop web-based landing page builders. These landing page builders work independently of your actual eCommerce store platform (php-based stores, WordPress stores, Shopify Stores, or even stores on BigCommerce). 
• Independent of your eCommerce store, you can generate email signups (as leads), and immediately run email marketing sequences while simultaneously adding leads to your CRM and more. This is thanks to the versatility and the number of integrations that landing page builders provide. 

Which leads us to…

Landing Pages for eCommerce + Email Marketing: The Magic of Workflows 

The magic of eCommerce marketing -- and the resultant success you’ll eventually find -- is in the email marketing workflows (designed and managed on top of your regular broadcast emails and transactional emails). 

Email marketing workflows allow you to send timely, personalized, and relevant emails (with the right messaging) to leads and customers (in various stages of your customer flow). 

• Build audiences consisting of visitors of landing pages and then product pages but did not take any action whatsoever. 
• Build audiences of prospects who click through and/or signed up for a coupon, added item(s) to the shopping cart, but never actually purchased. 
• Standalone email workflows to customers who already purchased once. 
• Email campaigns to existing customers who purchased between order values of $50 to $150. 

You get the idea. 

With a mix of email campaigns, retargeting ad campaigns, and custom email campaigns to pre-built segments, you’ll now have a chance to fine-tune workflows and build up sales and revenue for your eCommerce store. 

If you need help with marketing strategy, using landing pages, or if you’d like to save enormous amounts of time while still manage to stay inspired with actual campaigns around the world (sorted by industries and campaign types), sign up with Panoramata and see how eCommerce campaigns give you a winning edge. 

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