Types of Landing Pages

There are many types of land­ing pages.

Contrary to pop­u­lar belief, land­ing pages aren’t syn­onym­ous with “all pages where users hap­pen to land.”

A land­ing page is a single-pur­pose web page stripped of stand­ard menus and side­bars with a single CTA (call-to-action) chosen to match the visitor’s demon­strated intent.

Landing page (LP) = a single-pur­pose web page stripped of stand­ard menus and side­bars with a single CTA (call-to-action) chosen to match the visitor’s demon­strated intent.

There are many dif­fer­ent kinds of land­ing pages.

Here we go:

Types of Landing Pages

Here are a few examples of dif­fer­ent land­ing page types:

Each land­ing page type serves a spe­cif­ic pur­pose in the cus­tom­er jour­ney, focus­ing on a single object­ive: increas­ing con­ver­sions by har­vest­ing demon­strated user intent.

Only your ima­gin­a­tion will determ­ine what types of effi­cient land­ing pages you can develop!

Read also: Types of Landing Pages

Examples of Landing Pages

Here are some examples of land­ing page types:

Event Landing Pages

When to use:

When I talk at events, people ask if they can get hold of the slides I’ve just shown.

Still, many years of exper­i­ence have gone into mani­fest­ing the know­ledge I share. I think it’s only fair that I get some­thing extra for shar­ing my present­a­tion, right?

So, instead of just send­ing over a file with my present­a­tion to the coördin­at­or, I end my sem­in­ar with a link to a land­ing page where the audi­ence can opt-in to down­load my presentation.

This way, the audi­ence gets access to my present­a­tion instantly after­wards, and I get a chance to nur­ture the new rela­tion­ship digit­ally. At this point, I think I’ve cre­ated 35 event land­ing pages. The con­ver­sion rates on these pages are often between 70% and 90%.

Thank-You Landing Pages

When to use:

Every web page needs a thank-you land­ing page, and most brands need sev­er­al dif­fer­ent thank-you land­ing pages.

About Landing Pages

When to use:

Most web­sites have at least one About page. Despite often being quite dull, these pages are often rel­at­ively well-vis­ited. Therefore, it makes sense to trans­form your about-pages into land­ing pages. 

Content Theme Landing Pages

When to use:

Brands focused on online con­tent often con­cen­trate their efforts on con­tent themes. Once such a peri­od is com­pleted, cre­at­ing sep­ar­ate con­tent theme land­ing pages often makes sense.

Resource Landing Pages

When to use:

Brands focused on inbound com­mu­nic­a­tions often gen­er­ate deep con­tent, such as down­load­able assets, lead mag­nets, con­tent upgrades, infograph­ics, tem­plates, swipe files, etc. All such resources war­rant their resource land­ing pages.

Form Landing Pages

When to use:

Instead of embed­ding your forms dir­ectly into a stand­ard web page, it’s often bet­ter to use a but­ton and point to forms embed­ded on form land­ing pages instead.

FAQ Landing Pages

When to use:

Many busi­nesses get the same ques­tions repeatedly, and for this reas­on, many com­pan­ies use FAQ sec­tions. One trick is to keep each answer in your FAQ very short and fin­ish each reply with a Read More link. These links could then refer to many dif­fer­ent FAQ land­ing pages.

Automation Landing Pages

When to use:

A brand could make good use of vari­ous online auto­ma­tion. It could be a short series of emails like a mini-course or a vir­al loop with a sequence of videos. These types of pages spell good oppor­tun­it­ies for cre­at­ing auto­ma­tion land­ing pages.

Disclaimer Landing Pages

When to use:

Most brands use dif­fer­ent kinds of dis­claim­ers, which are typ­ic­ally dull. With some cre­at­ive think­ing, these dis­claim­ers could be con­ver­ted into dis­claim­er land­ing pages.

Intent Landing Pages

When to use:

Think about this: Where can a vis­it­or click a link on the web and end up on your web­site? Suppose you know of such links, which can often be eas­ily iden­ti­fied by track­ing extern­al refer­rers in ana­lyt­ics. You can set up intent land­ing pages to bet­ter serve (and con­vert) inbound audiences.

Learn more: Types of Landing Pages

Conversion Cannibalism

Imagine a web page with one but­ton for users to click. Let’s say the but­ton gen­er­ates 10 clicks.

So, what if you add anoth­er but­ton?
Will you now get 10 + 10 clicks?

Typically, no.

In most cases, you won’t even get to keep your ini­tial 10 clicks. You might get 5 clicks in total and thus lose half of your engage­ment by adding anoth­er choice.

This is con­ver­sion cannibalism.

The Paradox of Choice

In 1995, Professor Shena Iyengar from Columbia University launched a mar­ket stall with dif­fer­ent jam fla­vours. When she offered twenty-four options, more people came to the booth. When she only offered six choices, more people con­ver­ted into pay­ing customers.

Our decision-mak­ing pro­cess is com­plex, but research­ers have offered many pos­sible explan­a­tions, such as decision fatigue, ana­lys­is para­lys­is, and buy­er­’s remorse. ¹Piasecki, M., & Hanna, S. (2011). A Redefinition of the Paradox of Choice. , 347 – 366. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​0​7​/​978 – 94-007‑0510-4_19

Buttons and forms on a web­site are sub­ject to the para­dox of choice.

Horizontal vs Vertical Design

On the web today, we see a trend where there is white space to both the left and right of but­tons and forms. We also see a trend where more of the same CTAs are stacked from top to bottom.

Why is this a design trend?

The minor­ity who click your content’s call to action (con­tent diver = mov­ing ver­tic­ally) is expo­nen­tially more valu­able than the major­ity who scan and move along (con­tent surfer = mov­ing horizontally).

The stra­tegic pla­cing of CTAs and visu­al ele­ments should, there­fore, be con­sidered when design­ing a web page:

Learn more: Beware of Conversion Cannibalism

The Classic Home Page Debate

“We must put all these items on our home page because they’re all import­ant to us.”

I often get involved in heated debates on what to include on the home page. If I weigh into the debate that they should remove cer­tain ele­ments, the chances are that someone will get offended. 

Like, “How dare you sug­gest that my work func­tion be removed from our home page?”

The Google Home Page

Take a look at Google’s home page:

Now, Google has many products that are argu­ably import­ant to their busi­ness model.

To name a few examples:

All these Google products are reas­on­ably sig­ni­fic­ant, right? However, they still don’t replace Google’s de facto home page — the Google Search page (designed to be a land­ing page).

It begs the ques­tion:
If Google can keep its home page clean, why can­’t you? 

Small Ask vs Big Ask

The key to an effi­cient home page design is to stop think­ing about what’s “import­ant” and “not important”.

Think instead of how to cre­ate a “yes lad­der” by start­ing with a “small ask” and, through ice­berg pub­lish­ing, work your way up to a “big ask.”

Small ask = a value pro­pos­i­tion that requires little effort and resources for a pro­spect to accept. It works best when the ask offers a swift, hassle-free solu­tion for an urgent pain point.

Big ask = a value pro­pos­i­tion that requires high engage­ment and a sub­stan­tial trans­ac­tion by the pro­spect. It works best when mutu­al under­stand­ing and trust are thor­oughly established.

By pri­or­it­ising a small ask on the home page design, you increase the like­li­hood of build­ing such a “yes lad­der” by gently prim­ing your user to “yes” over time.

Learn more: The Classic Home Page Debate

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