The Difference Between Web Pages And Landing Pages

The average cost of acquisition (CAC) in direct-to-consumer eCommerce has increased by about 60% in the past five years. Your ads now need to work harder and be more effective to get a click — and businesses are seeing diminishing returns.

This shift in the ecosystem has made it more important than ever to rank higher in organic search: your business needs to show up prominently when customers make high-intent searches related to your business. This is where landing pages play a significant role in capturing customers — but they have to be used properly.

To dive in, here's what you need to know about the difference between web pages and landing pages, and how to get started on driving more traffic with your own landing pages.

Websites are information repositories for your whole business and serve various types of visitors, like prospects, current customers, job candidates, partners, suppliers, and even investors.

Landing pages are web pages that don't live on your main website and are usually designed with one specific goal in mind, often related to conversion – such as email subscriptions or a product purchase. Marketers use landing pages as a destination for events, marketing assets, advertising campaigns, and much more so that their audience is more likely to convert.

Your website is made up of web pages — they're the building blocks of your online presence. Your home page, product category pages, individual product detail pages, "about us" page, careers page, and privacy policy page are all web pages. Unlike landing pages, your web pages serve a wide audience and many different purposes.

There's many reasons you leave those web pages alone most of the time. A main one being websites are expensive and time-consuming to update. The average ecommerce website costs $1000+ USD to launch if you're lucky enough to be able to DIY pieces in-house to cut costs. Hiring an agency to build a custom site can cost tens of thousands of dollars — and that's not counting your ongoing hosting and maintenance costs.

Because of this, the web pages that make up your website are designed to stay the same for the most part, containing information like your company's history and main product categories that are relevant for a wide audience.

Landing pages give you flexibility without having to build brand-new website pages on your own or contract a freelancer or agency to build them for you. You can use third-party builders (like Yext Pages) to create as many pages as you like, without cluttering up the website experience you carefully curated.

The value of landing pages is in the name: Your visitors need a place to "land" after coming from a source like Google Search or an ad on LinkedIn, and landing pages give you a very focused place to direct that traffic. Landing pages are often stripped down to the barest essentials so your visitors can convert without being distracted by extra buttons, copy, or visuals.

There's a direct correlation between how many landing pages a brand uses and how many conversions their online advertising generates. That, and 76% of your potential brick-and-mortar customers check your online presence before physically visiting your business.

Landing pages are a painless way to capture more business and put your brand ahead of the competition.

There's a big difference between casually flipping through Netflix's "Recommended For You" section and typing into Netflix's search bar, "1990s Bollywood coming-of-age drama."

When you want something specific, a generic answer won't do. That's where landing pages come in.

When your audience searches for "men's dress shoes size 40W" or "gift shop near me open now," they're searching with high intent — meaning, they're using language that signals they are ready to take action. The last place you should send them is a generic web page that makes them do more work to find what they're looking for.

Create landing pages that let your audience take immediate action by customizing different pages to answer popular search terms for your business.

If you sell athletic sneakers to casual fitness fans and ultra-marathon runners alike, the messaging you write for those two groups will sound quite different.

Landing pages segmented to speak to different groups of customers can help your audience convert more than a standard sneaker product page, especially if you're targeting those segments with an advertising campaign.

To illustrate with an example: when Häagen-Dazs leveraged Yext Landing Pages to maximize conversions and boost discoverability in local search, they saw results in driving both online clicks and in-store shopping.

Altogether, Häagen-Dazs saw 75% YoY growth in website clicks for all locations and markets. During peak season, shops with Yext Pages saw a 25% incremental lift in foot traffic and a 45% incremental lift in website clicks. These locations also experienced 236% fewer phone calls than expected during the same period, suggesting that consumers were able to find the information they were searching for without resorting to a costly phone call.

See more examples of how optimized landing pages can impact clicks and conversions.

If you use a web builder like Webflow, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress, you may be able to create a quick landing page within your existing infrastructure. Just set the page to "unlisted" and give it a descriptive URL so you can keep track of conversions.

You can also choose to use a third-party provider like Yext Pages to give yourself a little bit more flexibility. These tools can be extra handy if you don't (or can't) update your website frequently.

Make sure your landing pages have these elements:

• Aesthetically pleasing, fast-loading visuals that grab your visitor's attention

• Targeted content for the intended audience of the individual landing page

• Clear, specific, and compelling call-to-action so your visitors know what to do next

Want more guidance on landing page best practices? Check out our webinar on How to Develop Custom SEO Pages.