Landing Page vs Homepage: The Key Differences Explained
Experiencing some difficulty with your online business? There are billions of other sites so edging out over the competition is no easy feat, after all.
If you intend to build a successful website for your business, you must know the difference between a landing page and homepage. That way, you know which fits your situation more. But with no prior experience in web design, you might feel overwhelmed and confused.
We’ll walk you through the process and we’ll start by discussing the difference between a landing page vs homepage. They function differently and you need to take advantage of what they offer your site and business. Read on and find out more:
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page boasts a major objective and a minor objective. The former is to turn the website into something that converts visitors to leads. When visitors go to your website, they have to know your story and find educational content for their needs.
That means your landing page must be efficient in nudging your customers to take the final step. Because of this, your landing page design should prioritize conversion. It must tell a succinct story to ensure your customers know what they’ll get by trusting you.
Thus, landing pages should have no navigation since visitors shouldn’t go anywhere else. That’s why it must have a compelling copy. In most cases, landing pages can convert around 20-40% of your visitors.
What is a Home Page?
Your home page is akin to your front door. It means people will tend to judge your website based on what they see on your home page. They will do a quick scan and make decisions based on whether they can relate to how you project your business.
Home pages can only hold a user’s attention for 10 seconds before they get out of your website. It’s consistent with recent studies finding out that websites lose 10% of users for every second it takes for their home page to load.
What it means is that home pages must do a lot within a short period. Its goal is to disrupt your audience’s status quo will building rapport with them. That way, you can convert them using your informative content or let them navigate through your website for more content.
In most cases, home pages are great for customers already in the Awareness stage. That’s why its content must adjust according to this assumption. It’s a critical component of your inbound marketing strategy.
Landing Page vs Homepage: Differences Explained
With the purpose of the two explained, we will now tackle the comparisons between the landing page and the homepage. You can also read this guide if you’re interested in making custom coming soon pages to hype up your audience.
Here are some things you should consider:
1. Audience and Purpose
It’s a common mistake for people to use these terms interchangeably. The truth is that the landing page is a page where someone gets to after they click your PPC ads. That’s why when you’re using a PPC campaign to attract customers, this is the page you must promote.
People who view your landing page already expressed interest in your products or services. For example, if you’re selling used cars, someone searching for “used car sellers” clicked on your paid search result. It means the person is already looking for cars within your operation area.
That’s why it’s always a better assumption that these people are already on their way to your sales or conversion funnel. Even more so than the people who happened to stumble upon your website using normal search. With that said, you can do a lot more promotion on a landing page compared to your homepage.
2. Links
Landing pages only aim to convert traffic while homepages have more functions. On a typical homepage, you’ll see a navigation bar at the top and site links at the footer. Some take it a step further and include their social media and blog links.
For landing pages, these links will only make it more ineffective. As said before, your visitors shouldn’t go anywhere else until they get converted. That’s why landing pages are often devoid of these distractions.
If you find a reason for your audience to open another page, use a lightbox function. Other than that, the link should open into another tab or window. With limited options, the landing page will have better odds of converting visitors.
3. Content
Sometimes, your landing page has the same content as your homepage. But even with this, you must trim it to show content related to your company’s products and services. You know the ads and search terms that brought people to your landing page, unlike organic traffic.
With this in mind, tailor your landing page content to be specific to those ads. For example, if you’re a flower shop and someone clicks on your ad after searching for roses, they must arrive on a landing page specific to the flower they searched for. If you use your homepage for this purpose, you’ll end up confusing your visitor since they’re taken to a page where they can see other flowers.
To simplify, landing pages should make visitors think the content is exactly what they’re looking for.
4. Call-to-Action
The biggest difference between homepages and landing pages is that the latter emphasizes action. It means landing pages will always have a Call-to-Action (CTA). This encourages its visitors to do a specific course of action that leads to conversion.
CTAs can range from fillable forms to calling a phone number or buying a product. Regardless, it must be simple and obvious. As for homepages, it shouldn’t have strong and prevalent CTAs since its function is to direct customers to other parts of your website.
Learn the Difference Between Landing Pages and Home Pages Today!
These are things you must remember when tackling your landing page vs homepage. Set it as a reminder whenever you’re building a website for your business. Knowing the difference is important since it plays a large role in determining your website’s effectiveness.
Did you find this guide about landing pages and homepages helpful? If so, don’t stop here because we’ve got more posts to help you out! We invite you to come check out more of our posts for all the business tips and tricks you need!
