Sales page vs. landing page, which one should you use? I’ll answer this question while also covering the pros and cons of long-form vs. short-form sales page copy.
Are you a business owner? Do you have a website?
If so, you might have heard that you need a landing page or a sales page, or maybe both.
Well, unless you’re a marketing expert, knowing the difference between a sales page and a landing page can be tricky. They’re both standalone pages on your website, and each is designed to help achieve your sales goals down the line. However, they have different objectives that aim to reach web visitors at different stages of your marketing funnel.
So in this blog post, I’ll go into detail about the differences between a sales page and a landing page. And I’ll discuss the pros and cons of long-form sales page copy vs. short-form sales copy as well.
Also, if you’re wondering what skills are needed to write landing or sales page copy, I recommend you read one of our latest blogs on 7 traits of sales copywriters you should be hiring.What’s A Landing Page?
A landing page is a standalone web page created for a single objective: converting visitors into leads.
But how can a landing page help convert your web visitors into qualified leads?
Well, the reason it’s called a landing page is that it’s where your visitors “land” after clicking on a link in an email newsletter, social media bio, or Google, YouTube, or Facebook ad.
Once there, the goal is to get web visitors to share their contact details by offering a freebie (or lead magnet) in exchange for their email address. The process is more simple than you’d think.
Let's say a visitor clicks to your landing page from a Facebook ad. They'd end up on your landing page and see you're willing to give them a free 7-day software trial in exchange for an email address. Then they'd type in their email, click submit, and receive an email with their free trial. In exchange, you've just gotten their email address for future marketing purposes.
This is a fantastic way to generate qualified leads. Why? Because people who sign up will have a genuine interest in your main offer. And this makes it easier for you to convert them into paying customers down the road.
What’s A Sales Page?
As the name suggests, a sales page is a web page with one goal in mind: converting web visitors into paying customers.
It does this by sharing the benefits of your products or services, and showing web visitors how your offer can solve their problems. Sales pages that convert typically feature engaging copy, appealing images, social proof, and a clear call to action to encourage prospects to buy.
Plus, while they can boost your sales and conversion rates, sales pages are also a powerful marketing tool to increase your average transaction value per customer.
Now, what do you think happens when you combine an expertly written sales page with targeted traffic? Simple, a potential boost in sales!!
We need to ask ourselves who wins in the fight of the sales page vs. landing page? Well, unlike with a landing page, where you’re simply collecting email addresses to sell something later on, if you have a professional sales page, you can reap financial rewards immediately.
Therefore, a sales page is a no-brainer for businesses looking to improve their bottom line fast. But that leads us to the following question, should you use short-form or long-form copy for your sales page?
What Are the Pros And Cons Of A Long-Form Sales Page?
You might think that shorter copy is better to use. After all, nobody wants to spend hours scrolling down a sales page only to be told many times over to buy a product.
Yet, David Ogilvy himself said that he had only seen short-form copy beat long-form copy twice throughout his entire career.
What are the benefits of a long-form sales page?
- Helping you sell a technical product or service: long-form sales copy tends to be more effective than short-form, especially when you’re selling a technical product or service that requires educating customers.
- Helping you sell high-value items: long-form sales pages are also better suited to businesses selling high-value items. That’s because to win over your prospects, you need to provide more reasons why they should spend more money for better quality.
- Providing you with more opportunities to convince prospects to purchase from you
- Helping you convert first-time visitors who aren’t familiar with your brand
- Addressing more objections
- Enhancing your SEO with the use of more backlinks, keywords, etc.
What are the cons of using a long-form sales page?
- Risk of losing your prospects’ attention: the average attention span is 8 seconds these days. And this makes it harder to keep your potential customers reading long-form copy.
- Overwhelming your prospects with a lot of information
What Are The Pros And Cons Of A Short-Form Sales Page?
While I’ve detailed the scenarios where using long-form copy on your sales page is better, there are reasons why short-form pages are much more common in the digital age.
What are the benefits of a short-form sales pages?
- Helping you sell lower value items: consumers don’t need as much persuasion when purchasing inexpensive items.
- Complementing image-heavy sales copy
- Making the benefits of your products or services easy to spot: this will help you quickly convert web visitors with a short attention span or little time.
- Making information easier to digest and understand
- Keeping your customers’ attention
What are the cons of using a short-form sales page?
- Hard to cover a product or service in-depth
- Harder to effectively convey the benefits of your offer in a few words
- Not as helpful with SEO as long-form sales copy
- You might not manage to answer all of your visitors’ questions
What’s Best For Your Business?
Ultimately, knowing whether to use a landing page or a sales page depends on your specific offer and marketing goals. And the same applies to whether you should use long-form copy or short-form copy on your sales page.
My suggestion? I recommend testing, testing, and testing until you find what resonates best with your audience.
Yet, as a rule of thumb, I like to follow the quote ‘’copy is like a woman’s skirt. It should be long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to keep it interesting’’ 😉 And that’s exactly what we strive to do at CopywritingCrew when crafting sales pages for our clients.
So, if you need help creating high-converting sales page copy, feel free to order on our website. Alternatively, you can also contact Jesse, our founder, to discuss your project.
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Frequently Asked Questions About Sales Pages
Question: Sales page vs. landing page, what’s the main difference?
Answer: a landing page aims at converting web visitors into qualified leads. A sales page aims at converting web visitors into paying customers.
Question: Do I need a sales page?
Answer: if you want to increase your sales and the average value per transaction per customer, then the answer is yes!
Further reading
If you’re looking for more copywriting tips, don’t hesitate to browse our blog section. Some of our latest blog posts that could be useful to you include: