How to Effectively Use Sales Pages vs Landing Pages — Complete Guide

Launch Your Online Business in Just 7 Days

If you’re even remotely confused about sales pages vs landing pages, this post is for you.

Today we’ll cover:

Meanings behind sales and landing pages
How to easily build each type of page
Sales page examples and landing page examples
When and where to use sales and landing pages
How you can create all kinds of web pages in minutes for free

And then, we’ll teach you how to run A/B tests to optimize everything for optimal conversions as well!

Let’s dive right in.

Definitions

This is where a lot of people get things confused between sales and landing pages, so let’s get it out of the way first.

What’s a sales page?

It’s a web page on your website that serves a distinct purpose: getting people to buy a product or service.

Types of sales pages

Sales pages are split into 2 main types:

1. Short-form sales pages

You’ve probably seen it a million times by now.

A short-form sales page is your regular product page on Amazon, ecommerce stores, or even info-product pages.

They generally have:

Low price (under $100)
Brief copy that talks about the product (features and benefits)
A few sections for reviews, pricing, and FAQs
Tendency to work well with digital products that make the buying process frictionless for prospects

They also normally feature products/services that are simple and easy to understand, like toothbrushes, for example.

2. Long-form sales pages

If you have a product/service that is:

Complex, complicated, or technical
Has a high price range ($100 - $10,000)
Marketed to a cold audience that doesn’t know or understand it yet
Requires a commitment by the buyers

Then a long-form sales page would drive you more conversions and sales.

Simply because it features persuasive — and rather long — copy that details everything about the product, eliminates doubts and fears for prospects, and offers incentives to push readers to make a purchase.

Both short-from and long-from sales pages work in their respective areas to drive excellent conversion rates, but it all depends on the context.

So if you want the perfect sales page structure, you’ll need to build it around your offer and your target audience.

What’s a landing page?

It’s a post-click web page that people land on after clicking on a link from ads, social media posts, or other traffic sources.

By definition, it looks like any web page could end up being labeled a landing page...

But it’s an unspoken truth among internet savvies that, in most cases, landing pages:

Are designed to convert prospects to leads
Have a form to collect prospects’ emails
Have 1 clear call-to-action (CTA) button
Have concise wording and copy
Are marketed to cold audiences
Can take the form of multiple web pages

Types of landing pages

Here are 6 types of web pages that you can call landing pages:

1. Lead magnet landing pages

These types of landing pages sit on top of your sales funnel.

They offer a lead magnet in exchange for customers’ emails.

2. Squeeze pages

While these landing pages don’t offer a lead magnet, they serve the same goal of collecting emails.

Usually, via giving access to content, memberships, or other freebies.

3. Thank-you landing pages

After a sign-up or a purchase, use these landing pages to send the remaining traffic to wherever you want in your online business.

They’re also neat for confirming what the lead signed up for/bought and how they're going to get it.

4. Unsubscribe landing pages

Source: Grammarly.com

These landing pages are used when someone clicks “Unsubscribe” on an email.

Usually to opt-out of an email list or a service.

5. Click-through landing pages

Source: Lumosity.com

These landing pages don’t have a form to collect emails, rather, they act as top-of-the-funnel pages that push traffic into other steps in the sales funnel.

6. Product landing pages

Source: Ridge.com

Perfect pages to display your product collections and what you have to offer.

So, in conclusion, you can think of the term “landing page” as a broader spectrum that includes many other web pages — and yes, even sales pages sometimes.

Sales page vs landing page: Build with purpose

In the landscape of the ever-changing internet, simply existing is a significant challenge for any small online business.

This is where sales and landing pages come to save the day by:

Serving at the forefront of websites to bring in a constant stream of leads, conversions, and revenue
Reaching a bigger target market
Building a convenient experience for your customers

So it’s safe to say, getting the right page in front of your prospects is crucial, and for that, you’ll need to know the distinct differences between sales and landing pages.

Biggest differences

Here’s how sales pages and landing pages differ.

So while you technically can’t call all landing pages “lead generation landing pages”....

You’ll find that it’s the most common type of landing page marketers and online businesses refer to when mentioning a landing page.

Sales pages vs landing pages: Where and when to use them?

The last thing you want is to make it hard for your website visitors to navigate and do what you want them to do — buy your product or service.

Considering that you’ll surely be using both landing pages and sales pages, it can’t be overstated how much you need to optimize them for conversions.

And by optimizing, we mean:

Have them in the right places
Give them flawless designs (don’t mix the 2 up)
Have a crystal clear goal for each page
Craft your buyer’s journey

(Plus, don’t forget to optimize each page for mobile devices.

More than 55% of your online traffic comes from there)

So depending on your situation, what you have to offer, and the status of your target audience, you’ll have a different arrangement of landing and sales pages along with other pages as well.

For example, let’s say you’re promoting an online course.

Your sales funnel might look something like this:

1. Lead generation landing page

First page, collect prospects' emails in exchange for lead magnets, or even access to the first lesson of the course for free.

2. Sales page

If prospects go through and sign up on the first page, they get redirected to this sales page where you offer them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain access to all of your courses for X amount of money.

3. Order form page

Depending on what prospects decide on buying, you’ll display a checkout page that will let them complete their order.

4. Thank-you page

Confirm what prospects signed up for and tell them you’ve already sent their lead magnet or access link via email.

- That’s it? Is that the simple recipe for making money online?

Yes and no — allow us to explain.

The formula itself works 100%, we know because we’ve used iterations of it to generate results like this.

A sales funnel that was used by systeme.io in the past

But the arrangement of your landing and sales pages is only one piece of the puzzle.

The design of the pages and what you actually offer are equally, if not more, important.

Assuming your offer is irresistible — or for your sake, compelling enough to generate attraction and sales — how can you possibly know the best arrangement of pages?

Or the best possible design of the pages themselves?

Easy, you A/B test everything!

For the uninitiated, A/B testing (also known as split testing) refers to splitting online traffic between two identical pages with only 1 known variable being different, like having different titles, for example.

This method is super effective in increasing the performance of your online business.

We know because recently, we A/B tested our homepage at systeme.io and managed to increase our conversion rate by more than 30%!

And the best part about it is that it’s actually way easier than you may think to implement an A/B test.

In fact, if you’ve already got a sales page or a landing page with a platform like systeme.io, you can create an A/B test in no time.

A/B test and see what works for you

A/B test that’s ready to start in systeme.io

When first creating sales pages, here’s what you should A/B test:

Depending on your offer, test out whether a long-form sales page or a short-form one would deliver you the most sales
Try testing different headlines and different arrangements of body sections
Use different descriptions on CTA buttons and different positions as well

When creating landing pages, here’s what you should A/B test:

Try out different designs/templates for your landing page (and choose the one that best matches your goal for the page)
Again, you can test different headlines, body sections, CTAs, etc

Then, while not a technical A/B test, you can mix arrangements of your pages at set periods of time to figure out which ones perform the best.

Create your sales or landing page in the next 5 minutes

You can have the best Google ad campaign out there, and the best sales team to back it, but if you drive traffic to a landing page that looks like this...

Bad landing page example

You’re going to most likely fail in generating enough leads to stay in business for a long time.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “Oh great, now I need to hire a designer, a copywriter, and who knows what else to make this work."

And the answer to that would be... No, you don’t!

It takes less than five minutes to create a proven design for a sales page and/or a landing page.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Get your forever-free account at systeme.io, and you’ll be greeted with this dashboard

Main dashboard in systeme.io

2. Head to Funnels in the menu, and create a new funnel

Creating a new funnel in systeme.io

3. On the left, create a new step, and choose a type of page

Creating a funnel step/page in systeme.io

4. Choose one of the proven templates for your page design

Templates in systeme.io

5. And Voilà! You have a solid design for your first landing page and all you need to do is plug in your info

Drag-and-drop editor in systeme.io

You don’t need to worry about hosting, file storage, or custom code.

And you can even connect your own custom domain for free!

But hold on for a minute….

What is systeme.io?

Systeme.io’s logo

We’re not just a landing page builder.

We’re actually an all-in-one platform that was built to create, maintain, and scale online businesses.

And here’s how we can help you build your own online business:

Website builder: Use proven templates and a drag-and-drop editor (no code needed) to build a beautiful website in no time
Email marketing: Get into an industry that has an amazing ROI of $42 for each $1 spent. Carry out highly targeted email campaigns by sending unlimited promotional emails to flawlessly segmented customers
Online courses: Upload, promote, and sell your online courses from 1 place
Affiliate program management: Create your affiliate program, and gather a team of affiliates to sell your offerings day and night
Marketing automation: Forget about having a sales team. Automate responses to customers, set up workflows, and run your digital marketing efforts on autopilot

And there’s more!

Stuff like A/B tests, deadline funnels, blogs, evergreen webinars, assistant accounts, and order bumps are all a few clicks away!

But hey, don’t just take our word for it — check out more than 1,000 reviews on Trustpilot with an exceptional average rating of 4.9/5!

A/B testing with systeme.io

It takes 4 clicks to create and run a split test with systeme.io, simply:

1. Head to “A/B test” when having the desired page selected in the funnels dashboard

Main funnels dashboard in systeme.io

2. Click the “Choose Variant” button, and then, select the variant page and goal page (where all traffic will go) for your A/B test

Setting up an A/B test in systeme.io

3. That’s it! You only need to click on “Start A/B test” and you’re good to go!

Starting an A/B test in systeme.io

From here, keep an eye on how your pages are performing from the same dashboard.

Analytics dashboard in systeme.io for A/B tests

And if you think you can’t afford all this, think again!

Systeme.io’s pricing

Systeme.io’s pricing

We have 4 scalable plans:

1. Free: $0/month

2. Startup: $27/month

3. Webinar: $47/month

4. Unlimited: $97/month

The Free plan is free forever — and with it, you get:

Full access to the website builder and library of templates
Unlimited file storage, unlimited hosting, and connect your custom domain for free as well
A blog with unlimited blog posts
Run your own affiliate program

(And sell products/services with 0% transaction fees!)

Plus, get the ability to send unlimited marketing emails, access to tags, automation rules, coupons, online courses, and A/B tests.

As you go up in the plans, you’ll get higher limits on all the tools you have in the free plan, and unlock new features as well.

Once you reach the Unlimited plan, you’ll have zero limits on all the tools we have at systeme.io.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to get a 1-1 coaching session, and free migration for your entire online business if you go with Unlimited.

(Additionally, you get free migration on any annual billing plan, which are all offered at a nice 30% discount)

If any of this sounds interesting to you, go get your free account now and try it out for yourself.

We won’t ask for your card info!

FAQs

Can a sales page be a landing page?

Yes, and here’s why…

A landing page is a post-click web page that online traffic “lands” on after clicking on an ad, a social media post, or any other traffic source.

Now, if that page happens to also sell a product or service, with a pricing section and multiple CTAs that would lead to a checkout page, then that landing page is also considered a sales page.

When should I use a sales page?

Use sales pages to directly sell your offer to your target audience.

Your sales page shouldn’t be used as a homepage for your website in most cases.

Sales pages tend to drive more sales when they’re placed effectively in a sales funnel.

When should I use a landing page?

You’ll use landing pages for various reasons, most notably, as lead generation pages to build your email list or enroll members into a community (like a Discord server for example).

What’s a click-through landing page?

Simply put, it’s a landing page that doesn’t contain any form to collect emails, rather, it acts as a bridge for moving traffic down the sales funnel.

Conclusion

Alright, today we’ve learned:

The term “landing page” includes many other types of web pages, and sometimes even sales pages
You need to build each page with a distinct goal in mind
Both landing pages and sales pages tend to go hand-in-hand in sales funnels to bring you the highest conversation rates
You should run A/B tests to optimize your conversions and figure out what works and what doesn’t for your customers
Creating both sales pages and landing pages is easier than ever

And of course, don’t forget to go get your forever-free account at systeme.io and take your online-business journey to the next level.

We won’t ask for any card info!

Cheerio!