How to Build a Shopify Landing Page That Converts

This content is sponsored by GemPages Shopify Landing Page builder.

What percentage of your total website traffic converts to a paying customer? How much more revenue would you earn if you could boost that number by just one point? With a well-designed Shopify landing page, you could see more income than ever before.

Not all landing pages are created equally, however. We’ll walk you through the various types of landing pages, and why you need them before we dive into how to create them and the best practices to follow.

What is a Shopify Landing Page?

Landing pages are pages specifically built around a conversion goal. Data shows the average landing page conversion rate is just 2.35%, but the top 10% of pages get conversion rates of 11.45% or higher. Shopify landing pages are those pages built on your Shopify store.

How are landing pages different from product pages?

A product page serves multiple purposes – to educate users about your product, and to make it possible for shoppers to buy it.

A landing page, on the other hand, is designed to get shoppers to take a specific action – that may or may not be making a purchase.

Product pages can only be used in your Shopify store, but landing pages can be deployed anywhere along the customer journey. You can use them to:

• Promote specific products
• Advertise product collections
• Promote limited-time deals
• Collect leads for your email list and other marketing campaigns

Types of Landing Pages

Splash Pages

Splash pages are the ones users land on after they click an ad. They are most commonly used to share an announcement or verify the user’s age. For Shopify, you may see this as a Coming Soon page or a Password page.

Splash landing pages use strong visuals with minimal copy but powerful messaging to leave an impression on users. Splash pages come before a web page so you can use them at any point throughout the marketing funnel. However, it’s most common to use them at the top of the funnel to boost brand awareness since there’s a bit of a “wow” factor involved.

Lead Generation Landing Pages

Lead generation pages are typically found in the middle of the funnel because that’s where you capture a prospect’s information. For a strong lead gen page, you have to strike the proper balance between asking for a user’s email address and the reward you give them in exchange. You can make your reward a downloadable checklist, ebook, or some other digital product, or a product discount.

Shopify makes it easy to build this kind of landing page with built-in contact forms and customer forms you can add to your Password page, Coming Soon page, or a lead capture page.

Sales Pages

Sales pages are used at the bottom of the funnel when you need to convert a regular visitor into a buying customer. Because of this, structuring and designing these pages is more difficult. Shopify makes the process easier with Product pages and collections pages, with templates. The templates are limited and require some customization to take them from the standard product page to a sales page that converts. We’ll get to how to transform the pages later in this post.

Sales pages vary in length, based on how much information you need to convince someone to follow your call to action. Typically, the more expensive or complex your product is, the longer your sales page needs to be to address all the potential objections a buyer may have.

Thank You Pages

Buyers get redirected to a thank you page after entering their information or making a purchase. Going beyond a basic, boring design with a single line that reads “Thank you for X” to provide a well-designed and visually appealing page not only helps move leads through the funnel but can also boost your average order value with repeat customers.

Seasonal Landing Pages

A seasonal landing page is a standalone page that directs users to a seasonal or holiday sale. For the greatest chance of conversion, focus on creating a festive design that matches the current season/holiday, clearly communicate your offering, and remove the header and footer elements on the page – as those will distract from your CTA. Create a sense of urgency with a limited-time offering, and include discounts with free shipping.

Why You Need Shopify Landing Pages

Address Customer Concerns

Buyers will always have objections to purchasing – even if they’re familiar with your brand and products. It may be that they’re worried about making such an investment, or they’re not sure your product offers all the features they’re looking for. Whatever the fears holding buyers back are – the landing page is the best place to address your most common customer objections. Having dedicated landing pages ready to support your campaigns when you first launch your Shopify store is key to success.

Move Buyers Through the Sales Funnel

Since each Shopify landing page has a specific focus, you can use them to move people through your sales funnel. For instance, at the beginning of the funnel, or the awareness stage, you can use landing pages to collect leads from your target audience and share an ebook or list of tips as they relate to the problem your customers are trying to solve.

In the consideration phase or the middle of the funnel, people know your brand and are now considering how your product is the best option to solve their problem. Here’s where you can use landing pages to offer case studies, webinars, or free samples of your product. Customer testimonials and other social proof are helpful here, too.

And in the decision phase, or at the bottom of the funnel, when the customer is ready to buy, you could offer free trials, discount codes, etc.

Measure the Success of Marketing Campaigns

With tracking tags, you can see how much traffic each landing page got, and where it came from. Your analytics data will tell you which marketing channels were most successful, so you can re-invest your efforts there.

Creating a Shopify Landing Page

Use Landing Page Builder Apps

Shopify has a wide selection of landing page builder apps available in their marketplace. GemPages is one landing page tool, that makes it easy to build a variety of landing pages on your site with just a few clicks. It uses a drag-and-drop editor so you can design pages without coding knowledge. Plans start at just $15/month and include an unlimited number of landing pages. A free trial is available so you can test the features and design elements before making a commitment.

Use the Product Collections Feature

Every Shopify theme supports Product Collections. If you know the kind of traffic you’ll be sending to these collection pages, you can customize them accordingly.

Using a product collection as a Shopify landing page comes with three advantages:

• Customers are likely already aware of how collection pages work, reducing friction to improve usability.
• It’s easier to design and write the page content for these custom landing pages
• It shortens the distance to your “Add to Cart” button, making it easier for people to actually purchase.

To create Shopify landing pages with Product Collection pages, follow these steps:

Create Your Product Collections

Go to Products in the Shopify Dashboard, and then Collections. You can add products manually, or build a collection of products automatically based on a product category.

Choose the title and URL for the page. Try to make it something SEO-friendly, using keywords people would be searching. The words you use in your advertisements are a good place to start.

Note any tracking parameters associated with paid ads, so you can further target your dynamic content, widgets, notifications, etc. to specific campaigns.

Adding Subdomains for Landing Pages

1. From the Shopify Dashboard, go to Settings > Domains.
2. Choose the domain you wish to configure and click Manage, then click Subdomains. Then click Add subdomain.
3. Enter the prefix you want to add such as shop or thankyou and click Add subdomain.

Create a Shopify Landing Page Template

Create a new template within your Shopify theme so it’s easier to build custom landing pages throughout your store. It will require some HTML code editing, however.

Before you get started, check to see if you have a sectioned or unsectioned theme. Sectioned themes are easier for drag-and-drop editors to use, and newer Shopify themes are sectioned. In your Shopify dashboard, click Online Store > Themes. From there, click Actions > Edit Code.

In the theme editor, you’ll see a bunch of directories and liquid files. Look for a Sections directory, and if you can, open it. If you see {/} collection-template.liquid then you have a sectioned theme.

Creating a New Template in a Non-Sectioned Theme

1. Navigate to Online Store > Themes. Then, click Actions > Edit Code.
2. Navigate to the Templates directory. Click Add a New Template and name it something like landing-page.
3. Now, you’ll be taken to the editor where you can make edits to the pages HTML code as necessary to build a template.
4. Once your edits are saved, you can assign the template to a page.

Creating a New Template in a Sectioned Theme

1. Follow steps 1-3 above. If you can edit the code for the feature you want in the template editor, follow the rest of the instructions above.
2. If the code you’re trying to edit is in another section, you need to create a new section.
3. While you’re in the template editor, find the liquid tag for the section you wish to edit and replace the name of the tag with a new name – whatever you want to call the new section. Save the changes.
4. Now, create a section with the name you created. Go to the Sections directory in the theme editor, then click Add a new section and use the same name you used in the code editor. You’ll need it in the next step when you’re removing the default template code.
5. After you click Create Section you can edit it. Remove the default code and replace it with the code you replaced in the template code. It can now be edited and saved as a new section, so you will be able to finish the steps above.

Shopify Landing Page Examples

Below we look at some landing page designs that are worth mimicking in your own marketing campaigns.

Anna Sui

Anna Sui, a luxury fashion and fragrance brand, demonstrates how easy it is to use product collections pages as landing pages.

Amazfit

Amazfit is a brand of smartwatches. Here’s a great example of a product landing page. It provides a ton of detail for people who are interested in purchasing and makes it easy to compare specs with other watches the company offers.

Turtle Beach

Turtle Beach is a popular gaming headset company. This amazing Shopify landing page highlights all the products in a particular category.

Moschino

Luxury fashion brand Moschino uses a landing page to showcase the fashions from the latest runway releases. It features videos of the fashion show, along with still photographs.

Davines

Luxury hair care brand Davines is a prime example of how easy it is to create custom landing pages. In the screenshot above, we see a landing page that focuses on the brand’s commitment to social and environmental sustainability.

FAQs

Creating Stellar Shopify Landing Pages is Easy with GemPages

When you want to create landing pages without understanding how code works in Shopify, then the GemPages landing page builder is the way to go. You don’t need any technical skills to build beautiful landing pages in a matter of minutes.