What’s the difference between a landing page and a normal web page?

Sometimes it becomes difficult to distinguish between a landing page and a normal page. What’s the difference between them?

A few days ago, I received a query from a client that she was looking for a copywriter to write a landing page. I told her how much it was going to cost.

I never heard back from her. I don’t do follow-ups. I believe clients must want my services strongly enough to get back to me on their own.

After a couple of months, she again submitted the contact form on my website, and she told me that she had written to me before. This time she asked about writing content for a website – the homepage and individual web pages.

By then I had forgotten about our previous exchange, but I looked up her email in my inbox and found her previous message.

This time I sent her a quote for the website and web page content. It included the homepage and the other, normal pages on her website.

She asked me why I had sent a different estimate per page the last time, which was way more than what I had quoted for the current work.

I told her that my previous estimate was for a landing page and right now she was talking about web pages of a website. These two are different.

Many clients have had this confusion: what’s the difference between a landing page and a normal web page?

What is a landing page and how it is different from a normal web page?

People often think that a homepage is a landing page. If people are arriving from search engines to a particular link, then then they think that particular link is a landing page.

Logically, wherever on your website people arrive, it is your landing page.

But in terms of copywriting and digital marketing, there is a difference between a landing page and a normal page.

When do you use a landing page?

A landing page is used in conjunction with a PPC campaign.

A landing page is also used to send traffic from an email marketing campaign or a social media marketing campaign.

A landing page is different than a normal web page in the sense that you don’t write and publish a landing page to improve your search engine rankings.

You publish a landing page to make sales or to nurture leads.

Traffic comes to your landing page through a concerted effort. Landing pages are not known for their higher search engine rankings.

For example, you’re not going to publish a series of landing pages to improve your search engine rankings

Can your homepage be your landing page?

Many consider their homepage as their landing page because one, it is their main page and most of the conversion happens through it, and two, in their PPC campaigns, they send the visitors to their homepage.

But otherwise, a landing page is exclusively created to run a campaign to either sell a product or to capture leads.

A landing page is highly focused.

You can create a landing page to make visitors download your e-book or case study in return of an email ID.

You can create a landing page to sell a course or a workshop.

You can promote an offer or a discount using a landing page.

A landing page thrives due to its sales copy. An experienced copywriter who can communicate well, writes a landing page.

Copywriting for a landing page, therefore, costs more.

It’s not that one needs to write a lot in the case of a landing page. A web page having 1000 words may cost a lot less than a landing page having 500 words.

In fact, sometimes only 250 words may do the job, but a copywriter may charge as if he or she is writing 5000 words.

Just the fact that only 250 words are needed and not 5000 words tells you how much experience your copywriter has, and then you pay for that experience, and not for the number of words.

A landing page needs to be compelling. It must convince people into performing the action you want them to perform.

For example, if you want people to register for your webinar and if your landing page copy is not able to convince them, they’re not going to register, or the conversion rate of your landing page is going to be quite poor.

This means, the money that you are be spending on your PPC campaign, on your email campaign, or on your social media marketing campaign, it is going waste because the traffic is not converting.

Remember that every person that you send to your landing page, you spend money on that person or visitor.

Hence, for better conversion rate, you need compelling and effective copywriting, which is different from usual content writing for a web page.

The level of expertise needed to write a landing page is completely different from that of writing a normal web page.

This is why, when I send an estimate for a landing page, it is a lot different from the estimate of the usual web page.

When do you use a normal web page?

Any web page on a website included in your navigation is a normal web page.

For example, if you have an “Our Services” or an “About us” page on your website, it is a normal web page.

I’m not saying a normal web page on your website doesn’t need to convert – of course every page on your website is supposed to convert.

But the necessity to convert is lower because you’re not spending money for every visitor, you’re getting to that normal web page.

Most of the traffic that comes to your normal web page originates organically. It either comes from search engines like Google, or from other websites and blogs that may have published your link.

A normal web page gives information about your company. It doesn’t necessarily sell a product or a service.

There is no sense of urgency in a normal web page.

Suppose you have B2B website. Your business partners would prefer to come to your website and get information about the products or services that you are offering.

They just want the information. Right now they don’t want to buy from you so they are not expecting to be hard sold.

For example, I may have a web page on my content writing process. Here I explain how I approach individual content writing assignments.

Even this present web page that explains the difference between a landing page and a normal web page, is not a landing page. It does not ask you to hire me for my copywriting and content writing services. It simply explains to you the difference between a landing page and a normal web page.

Hence, this is a normal web page.

Again, I’m not saying this web page is not supposed to get me work. It provides information. It nurtures leads. If not right now, maybe someday in the future, it will have an impact on one of my clients, or in a remote manner, improve my search engine rankings.