This post is part of the Friday Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.
Vijay asks:
How to build a product landing page to sell our own products through our blog? Should we develop a page on the same domain, or should we put it on another domain?
Last week I answered to the second part of the question above. You can read that here: Should I Put My Product Landing Page Inside My Blog Or On A New Domain?.
Now let’s talk about the first part: how to create landing pages for your products and services.
If you decided to host your landing page inside your existing website you have two options: you can either use a normal page template to create a landing page (i.e., just create a new page on WordPress or on your publishing software), or create a new template.
Many people opt to use a normal page template because it is easier and fast. If you want to see an example check the landing page that Darren Rowse create for his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook. As you can see it is a normal page, with all the default elements (e.g., header, sidebar, footer and so on).
If you have time and know a bit of web design you could create a new template for your landing page, including only important elements of your design (e.g., the logo) and removing than unnecessary ones that might distract potential buyers (e.g., ads, external links and so on). You can see an example of that with the Freelance X Factor that Brian Clark launched a while ago. He basically create a landing page inside his blog to sell the course. The product is not available right now, but you can get an idea of how the landing page looked like compared to the default design of the blog homepage.
WordPress users can create new page templates easily. You’ll just need to download the page.php file from your theme, create a copy of it, rename the copy (e.g., to landingpage.php), and then customize at will. You might need to create a new header.php and sidebar.php files (e.g., by calling them header2.php and sidebar2.php), but that is easy as well. Once you are done, simply upload the new template to your server and create a new page using that template.
If you are going to host your landing page on a new domain, you’ll need to find a template to use there as the landing page. The easiest option is to use a simple HTML/CSS template, which you just need to customize and upload to the server. There are dozens of free landing templates on the web, just search on Google for “free landing page” and “free sales templates.”
Obviously the free templates won’t look that great. If you have a product that is selling well, or that you believe will sell well, it might be worth it to invest in a custom design. Landing pages usually have simple layouts, so you probably won’t need to spend more than $300 to get one done.
Finally, you can also load a CMS on your new domain and create your landing page on top of that. One example of this technique would be to install WordPress on your domain and use a landing page theme like the Squeeze theme. You’ll need to spend some extra time installing and tweaking WordPress, but this solution offers many more features than a simple HTML/CSS template.
You might also be wondering what you should include inside your sales page, what are the best practices and so on. Well, that deserves a post of its own, so stay tuned!
