Product Description page vs Independent Landing Page

Consumers want their purchase journeys and ad experiences as personalized as possible, even if they have opted out of tracking. Now this can be difficult. 

But one way that we can take a more personalized approach to ad campaigns is ensuring that the journey from ad to website is as seamless as possible. And that is why you may want to think about switching out your product page CTAs to more tailored campaign based landing pages. Here we’ll take a look at the differences between the format of these pages and when each one might be the right one to use. 

What is a product description page? 

A product description page is exactly what it says, it’s a page dedicated to displaying the description of your products.  

Ecommerce PDPs often have a very similar format including

·      A range of images

·      Product details such as 

o   Descriptions

o   Ingredients

o   Fabrics

o   sizing options etc

·      price

·      payment details

·      social proofing such as reviews. 

What is a landing page? 

A landing page is where a visitor lands after clicking on a link or CTA either from an ad campaign, email, social profile etc. 

And these pages are usually completely individualized based on the campaign and will act more as a discovery page, directing users through to product description pages if they wish to browse further. That’t not to say they can’t have any kind of CTA included. As shown in the example below, a simple sign up form has been used to help generate interest for when the product drops. 

Did you know that addressing buyer fears on a campaign landing page can increase online conversion by up to 50%.  (Hubspot)

When to use a landing page? 

There are 2 places where we would always recommend using landing pages instead of directing users to your homepage or product pages. 

Your ad CTA reads “Learn More”.

If you have any ad campaigns where the CTA reads “learn more” you should be directing users to a bespoke landing page which actually tells the user more about whatever is being showcased in your ad. 

Example campaigns where “learn more” is used could be specific seasonal product drops, bundle offers or promotions you are running. 

Upper funnel activity.

When you are running brand awareness campaigns that are focused more on your brand’s story than a specific product, you should be using a landing page as the final destination. Yes, you could just use your homepage but sometimes homepages are very simple offering a more visual experience for the user. 

A landing page, in this instance, would offer more page space for you to delve into your brand story or creative theme in more detail, highlight key products and showcase social proofing and reviews in a central place. It would provide a smoother user journey than directing to a PDP but a more personalized experience that just hitting the homepage. 

When to use a product description page? 

PDPs can be used in your marketing campaigns. Not every final URL needs to be a bespoke landing page. Bottom of funnel, sales activated ads like Google shopping ads, and catalogue style ads across social are the ideal campaign types for using PDPs as your landing pages. 

These campaign types showcase specific products, often with a “Buy Now” CTA. You want these users to be able to buy the product in as little clicks as possible so directing them straight onto a PDP where they can check out product specifics, add to cart and check out without navigating to another page is really important. 

Long story short. 

Top and middle of funnel ads = Landing page

Bottom of funnel ads = Product description pages. 

Now just make sure that you are building and optimizing these pages in line with page specific best practices.