What is a sales page?
If you are interested in anything related to building your own online business, you probably see this term a lot: a "Sales Page". But what is a sales page and what can you do with it? Is it the same as a landing page? Is it part of what people call a sales funnel or of a website?
In this post I will explain exactly what a sales page is, what the difference is between different types of pages that are often confused and why you need one for your business. And how you can easily create one for yourself. So you can start turning visitors into customers.
In the last decade I have built hundreds of sales pages, websites, and sales funnels. If you want to learn how you can build your own successful business online, please consider to subscribe to my email list or my YouTube or TikTok account so you don't miss any new content or updates!
The definition of a Sales Page
One question that many people ask is: what is a sales page exactly. And the simple definition is "A sales page is a page from a website that is designed to do just one single thing: to convince your intended visitors to make a purchase or to take a specific action".
So the first part is pretty straightforward, right? You want people to click a buy now button, but what does the second part mean? "Taking a specific action"? Well, let's say that you visit a page after clicking on a link below your favorite YouTube channel. The internet marketer or website owner who built the page can have several intentions and goals. Perhaps they do not even want you to buy anything immediately, but to convince you to sign up and leave your email address or phone number so they can offer products and solutions to you later. Or they might want to build a community to attract even more visitors as the community evolves and grows for some digital marketers, a sales page does not always have to sell while others do make a very clear distinction and use different terms for different pages for different purposes.
Pages with different purposes and intentions
These marketers say: a sales page is for driving sales. A page for collecting an email address is a lead generation page or an opt in page. And a page for enrolling in a webinar is a sign up or a registration page. But most digital marketers do agree that a sales page simply is a page where you want to influence your visitor's behavior. To get them to take a specific action where you are in a sense, selling them on the action they should take on the page.
Difference between a Sales Page and a Landing Page
So is a sales page, the same as a landing page? Many people use one of these terms and mean exactly the same, but there is a big difference. A landing page literally is a page you land on when you enter a website. You might be looking for certain information or products in a search engine or expect information by clicking a banner on another website. The page you land on is the landing page. You can land on a different page depending on where you enter the customer journey. The reason why the difference between a sales page and a landing page is sometimes not clear for people is because a landing page can of course exist to sell you something or to get you to take a certain action.
If for instance, you click on a banner on my website for the software that I use to build my websites and sales funnels, you visit a landing page that explains why I believe you really need these tools and how you can get. So that means that some landing pages actually are a sales page and is a sales page always part of a sales funnel? Often, yes, but not always. A clever marketer that wants to sell a product or a service wants to make sure the right customer visits the sales page. So the chances of converting that visitor are the highest. You do that with a sales funnel. A sales funnel is just a cleverly designed network of pages that filters the right customers based on what they most likely want. It guides them through that entire purchase process.
And if they're not ready to buy, you can connect with that visitor later and try again. So there are many traditional sales pages that try to sell a product or service on a page to any random visitor on that page. They are just less effective because once that visitor leaves the page decides not to purchase the customer is gone and cannot be proactively reached out to, to make a new offer.
Different types of Sales Pages: Long Form vs Short Form
And finally, there are two different types of sales pages. You have the short form sales page and the long form sales page, a short form page is what you see more often nowadays. It explains the benefits and essential information about what it is you're offering. Sometimes you see short form pages with a video that does the explaining .And to make matters even more complicated, the official term for a page where a video does most of the explaining is called a video sales letter, also known as a VSL.
Next to the short form sales page you have, of course, the long form sales page. It explains why the visitor needs the product or solution. What the unique benefits are for that specific visitor. Taking away fear or uncertainty. Building authority and trust. Making an incredible offer that is almost impossible to resist by using bonuses, injecting scarcity, and FOMO, or fear of missing out. The long form sales page is often a bit more formal and can feel a bit manipulative depending on the skills of the marketer.
A Long Form Sales Letter
Another term for long form sales page is a sales letter. So a sales letter is just another word for a long form sales page. That name is a relic from the days before online, when a marketer would send you a physical sales letter through the mail as direct response marketing. Instead of clicking the buy now button customers would send back the letter with the order form. For the rest of the old offline approach is very similar to the current online approach.
So the bonus tip. There's one very good tool that allows you to easily build your own sales page. Whether it's a short form or long form sales page. As you might have heard, the elements of a sales page are all quite common. It's like content blocks that you can either decide to put in or to leave out.
Build your own converting Sales Page with these tools
All these blocks are available in this website and sales page builder that I use for almost all my businesses. You can easily create headlines, add videos, change text, add a call to action so people can buy your product or service. But also opt-in modules, if you want people to sign up. Guarantee seals, bullet points, and everything else that you could ever need for your sales page, website, or sales funnel. I will leave a link in video description in case you're interested in using the exact same tools that I do for my online businesses.
