Your customers arrive through windows, side doors, and skylights. Each entrance deserves the same care, clarity, and persuasive intent we have been reserving for the homepage. When every page works as a landing page, you stop losing those customers you’ve worked hard to attract.
Your customers arrive through windows, side doors, and skylights. Each entrance deserves the same care, clarity, and persuasive intent we have been reserving for the homepage. When every page works as a landing page, you stop losing those customers you’ve worked hard to attract.
Like a main street shop front, the homepage is the front door of your online store. It’s where I see a lot of time & energy being spent. The assumption runs deep. Product pages and collection pages are typically afterthoughts. Functional. Utilitarian. Somewhere the customer ends up after arriving fresh on the homepage or from a search query into a blog article.
But there’s a problem with this thinking. While we treat the homepage as our main brand page for most of our first time visitors, it won’t necessarily be the first page they see.
They find a product through Google. They tap an ad on Instagram linking to a specific item. A friend sends them a URL to a collection page. They click a link in an email dropping them onto a seasonal edit. The homepage might be the page you care about most, but the data often tells a different story about where people land.
When we treat the homepage as the only page needing to sell the message, orient, and build trust, we leave many of our visitors standing in a room with no context, no welcome, and no clear reason to stay.
If you take a look at the analytics, you’ll probably find that a good portion of your traffic is landing on product and collection pages. And more often than not, those pages have none of the persuasive architecture we carefully build into our homepage. We’re decorating the front door while leaving every other entrance bare.
Ecommerce platforms reinforce a hierarchy. Homepage at the top. Collection pages in the middle. Product pages at the bottom. We build our stores this way and we think about our customers the same way. Top down. Start at the beginning. Navigate through the menu. Browse collections. Find a product. Purchase.
But most customers don't experience your store in this order. They experience whatever page they land on first. And they make a decision within seconds about whether your brand & product is the one for them.
This is where the concept of a landing page becomes useful. In conversion-focused marketing, a landing page is any page designed around a single goal with a clear relationship between where the visitor came from and what they find when they arrive. The key word there is “any.” A landing page is defined by its function and its position in your site architecture is irrelevant.
Your product pages are landing pages. Your collection pages are landing pages. Your homepage is a landing page. Every page where a visitor first encounters your brand needs to do the work of orienting, persuading, and converting. The only question is whether you have designed them to do this work, or whether you have left it to chance.
The way people discover and enter online stores has shifted. Paid social campaigns link directly to products. Google Shopping results bypass your homepage entirely. Email campaigns deep-link to specific collections. TikTok and influencer content sends traffic to individual product URLs. The percentage of sessions beginning on your homepage shrinks every year as these channels grow.
This creates a compounding problem. As more traffic enters through non-homepage pages, the gap between your most persuasive page (the homepage) and your most visited pages (products and collections) widens. You invest more in driving traffic and less in making the pages where traffic lands do their job.
The feedback loop runs in the wrong direction. More ad spend drives more traffic to product pages. Those pages convert poorly because they were designed as endpoints and not entry points. Poor conversion leads to higher customer acquisition costs. Higher costs demand more spend. The cycle accelerates.
Breaking this loop starts with a shift in how we think about page design.
One of the most useful concepts in landing page design is the attention ratio. This is the ratio of interactive elements on a page (links, buttons, navigation options) to the number of conversion goals for the page. A dedicated landing page with one goal and one button has an attention ratio of 1:1. A typical homepage with forty links and one primary goal has a ratio of 40:1.
The higher the ratio, the more diluted the visitor’s attention becomes. Every additional link is a potential exit. Every extra navigation option competes with the action you want the visitor to take.
Now think about your product pages. They likely have global navigation, footer links, related product carousels, recently viewed items, social sharing buttons, blog links, and promotional banners. The attention ratio on a typical ecommerce product page is enormous. We have built pages where the primary action (add to cart) competes with dozens of other clickable elements.
This does not mean we should strip product pages down to a single button. Ecommerce is more complex than a lead generation landing page. Customers need to see related products. They need to navigate to other sizes or colours. They need access to your returns policy and shipping information.
The principle still applies in a proportional way. We should be intentional about what competes for attention on every page. Every element should earn its place. And the primary action for each page type should be visually dominant over secondary options.
On a product page, the add-to-cart button should be the most visually prominent element. On a collection page, the products themselves and the path to clicking through to them should dominate. On the homepage, the primary call to action (whether shopping a featured collection, exploring a new arrival, or engaging with your brand story) should be unmistakable.
When someone clicks an ad for “organic cotton baby sleepsuits,” they carry a specific expectation into the page they land on. If they arrive on a generic baby clothing collection with no mention of organic cotton, there is a disconnect. The promise made in the ad does not match the experience on the page. This mismatch causes people to leave.
Conversion-centred design calls this “message match” or “context congruence.” The principle is straightforward. The message bringing a visitor to your page should be reflected in what they see when they arrive.
For dedicated campaign landing pages, this is easy to implement. You control the ad and the page. You write the headline to echo the ad copy. You show the same product image. The scent trail is clean.
For ecommerce stores, the challenge is harder because you have many sources of traffic arriving on the same pages. A product page receives visitors from Google organic search, paid ads, email campaigns, social media, and direct links. Each visitor arrives with a different context, a different expectation, and a different level of awareness about your brand.
We are unlikely to create unique versions of every product page for every traffic source (although some brands do this for their highest-volume paid campaigns, and it works). What we are able to do is ensure our product pages contain the elements satisfying the broadest range of arrival contexts.
This means every product page needs a clear, benefit-driven headline communicating what the product is and why it matters. It needs imagery confirming the visitor is in the right place. It needs enough context about your brand and your values so someone arriving for the first time, with no prior awareness, understands who you are and why they should trust you.
Most product pages fail this test. They assume the visitor already knows the brand. They present the product name without context (a style name meaning nothing to a new visitor). They show product images without lifestyle context. They rely on the customer having navigated from the homepage, where the brand story lives.
Regardless of page type, there are five persuasive elements helping a page function as a landing page. These come from conversion-centred design principles, and they apply to homepages, collection pages, and product pages alike.
This is where the page communicates what it is about and why the visitor should care. On a product page, this is a headline and description communicating the core benefit. On a collection page, this is a clear statement about what unites these products and who they are for. On the homepage, this is your brand’s core promise.
I see collection pages on ecommerce stores every week with nothing more than a title (“Summer Collection”) and a grid of products. No context. No story. No reason for the visitor to believe this collection is relevant to them. Adding two or three sentences of purposeful copy to a collection page gives arriving visitors the context they need to stay and browse.
The first visual impression matters. This is the image, video, or design element confirming the visitor’s expectations and drawing them into the page. On a product page, this is your lead product image. It should be large, high quality, and immediately visible. On a collection page, this is a lifestyle banner or a curated visual setting the tone. On the homepage, this is your hero section.
The hero moment is doing emotional work. It tells the visitor, in a fraction of a second, whether this page feels right for them. We underinvest in collection page imagery. We treat it as optional. For a visitor arriving from a Google search or an ad, the collection page banner might be the first visual impression they ever have of your brand.
People make purchasing decisions based on what a product does for them. Features matter, and they matter in service of the benefit they provide. “100% organic cotton” is a feature. “Gentle on your baby’s sensitive skin” is a benefit. Every page should lead with the outcome the customer cares about and support it with the features making the outcome possible.
This applies to collection pages too. A collection page for running shoes should communicate the benefit of the collection (find the right shoe for your running style) before listing product specifications. The benefit frames the browsing experience. Without it, the visitor is left to figure out why these products are grouped together and which one is right for them.
Trust signals are essential on every page, and they become more important when the page is the first thing a new visitor sees. Reviews, ratings, testimonials, press mentions, trust badges. These elements reduce the perceived risk of purchasing from a brand the visitor has never heard of.
On product pages, customer reviews do this work effectively. On collection pages, we often forget to include any social proof at all. Consider including a brand-level trust bar (number of customers served, average review rating, notable press mentions) appearing on every page. This gives first-time visitors arriving on any page a reason to trust you, regardless of where they entered.
Every page should have one primary action the visitor should take. On a product page, this is “add to cart.” On a collection page, this is clicking through to a product. On the homepage, this might be exploring a featured collection or shopping a new range.
The call to action should be visually distinct from everything else on the page. It should use action-oriented language. And it should be easy to find without scrolling. These sound like basic principles, but I regularly audit ecommerce stores where the add-to-cart button is below the fold, uses the same colour as every other element on the page, and says “submit” instead of something meaningful.
The homepage serves visitors who arrive with the broadest and least specific intent. They typed your URL, clicked a branded search result, or followed a general link. They want to understand who you are and what you sell.
The homepage’s job is orientation and direction. It should communicate your brand positioning in seconds, establish credibility, and guide visitors toward the part of your store most relevant to them. Think of it as a concierge. It does not sell a specific product. It helps the visitor find what they need.
Where most homepages struggle is in trying to do everything. They feature every collection, every promotion, every piece of news. The attention ratio blooms to 50:1 or higher. The visitor drowns in options.
A more effective approach prioritises one primary pathway (your best collection, your core offer, your seasonal focus) and treats everything else as secondary. This gives the homepage a clear direction without removing the ability to explore.
Collection pages are some of the most underutilised pages in ecommerce. They receive significant organic and paid traffic, and they are typically nothing more than a title, a filter sidebar, and a product grid.
When we treat a collection page as a landing page, we add the elements making it persuasive for first-time visitors. A brief introduction explaining what this collection is and who it is for. A visual hero moment establishing the mood and quality of the range. Trust signals working at the brand level. Clear visual hierarchy drawing the eye toward the products.
The collection page should also maintain message match with the traffic sources driving visitors to it. If you are running a Google Ads campaign for “sustainable women’s workwear,” the collection page those ads link to should use this language in its heading and introduction. The visitor should feel an immediate sense of congruence between what they searched for and what they found.
Filtering and sorting tools matter here too. A first-time visitor landing on a collection page with eighty products and no guidance will feel overwhelmed. Smart default sorting, clear filtering options, and visual cues highlighting bestsellers or staff picks all help reduce the cognitive load. This is Hick’s Law in practice. The more choices you present without structure, the longer the decision takes, and the more likely the visitor is to leave rather than choose.
The product page is where the most commercial intent concentrates. Visitors arriving on a product page from Google Shopping, a paid ad, or a direct link often have strong purchase intent. They have already decided they want something like this product. The page’s job is to confirm their choice and remove any remaining barriers to purchase.
This is where the full suite of landing page principles comes together. The value proposition needs to be specific and benefit-driven. The hero image needs to be exceptional. Social proof needs to be visible and relevant. The call to action needs to stand out. And everything else on the page should support the single goal of moving the visitor toward adding the product to their cart.
Product pages also carry the heaviest burden when it comes to building trust with first-time visitors. Someone who has never heard of your brand needs to feel confident the product is as described, it will arrive on time, they have the option to return it if it does not work, and their payment information is safe. These trust signals (shipping information, return policy, payment security badges, customer reviews) should be prominent and accessible on every product page.
One pattern I have found effective is a brand story module sitting within the product page. Two or three sentences about who you are, what you stand for, and why you make this product. For returning customers, it is invisible. For first-time visitors arriving from an external source, it provides the context the homepage would normally deliver. It answers the unspoken concern of every new visitor, the need to know who they are buying from and whether they are trustworthy.
Conversion is not always the end of the interaction. Many visitors are not ready to purchase on their first visit. They need more information, more time, or more trust before they commit. A well-designed landing page accounts for this by offering a secondary conversion path.
In ecommerce, this might be an email signup offer, a “save for later” option, or a prompt to follow on social media. The goal is to maintain the relationship even when the visitor is not ready to buy.
This applies to every page type. A product page visitor who does not add to cart should have a clear path to join your email list. A collection page visitor who does not click through to a product should have an opportunity to save the collection or sign up for updates. A homepage visitor who does not navigate deeper should have a compelling reason to hand over their email address.
The continuance principle ensures traffic you have paid to acquire does not vanish entirely when the visitor leaves without purchasing. It transforms a single visit into the beginning of a relationship.
If you are looking at your store right now and thinking every page needs work, you are likely right. The question is where to begin.
Start with your analytics. Identify the top ten pages by entrance rate. These are the pages where visitors most frequently begin their session. For most ecommerce stores, a handful of product pages and collection pages will dominate this list. The homepage might be third or fourth.
Those top entrance pages are your highest-priority landing pages. Audit each one against the five elements outlined above. Does it have a clear value proposition? A strong hero moment? Benefits-led copy? Social proof? A clear call to action?
Then check message match. Where is the traffic coming from for each of those pages? Does the page reflect the language and expectations of those traffic sources? If your top-entry product page receives most of its traffic from a Google search for “waterproof hiking boots for women,” does the page headline and description use this language? Or does it say something like “The Explorer” with no context?
Small changes in these areas produce measurable results. I have seen collection page conversion rates improve by thirty to forty percent from adding a single paragraph of benefit-driven copy and a trust bar. Product page improvements compound across your entire catalogue because the patterns you establish for one page become templates for all of them.
The work is ongoing. Treating every page as a landing page is a design philosophy. It changes how you brief designers, how you write copy, how you plan campaigns, and how you think about your customer’s experience of your store. The shift is worth making because it aligns your pages with the reality of how people find and enter your store, rather than the assumption everyone walks through the front door.
Your customers arrive through windows, side doors, and skylights. Each entrance deserves the same care, clarity, and persuasive intent we have been reserving for the homepage. When every page works as a landing page, you stop losing those customers you’ve worked hard to attract.
Big shout out to Oli Gardner and his work on conversion centered design that inspires my own work and the bones of this article.
