How Shopify Has Used Post-Click Landing Pages to Dominate the Ecommerce Industry

by Fahad Muhammad in Ecommerce, Landing Page Examples

Trusted by nearly one million businesses worldwide, Shopify is an ecommerce industry giant.

Go ahead, type the phrase “online store” in Google search and see what comes up. We'll save you the time and show you a screenshot of the results instead:

Let’s try the phrase “ecommerce website:”

Why include the Google screenshots? Seeing as how successfully visible they are — Shopify knows how to do marketing, especially when we talk about post-click landing pages.

There’s a thing or two you can learn by seeing how Shopify uses post-click landing pages for different campaigns, and today we’ll discuss those things.

We’ll do an overview how Shopify uses different post-click landing pages and promotes them to various audience segments for their campaigns. We’ll discuss why the post-click landing pages are successful and where there’s still room for improvement.

Shopify’s multiple post-click landing page approach

The first thing that Shopify has working for itself is the fact that they design multiple post-click landing pages for their various campaigns. This allows them to have a laser focus on their audience and generate conversions for their individual pages.

At Instapage, we believe that every promotion deserves its own page and Shopify is definitely on the right track here.

Shopify designs multiple post-click landing pages which allows it to have a laser focus on their audience.

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Shopify uses post-click landing pages to:

Get visitors to sign up for the product
Get visitors to sign up for the 14-day free trial
Encourage attendees to register for special events
Promote individual applications, like Shopkey and WhatShare

They promote their post-click landing pages on:

Google Ads
Facebook
Twitter
Their company blog

Let’s see how successful these post-click landing pages are by individually analyzing every page on the following two categories:

Message match

Message matching is the concept of aligning your ad headline to your post-click landing page headline. You can achieve good message matching when the ad and the post-click landing page have a clear relationship to each other.

Page elements

All post-click landing page elements will be critiqued on how they complete the conversion goal. For example, we’ll see if the headline is clear, the copy is descriptive, and the form is arranged properly (among other things).

1. Shopify’s sign-up post-click landing page

For starters, we clicked on this Facebook ad:

And were directed to this post-click landing page:

Let’s see how the page fares on the two categories mentioned before.

Message Match

The ad headline, “Sell Products on Facebook,” is not consistent with the post-click landing page headline because there is no mention of Facebook. All it says is, “The online store for someday millionaires.” As far as the headline goes, this is a poor message match.

However, the post-click landing page does depict a Facebook page when viewed on desktop and mobile. So, the visitor is somewhat reassured that they have come to the right place to start selling products on Facebook.

Page Elements

Let's analyze the page elements individually now to see what's working, and what could be improved.

Headline

The word “millionaires” in the headline provides inspiration to visitors who land on the page. After all, who doesn’t want to be a millionaire by opening an online store? Using Shopify helps turn this dream into reality.

Images

The images showcase how a Facebook online store looks on different devices, so it helps the visitor visualize their store by converting on the short form. The image of the customer support staff at the end of the post-click landing page is great for personalization and also humanizes the brand:

Lead Capture Form

The form is simple and easy to complete — only three fields and your store is created.

Call-to-Action button

The CTA button is designed in a contrasting color — Shopify’s brand color to be exact. The button copy is personalized, using “your” on the button encourages more visitors to convert than if the copy was more general, like “Get Started.”

Copy

The post-click landing page copy not only lists Shopify features in a readable manner, but it also tells visitors to know why selling on Facebook is the right idea:

Social Proof

There are two instances of social proof showcased on the page, which greatly help conversions.

First, the phrase “Shopify powers 243,000 businesses.” Right below this is another impressive statistic, “We’ve helped our customers sell over 14 billion dollars worth of products.” Both phrases reassure the visitor that Shopify is an expert online shopping cart provider, and they have helped thousands of business owners already.

Customer Testimonials

Shopify’s testimonials let visitors know that others have used their product before and found it to be successful. Taking this one step further, Daymond John’s testimonial can have a significant impact on audiences:

Endorsement Badges

Endorsement badges from high-profile brands such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times help sell Shopify to any potential new customer.

Elements to improve

There could be more message match between the ad and post-click landing page headline.
The massive footer at the bottom of the page offers many exit points.

2. Shopify’s free trial post-click landing page

In addition to its sign-up page, Shopify has a post-click landing page with multiple variations that promote their 14-day free trial. The pages have different headlines depending on the search query typed into Google. However, the rest of the page elements mostly remain the same, which tells us that they are testing the headline.

Let’s look at the three different Google Ads page variations we came across during our research.

Keyword phrase “ecommerce tools”

Search for “ecommerce tools” and Shopify’s ad is at the top of the list:

This is the post-click landing page you come to:

Message Match

The ad and post-click landing page headline are message matched perfectly. Not only that, the ad copy reiterates what the ad copy states, “plans starting at $9/month.”

Page elements

Time to analyze the individual page elements.

Headline and subheadline

The headline and subheadline are very clear, “Create your ecommerce store with Shopify, which is trusted by over 243, 000 businesses worldwide.”

Lead capture form

Shopify is only requesting an email address from visitors.

CTA button

The button is designed in Shopify’s branding colors and is contrasting to the page. However, the button copy is generic. “Get started” doesn’t count as personalized button copy.

Copy

This is a short form post-click landing page, so the copy consists of 5 bullet points that summarize what Shopify offers its customers.

Image

The image helps humanize the page, a smiling face looking at visitors has tested to be a good thing for increased conversions.

Company Endorsements

Endorsements from companies such as “The Wall Street Journal” and “Fast Company” establish credibility for the service.

Keyword phrase “how to sell online”

These are the ads generated for the keyword phrase:

This is the post-click landing page connected with the ad:

Message Match

The ad and post-click landing page headline are in perfect harmony with each other because the search phrase “sell online” is repeated in both the ad as well as the post-click landing page.

Page elements

Time to analyze the individual page elements.

Headline

The headline is clear and includes social proof which is great because visitors know from the start that Shopify is a brand they can trust to help them sell products online.

The rest of the post-click landing page is identical to the post-click landing page above. They use other headline variations for different keyword phrases as well. Here’s another page promoting their free trial: