The difference between a PDF and a landing page

Essence of a landing page

What if I just put up a pdf on my landing page?

This is the question I often ask myself before I want to design a landing page for something.

I love landing pages, both as a designer and a developer. For quite a while I consider landing page as a storefront. It should has colorful neon lights, a catchy slogan in bold fonts, and maybe a spinning decoration like those outside a barber shop.

But I missed a very important aspect. In the physical world a storefront doesn't exists by itself. It has surroundings - the tree in front of it, other shops besides it, the sun shining above and the smell of the street it locates on, the people inside the stores, and the different views I get when I walk pass by. These do not exist in the digital world.

In the digital world, we see a flat website existing alone inside a browser's tab, it should convey much more than just a standalone neon sign. Once I asked some non-tech friends "do you ever finished reading the feature descriptions on landing pages" and the answers are hard nos. Later, it also revealed that in a region (for example China) where people use smart phones for everything, users just don't look at landing pages.

As mobile phone users continue to grow rapidly around the world, is it still necessary to invest time and money on a landing page? If we treat landing page as storefronts, the answer will be a firm no. Because a PDF with well-designed visuals can convey necessary information as storefronts, and it is also suitable to show in app stores.

But what if we think of a landing page as a space, like a hotel lobby?

You see a beautiful hotel sign (hero sections on a landing page), then you enter the lobby (other parts of a landing page). If you ever have the feeling to run away after getting into a shabby lobby, then you must understand the importance of a lobby. It is the first touching point a user has with the hotel. It is immersive and interactive. I seldomly see flashy signs inside the lobby to introduce how comfortable the bed is, how hot the shower is, or how fast the wifi is. Because no matter how good these hardwares are, the purpose of a hotel is to let customers to sleep well, and "well" is a quality that cannot be measured simply by numbers, it is a feeling.

The point I'm getting at is that a landing page should be treated as an integral part of the product like a lobby to a hotel, not just a board detached from the product design process. None of the technical elements should be more important than "what is your product" and "how do you want your users to experience it through this landing page." Just like expensive hotels often have stunning lobby designs, a well-designed product deserves to have a landing page convey the same qualities of the product.

Let's do a mental exercise together. Say we are building a landing page for a web3 payment company. The product is simply a user scan the merchant's QR code to pay with cryptocurrencies. We want our users to have three feelings of the product: safe, cheap, and fast. The next step is to convey the feelings through our landing page.

The only solution I can think of right now, is to build a sandbox into the landing page. I agree that users might prefer to sign-up a newsletter if the landing page has cool microinteractions or stunning gradient colors, but I doubt these are the critical things to have if the product has the possibility of losing their hard-earned money.

The sandbox should let users buy a fake goods using fake money with the product directly inside the landing page. The microinteractions and gradient colors should be built into the sandbox to enhance user experiences, but they are only there to support users to experience a full user journey you plan to deliver to them.

So, should you just put up a PDF on your landing page? The answer depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you simply need to convey information or specifications, a well-designed static website (like a web-version PDF) might suffice. But if you want users to truly understand and connect with your product's experience, an integrated sandbox on the landing page should serve you better.

The key idea is that if your product expose risks to users, then a landing page shouldn’t just be a digital storefront or a fancy brochure—it's the first step for your users to trust your product. Make it count by creating an experience that reflects not just what your product does, but how it feels to use it.