Importance of landing page & traffic source tracking from social media

It’s not a secret that nowadays social media can cause so much traffic to your resources. There are so many influencers that use their profiles as leverage, and redirect their audience to external sources, usually landing pages for their product, course or service. Why don’t they sell directly on their profiles? Well, let’s try to analyze this.

Landing page - it’s not just a website

What is it?

Let’s clarify - the landing page is not just a website - as its name suggests, the user lands there, from some external source, e.g. another website, social media profile (link in bio) or post. Usually the purpose behind landing pages is to convert the user (not always to sell directly). The key is design - landing page should be explicitly designed to its main goal - conversion. The designer should have in mind proper structure and content, while still keeping standards of the brand in mind. Despite the fact that the landing page might have a relatively simple design, the process of its creation might be much more complicated than it looks like. It’s because every conversion matters, and the team behind the page has to do its best to make sure that conversion rate is high.

Why use it over social media feeds?

While your social media posts might work on some level, the platform itself is not designed to sell something on your demand, and it makes you dependent on the platform. On the other hand, a landing page designed specifically for your product, you have control over it, and you can be almost sure that content on your landing page will not get banned, that’s what cannot be guaranteed to you on social media.

Traffic analysis - why is it important and how to leverage it?

While getting users to your landing page should be one of the main goals of your campaigns, your job doesn’t end there. It’s excellent that you have many conversions and page visits, but do you know how they end up there? Do you know what caused all of those visits and conversions? Well, viral posts on social media might get you many conversions, but without proper setup, you do not know where all of those came from. That’s why it’s crucial to track as much traffic data as possible, especially when you have easy access to that (as you have with your landing page).

How to track traffic data?

The backbone of data analysis will be a web analytics platform, injected into your website. You might choose one of many platforms on the market - e.g. Google Analytics, Posthog.

Next important point, is to utilize UTM parameters, that will help you to track source of your traffic (e.g. Instagram, Tiktok), medium (e.g. post, bio, reels) and other details. In order to simplify the process, look for UTM builders, there are many free builders on the market. How does it work? To the search parameters of your URL (e.g. https://example.com), defined UTM parameters will be added (let’s consider Instagram as a source, and bio as a medium). After adding those parameters, your link will look like this: https://example.com/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=bio. Now, you can put this link into given place (Instagram profile bio in this example), and all of the views made with this URL will be tracked by your web analytics platform, thanks to that you will know where your users come from.

There are some downsides of this solution, you could notice the biggest one - length of the URL. While it doesn’t make that much difference, some users might omit this link, due to its size. In order to fix that, you might use a URL shortener, that will hide the real length of the link, while still keeping the functionality - source traffic.

Conclusion

Proper landing page and web analytics setup might bring you many conversions and data points, that will allow you to focus on the right type of content, and on the right platform, to maximize your business goals. The data is what powers today's world, make sure to utilize it to your advantage, and make sure that your data & landing page will “work work for you”!

by Jakub Misiło - Co-founder @ knm