Where to create & host your sales page?
When you hear sales page, many of you might immediately think funnels, and when you here funnels you hear ClickFunnels! While ClickFunnels and also LeadPages can indeed be used to set up and host your sales pages, it’s definitely not the only option. As I do not have complicated funnels, I personally prefer to keep everything on my own website. There are a few reasons to keep your sales pages on your main website and not use a third-party tool.
No extra monthly costs
This is the big one for me. It feels to me like a waste of money to pay monthly up to €300, just to have them host your page when I’m already paying for hosting for my own website. I don’t like to pay for things I don’t really need like building complete however-many-step funnels at the moment, definitely not that much in a year!
Make your website the main show
Google loves your complete website more when your pages get opened more. Why would I send MY traffic to LeadPages? If your sales page is on your own website, you also benefit from the traffic you get on your sales page on your whole website. Win-win.
Is it hard to host your sales page on your WordPress website?
To be honest, if you are not tech-savvy and want to it yourself, it might be easier to have it all done by a third party. That and the extra functions are also why they can charge you that much a month. But with the right investments on your own website ( most of which you will probably already have), it’s just as easy to do it on your own page. What you really need:
A page builder plugin. This could be WP Bakery, Elementor, or Beaver Builder for example. Many websites already work with a page builder theme, so this one is normally already set. If not, there are free versions of Elementor and Beaver, but you are definitely better off with the pro versions.
A way to pay you. It’s no sales page if sales cannot happen. An option is to use Stripe as I did on my sales page or PayPal. These are free options, you only pay transaction fees (which you also would have to pay if you work with an all-in-one system). Other options that would also make it possible to easily create order bumps are are Thrivecart with a one-time payment for a lifetime license. CartFlows, which comes with a yearly pricing system that you do not need to renew to keep using.
Way to connect to email. Once they bought from you, you want to keep in contact with them. It’s easier to sell something to someone who already bought from you before than keep finding new clients. When using PayPal or Stripe, you can use a service like Zapier to transfer any new customers to your email list. With Thrivecart or CartFlows, you can easily connect to your email system.
A/B testing (if you want to). It’s not a must-have, but if you plan on getting loads of visitors because you have an add running, for example, this might be an interesting option. There are plugins you can use to do this for you and have statistics about conversion shown to you.
It’s up to you
If you need a simple sales page or 3, you are okay with using your own WordPress platform and have everything in one place. It’s yours, if you ever don’t want to pay a monthly fee, you still keep your pages alive and you get more visitor stats on your own website which Google likes. If you want to set up enormous funnels with lots of hoops and things, it is still possible with WordPress, but the €300 monthly cost can be worth it.