A reference landing page presents information that is relevant to the visitor. These can display text, images, dynamic compilations of relevant links, or other elements.

The purpose of the transactional landing page is to persuade a visitor to take action by completing a transaction. This is accomplished by providing a form that needs to be filled out. The visitor information is obtained in order to add the visitor’s email address to a mailing list as a prospect. An email campaign can then be developed based on responses to transactional landing pages. The goal is to capture as much information about the visitor as possible. The ultimate goal is to convert the visitor into a customer.

Landing pages originated with Microsoft in late 2003, formed by their IT departments in response to poor online sales of Office. The process was tedious and time-consuming, however, and as a result, several American startups were formed to simplify and streamline the process. The rise of cloud computing and e-commerce around 2009 provided ideal conditions for these startups to flourish. Since then the customer requirements changed, requesting integrations with other solutions such as email marketing, lead nurturing and customer relationship management systems