What's the best way to create landing pages in Magento?
I do static blocks in CMS pages or just straight CMS pages. I don't know if it is the "best way" but it is an easy workflow when creating many landing pages for marketing purposes.
I am now using category pages and there I add static blocks or whatever I need. It is a pretty standard process and gives me lots of freedom to create and design the pages the way I want. Using XML Layout updates I can hide/show blocks and every single piece of the website.
I create landing pages for each specific topic or marketing channel, e.g. for PPC I have landing pages, email campaigns, specific products etc. So I have a "main category" with a speaking name so that this is represented in the URL. For example "promotions" is the main category for email campaigns.
I try to explain it now step by step from the beginning to make it clear.
- Create Root Category and subcategory (in my example my Cyber Monday page) for the landing page
- I remove pager and sorter for my products on the landing page so I edit it in the description of the category. There you can also add your normal html content without any blocks to your page already. You can also edit the CSS already from there.
- Use static blocks if you have specific content (this allows all HTML etc.)
In the Custom Design, I can remove and add these static blocks then for my needs. I have different blocks for different landing pages. So you could create specific ones for all channels and then add these to your needs here to the page as per seen below. Also because I remove the pager I change the initial number of products and so on.
- Just as per usual add the products to the category for your landing page, or just show static blocks depending on your needs