Ahhh Linktree. A pet peeve to most web designers and beloved by small business owners all over for their convenience and ease of use. If you’re not familiar with Linktree, you will be when I describe it to you: it’s a service that makes a bite-sized landing page and allows you to end numerous links so folks coming from social media can easily connect with you off of those platforms.
You’re surely envisioning what pops up when you click the “link in bio” for many users on Instagram. You may be having flashbacks of landing on a Linktree that seemed to scroll for eternity and made you feel unsure of which box to click next in the sea of options.
But it sounds good, right? A link landing page to get your followers off social and where you want them to go. In theory, yes, but in actuality, Linktree is not a smart nor strategic business move.
“It’s like a whole page of missed opportunity, and I just want people to know that there is a better way!” – actual words that spilled out of my mouth when I got into a heated rant with a fellow biz friend over Linktrees.
You might think that’s a little dramatic, but hear me out. Here’s why you should throw away your linktree and use a page on your actual website instead:
You can’t brand your linktree (unless you want ANOTHER monthly subscription) meaning a huge missed opportunity for building brand recognition. Even with adding brand colors, everyone who uses Linktree has a similar layout that it’s automatically clear someone is using the service. In the internet era with over-saturation of information and graphics, this definitely is not helping you stand out in your market.
Linktree gives you no analytics. You know I am all about the data so without analytics you have no idea how many people are clicking, where they are clicking to, and if they are actually converting. This is another HUGE missed opportunity, as being aware of these numbers can help guide you to what content is succeeding and what changes you should make.
With Linktree you’re sending your traffic to a third party, instead of guiding them to YOUR own website. Keep in mind that everytime someone clicks the link in your bio you’re given the opportunity to boost your web page ranking. Due to its nature of being another third-party host, Linktree forces each user to take in another step, or click if you will, before arriving to the real destination which should be your website or sales page. And in the journey of those clicks, they may never make it to your website!
People have short attention spans and a common thing with using Linktree is adding in 20+ links! People forget that it’s supposed to act as a stepping stone to your main links, and almost use it more as a long list. You want to keep it to 3-5 links so people don’t feel overwhelmed and ultimately don’t go where you want them to.
You’ve seen the light, and realize that Linktree is not serving you nor your business in the best way. So what should you do instead?
Use a custom page on your own website to drive traffic, that’s tailor-made to be a social media landing page — almost like a fancier, on-brand, easy-to-use, linktree on your own website. This way, you’ll have more creative control over the look and feel of the page, but also you’ll be able to track those key analytics to know where you need to make changes and what is working with your call-to-actions.
The best thing is I’ve made it SUPER easy for you! For all of my Showit-using small business owners, I’ve made you a Link-In-Bio template that you can easily load into your Showit account, customize, and launch within 5 minutes or less. It almost sounds too good to be true!
You could be free of Linktree in ten minutes or less, it’s that easy! This is such a simple thing, but it really will set you apart from all of the other Linktree landing pages and you’ll have much more insight into what your followers are loving from you.
And if talking about websites and landing pages is still on your mind, check out the full Template Shop for complete Showit Templates and other useful add-ons to make your site stand out even more!