Why Skipping the Landing Page For The Person Invited Is a Bad Idea

One of the most common questions we get:

“Can I skip the landing page and send referred users straight to my site?”

You can. But honestly, it’s not a good idea!

At Referral Factory, we’ve built hundreds of high-performing referral campaigns. And while it might feel easier to cut corners and “just send them to my homepage,” skipping the landing page strips out most of the power in your referral program. You’re choosing short-term simplicity over long-term results. And you’re making your life a lot harder for no good reason.

We designed Referral Factory differently, and we did it on purpose. To generate more referrals, track them more accurately, and get you more leads. If you choose to skip the landing page, you’re not just changing one little thing; you’re throwing away some of the best parts of the product.

So, before you make this mistake, let us explain why this single step matters more than you think.

The landing page we give you doesn’t just look pretty, it captures leads upfront.

Why does this matter? Because not everyone will convert right away. If you send them directly to your homepage and they don’t convert, you lose them forever. No email. No phone number. No chance to follow up.

So, even if they don’t take action immediately. That means:

Without this, you're wasting good traffic and missing out on potential customers.

Referral Factory gives every referrer a personalized page that they can use to promote your business. This page can say something things like:

“Your friend Jamie invited you. Here’s your reward…”

This kind of personalization is not just a nice touch; it drives conversions. It makes people feel special. It makes them trust your offer more. And it makes them more likely to submit their details.

A generic homepage just doesn’t cut it. No context. No message. No reason to trust the offer. When you skip the landing page, you’re dropping cold traffic onto a page that wasn’t designed to close them. You’re sacrificing conversion rate, and losing leads you could’ve easily had.

We’ve seen the numbers. Personalization wins. Every time.

Here’s the deal: Referral Factory doesn’t rely on cookies to track referrals.

Why? Because cookies are:

If someone’s referred on mobile but converts later on desktop, you’ve lost the referral. No tracking. No reward. No data.

But our landing page for the person invited solves this. We track users via unique links and form submissions, accurately and reliably.

Skip the page? Now it’s your job to:

Sound fun? We didn’t think so.

Let’s not forget the basics: your referral landing page is where you explain the offer and introduce your business.

“Get $20 when you sign up, because your friend invited you.”

“Here’s what this company does and why it’s worth your time.”

This page is often the first impression someone gets of your brand. If you drop them straight onto your homepage without context, you’re asking them to figure things out for themselves. And most people won’t bother. They might not even realize they’ve been referred.

Our landing pages are optimized to communicate both the referral offer and what your business is about, clearly and quickly. Without that, you’re just shooting traffic into the void and hoping something sticks. (Spoiler alert: it won’t.)

If the only reason you're considering skipping the landing page is because you want the referral link on your own domain, good news: you can!

Instead of bypassing the system, you can:

You’re looking for a referral marketing software that makes launching a referral program easy. And that is exactly what Referral Factory does.

If you choose to handle referrals this way (via API only and bypassing our default referral pages), you should be aware of a few trade-offs:

Technically, yes, you can bypass the landing page. But here’s the catch:

If you do, you’ll need to be responsible for all of the tracking and making sure you add the referred user to your campaign, and are able to identify who made the referral.

Whenever a new customer or user joins your product, you can add them to your referral campaign via our API using this endpoint 👉 Create A User API

The API response will confirm that the user has been successfully added to your campaign and will return all key data, like their referral link, code, and more.

From there, you’ll have the referrer’s CODE, but it becomes your responsibility to add the person they invited (the referral) using the same API function. At this point, you’ll also need to credit the referral to the referrer. See the attached screenshot for an example of how to test this using our API docs.

We have to be clear that we still advise that you do not bypass this step for the person invited, and use the pages as intended, because these personalised pages are extremely powerful.

Referral Factory works best when you let it do the thing it was designed to do: