The six best tools for building Landing Pages

When you’re used to working in an online environment there’s a risk you’ll assume knowledge of certain concepts, such as a landing page for example, that perhaps other mortals aren’t aware of because they simply don’t need to know about them. In other words, there are things that we’re know everyone uses in their daily lives, but they don’t necessarily know the name of the service they are receiving, or they don’t differentiate it from any other browsing element.

In this article, we’ll try to explain what a landing page is, what it is used for, and different ways to create it.

What is a landing page?

“Landing page” is the term used to describe a website or a part of a website that has a specific objective.

It’s called a “landing page” because it’s the page that users “land on” after clicking on a search result or menu item, whether a Facebook ad, a YouTube link, or any internal or external traffic source.

What is a landing page for?

The most common use of a landing page – or “landing” from now on – is to capture leads or contacts for your database. Other main objectives may be to improve SEO positioning by ranking the tags or keywords that appear on it or simply to organize and prioritize the information on a website, with the aim of improving usability.

In the case of landings aimed at capturing leads, they normally inform about the benefits of a product and/or service, and through a registration form, they initiate the user’s interaction or purchase process.

The recorded contact data is usually stored automatically in marketing or customer management software (CRM System) to be segmented and used in email marketing campaigns. They can also be stored in more rudimentary systems such as a spreadsheet in the database of your CMS or content management system.

Landings can be created outside of a website (to launch some special content, product, and/or service, for example), and they can also be hosted internally as an additional page. In both cases, they can be accessed from any source, as long as they are linked.

The design of a landing page is very important as it is often the first contact that a potential customer or user has with your brand or service. Therefore, it’s essential that all landing pages are adaptable to any device and can integrate the desired content formats: videos, photos, social media feeds, registration forms, digital catalog visualization tools, and buttons, among other things.

One of the main objectives of a landing page is to impact your “buyer persona”, i.e. your potential customer. They can also help to classify your potential customers and impact them through their favorite medium within an inbound marketing strategy or content marketing of value, in a non-intrusive way. That’s why it’s a smart strategy to make a landing page for each buyer persona, and then link that landing page to the main sites that your buyer persona frequents.

What types of landing pages are there?

Depending on your objective, different types of landing pages can be categorized. These include:

Landing page with form

These are designed to collect data. They usually involve a form and a good way of attracting visitors is to offer rewards for leaving data, such as a free resource (podcast, freebies, photos, eBook, etc.).

Category landing page

The idea of this type of landing page is to group a series of keywords to position them, thus helping the organic positioning of the page. In addition, when users search for a specific product, instead of taking them to the home page, they will land on a page optimized for the category they are interested in. This means they don’t have to browse the entire site, thus preventing the risk of them from giving up before making a purchase or acquiring the service.

Launch landing page

This is about presenting a specific product or service and avoiding distractions other than the presentation of its characteristics. For this type of landing page, it’s preferable not to include external links and to limit the navigation options.

How to build a landing page

There is no single way to build a landing page. Just like a website, it can be done through code, laying out the elements you want to include, through your CMS, with a specific plugin for landing page creation, or even through external software that may have its own domain or be within your company’s domain, as another section of your website.

But before looking at how to build one, you need to be clear about what elements a landing must include to be effective, and although this will ultimately depend on its objective, they each must include the following:

• Link or URL: This is the address through which users access the landing page. It will be shown in the search engine results or be linked in the button of any advertising platform, banner, etc.
• Title: This is the first element users will see when entering the landing page, so it should have the function of summarizing and attracting attention to the rest of the content.
• Body text: Users must not be oversaturated with information but at the same time find everything they need. For example, what the user is going to get when performing the action you are proposing, such as: downloading, registering, and buying, among others.
• Audiovisual material: Videos, photos, animations, etc. must support and complement the text as in many cases will replace it, so it must help the user to better understand what is being offered, its benefits, or its differential value proposition.
• Contact form: Its main function is to capture user data as part of the conversion process. For example, if a user wants to download a free document (lead magnet) from a landing page, they must fill in the form with their contact details to receive either the document or a download link by email.
• Call to action buttons: They need to be attractive, visible, and simple. Users must click on them to complete the desired action and get the reward offered.

Once you are clear about what you want to include, all you need to do is to try the different tools that are available on the web. There are both free and paid tools, and depending on the budget and the functionalities needed, you can opt for the following:

Instapage

This is one of the best software packages for creating landing pages and optimizing them, due to its simplicity. The page editor is intuitive and includes a drag and drop function, which is very useful for people who have no design knowledge. It has more than 100 templates for different purposes such as thank you pages, download pages, promotion pages, etc.

Its designs are customizable and optimized for conversion. It also has a database of photos and vectors and a very important feature, which is that it offers the possibility of A/B testing to test which photos or texts work best. There is a 14-day free version and the basic monthly plan is €150, which although it is a considerable amount, is always going to be cheaper than hiring a programmer/web developer.

Visme

Visme is an all-in-one tool for all your visual content needs and marketing material. You can create anything from logos, presentations, animations, social media graphics, and landing pages with Visme. 

Create stunning landing pages with Visme to strengthen your inbound marketing strategy and provide an interactive experience to your customers. With its easy drag-and-drop options and user-friendly interface you can create landing pages with great UX/UI. Use the library of digital assets including designs, templates, brand colors, font sizes, and free stock images to create the right landing page for your business. Redesign your existing landing page, or create a new one from scratch for better business branding. 

Powered by AI, Visme enables you to design customizable, 100% responsive, and highly converting landing pages for free. You can use AI writers to craft error-free copy for your landing page. Sign up for the Pro Plan for the premium feature

MailChimp

MailChimp is best known as an email marketing platform. However, this tool also allows you to design optimized landing pages from which to feed your mailing list.

Each page includes a form to capture subscribers for your MailChimp campaign. When you finish your landing page, MailChimp will suggest you add an autoresponse email to send a message to any new person who registers on your website. Its strengths include optimized integration for your future email marketing campaigns. The cost varies depending on your database and there is a free version for you to consider and try out.

SendPulse

SendPulse is a unified marketing platform that provides entrepreneurs with a wide range of tools they need to promote their business.

These days, in addition to the usual landing pages, it is helpful to have a so-called mini-landing page or a page with links for a bio on social networks. On such a page, the user can find all the information about the person or company, collected in one place.

A convenient editor and a set of ready-to-use templates will allow you to create a mini-landing that matches your brand’s design.

SendPulse provides the opportunity to create such a mini-landing for free.

HubSpot

HubSpot is one of the most complete inbound tools on the market that also has a landing page creation tool. This allows you to give your company’s inbound strategy a global approach.

It has a library of mobile-optimized templates that allow you to generate conversions or create your own pages from scratch. Create customized content and forms for each visitor, and display different content dynamically based on location, device, or any other contact data stored in your CRM.

It identifies the pages that generate the most conversions in a centralized dashboard, makes personalized SEO recommendations to optimize your pages for search, and offers the possibility of performing a deeper analysis to find out how many visits, contacts, and customers each page generates by testing up to five variants.

It has a complex pricing system which is not easy to understand without a personalized call or quote since it depends on whether specific services or packages are contracted, the objectives pursued and the size of the company, among many other variables. However, the cheapest plan starts at €41/month.

Elementor

This is a WordPress CMS plugin, so you can only use it with this content management system. It has a powerful visual editor in drag-and-drop format.

It has a free version that includes more than 30 templates and extended functionalities with a payment plan that starts at €4. Its more expensive version allows you to use its features on up to 1,000 sites and includes Elementor WooCommerce Builder for WordPress online shops.

Launchrock

Launchrock is a free landing page builder that allows you to quickly set up your landing page according to the preferences of your target audience or buyer persona. This is a free tool with limited resources, but very useful for beginner entrepreneurs, as it has an easy-to-navigate interface and 100% responsive design, which is essential for conversions.

Google Sites

Google Sites is one of the lesser-known applications in the Google Suite package, but it’s one of the quickest ways to create a free landing page in the style of a Google form. It doesn’t offer a lot of customization but it’s totally free and can be integrated with the entire Google suite such as Google Docs, YouTube, and Google Forms. It can also be tracked with Google Analytics. By default, it will publish with a Google subdomain but can be customized if you have a G Suite account.

This analysis of some of the many tools, software packages, and plugins for creating landing pages is useful – but beyond how you create your landings, the most important thing is to know what to communicate and who to communicate it to. The remaining factors will depend on your budget and the time you are willing to invest in learning each of the different tools.

Our advice is: Know your product well, know your potential customer even better and build your communication tool with them in mind. This is the only way to achieve success. Once you have decided on your content you can optimize your time and effort as you design and shape it thanks to the ready-to-use icons and other resources we offer you at Flaticon.