Growing your email list is about more than knowing how to create high converting landing pages for your opt-in offers or lead magnets. After all, you need to have a quality free resource to give away. But your lead page is a critical piece all the same.

I’m such a big believer in a holistic approach to your business and marketing.

I’ve had conversations with a few business owners recently who have followed a magic pill, only to realise success doesn’t come from just ONE aspect, it comes from all elements working well together.

So that one marketing tactic won’t work if your landing page design creates a horrible experience for the user. That amazing looking landing page won’t work if the copy doesn’t speak to your ideal client. And that slick Facebook ads copy won’t work if you’re not targeting the right people. And that’s without looking at what happens BEYOND that page – like the email sequence, sales page and nurturing storytelling.

The story, strategy and systems all need to be brought together.

Problem is, we keep falling for the magic pills. Because someone shares these amazing results that came from this one strategy, tactic or trick. But we’re not seeing the bigger picture.

Having had to console far too many business owners lately who invested high amounts in one-sided strategies, I feel pretty passionate about this one.

So on that note, and knowing sometimes we overlook the basics of our systems, I wanted to introduce you to the humble lead page. That is, the landing page that offers your ideal clients a free resource in exchange for their email address.

Now, if in the past you’ve slapped something together, only to go off and focus on a cool Facebook ad strategy and then wondered why it didn’t work, it’s because you’ve missed these basics.

Here’s how I’m able to make a landing page with 70%+ conversion rates.

Remember, if we can’t get someone to put their email address into the form on the landing page, then they’re never going to actually invest money with us. We’ve already missed that opportunity.

How to build a landing page

If you’re wondering how to make a landing page, you don’t necessarily need to have fancy landing page software. However, there are benefits of using lead page software.

1. Most software companies have templates that have already been tested. Leadpages.net, for examples, ranks the from highest converting to lowest.
2. Because they’re templated, you can get a page built in a matter of 10 minutes. You just need to have your brand colour codes, images and copy ready.
3. It’s much easier to test your page. This includes doing split tests and easily seeing the results of those tests through the landing page software’s analytics system. If you need to create multiple pages to test, then you’re not slowing your own site down with hundreds of pages.

Should you use paid or free landing page software?

Knowing which software to use to build your landing page seems to be a consistent question I hear. Here are a few options I’d recommend and some things to think about:

Leadpages.net

The thing I like about the responsive landing page builder Leadpages.net is I can get a page up and ready in five minutes. The design is all drag and drop, so no coding required. And it categorise its templates by industry and type, while ranking them by highest converting to lowest.

When it comes to how to test landing pages, then this is another place where Leadpages excels. You can split test your page right in the software, without needing to know complicated code or signing up to third party apps. This is how you can easily find out your best landing pages quickly.

I’ve been a long-time user of LeadPages. It has a monthly or yearly subscription.

GrooveFunnels and GroovePages

GrooveFunnels – and its landing page software GroovePages – is relatively new. But one of the big advantages to this software at the moment is that you can get lifetime access to GroovePages for free. This is the best free landing page service I know of at the moment.

It’s once again drag and drop and the level of templates being added is growing every day. As an added bonus, if you subscribe to the full version of GrooveFunnels, it also comes with email marketing software, video software, the selling platform and a membership platform. This means all the systems are in one and there’s no need to piece together multiple systems to capture and nurture leads.

I’ve just become a lifetime paid member of GrooveFunnels. As mentioned, you can get GroovePages for life for free (although there are limitations). Or they currently have a promotion for a one-off fee for lifetime access to their entire suite of software products. I’ve signed up for this, as I love the idea of not having recurring costs for landing page software, email marketing, video marketing… etc!

BeaverBuilder

If you really want to use your own website, I’d suggest investing in a page builder. The WordPress landing page builder plugin I use is BeaverBuilder. While BeaverBuilder comes as a website theme, it also has a page builder plugin.

You won’t get the same level of analytics like the other two, unless you set up your own Google Analytics goals.

I have a BeaverBuilder paid subscription that I use to build high converting landing pages and sales pages I’ve previously tested within my landing page software.

When you start to research for the best landing page software, it can all get a bit overwhelming because there’s just so much choice. If there are free trial options on the software you’re looking at, make the most of it to help you test and determine which platform is going to be best for you.

Use a drag and drop theme

There are many themes these days that will allow you to easily build a landing page without requiring additional third party tools or plugins. If you use WordPress, you can look at themes like Divi 2.0. The only pitfalls of some of these WordPress themes is they can impact the speed of your site. So you’ll need to weigh that up.

Sometimes the benefits are worth it though. For example, when using a page builder plugin, like BeaverBuilder, your existing WordPress theme may then limit what you can edit on the page. For example, the header, footer and menu that comes with the theme may be visible when you use a page builder. This is why having a theme that does it all in one is so beneficial.

If you don’t have WordPress, you may realise you already have all this functionality through Squarespace or Wix. While there are still limits with some of these website building platforms, they can still achieve a great looking and functional page.

Crafting headlines as you create high converting landing pages

Now, let’s start with the headline for our page. The landing page headline is the most important part of our page, because it’s what people are going to be looking at first.

If you are working on an existing landing page, can you improve your current headline? How can you write a really captivating headline to ensure you have a high converting landing page?

Focus on writing a results or benefit driven headline. What is it you’re giving away? Make sure what you’re giving away is what your audience actually wants, because asking for an email address is like asking for money. We’ve become very protective of allowing people access to our inboxes. So what we give away needs to be highly valuable and desired by our audience.

Ensure the headline speaks to the results the lead magnet or the free resource is going to provide for them. If you want some other ways to improve the headline, you can use:

Numbers. Odd numbers in particular work well. For example, 7 Steps To Improving Conversions On Your Landing Page. There is something that makes us gravitate towards numbers.

Emotive words. What words are you using that provoke an emotion? When somebody reads that headline, what is it they feel or want to feel as an outcome? And also think about the problem you’re solving for them. Is that easily understood from your headline?

Keep it concise. Now, while I’ve said you can expand on your headline and use different ways to make it more captivating, you do need to keep it concise. If we get too wordy, then it’s too hard for the brain to process. One of my clients was sharing how when she opens a book, if the chapters are long, her brain tells her she doesn’t have enough time to read it. But if the chapters are short, she’s happy to start reading. The funny thing is, often she ends up reading 5 or 6 chapters in one go – the equivalent of that one long chapter. So aim to keep it under 20 words so you can entice the reader to at least START reading your page.

Expand with a sub headline. You can team your headline with a sub headline, particularly if you’ve got a super short headline and you need to explain it further.

Describe your lead magnet

Not every high-converting landing page have a description, but if you do decide to include it, it’s a great place to describe what it is they’re getting. The description needs to be short though.

What you might find is that as a standalone paragraph, it doesn’t make sense. You need to read the headline and/or the subheadline for it to make sense.

However, one of the key advantages of including a description is so you can drill down even further into the benefits. You might paint a picture of where they are now in their life or business and how this free resource will achieve a certain transformation or outcome. You want them to identify themselves in this copy.

Dot points or bullets for benefits

Another optional extra for creating the best converting landing page is dot points or bullet points. You want to write benefit-driven bullet points. The reason we have these bullet points is to make it easier for people to read. Our eyes are attracted to the short sentences and it’s much easier to skim read. Compare that to a full block of text where sometimes our eyes want to skip passed it, because it requires work.

If you’re unsure how to write bullet points, you can start by looking at:

• What are the features of this free resource? What can you tell me about what I’m about to receive?
• What are the benefit of these features?
• Then before you wrap up each of your bullet points, answer the question: “so what?” Why should someone care about this particular feature and its benefit?

You only need 3-5 bullet points, particularly on a landing page.

Landing page images that tell stories

A landing page without an image is a pretty boring page. But it’s more than making the page look interesting. An image can help tell a story and it can create an emotional experience for the user. It can also help that user identify themselves in what you’re offering and help them see what it is they’re actually signing up for.

Whatever image you use, you need to make sure your images are high quality. If you can, take your own photos over using stock images.

If you do need to use stock images, choose sites with good quality images. The site I use is DepositPhotos. It allows me to put in my keywords, determine if whether I want people in it, what age range those people should be and even what colours are used in the image so it matches my brand colours.

Call to action button

It’s easy to overlook the button on your landing page. It seems like such a small part of the page. But it’s another key piece in the puzzle that is a high converting landing page.

Firstly, we want a call to action button – also known as a CTA button – rather than a clickable link. The reason for a button is because we’ve been trained to click buttons.

Now, it will depend on the landing page software or the email marketing system you’re using, but some systems may have the form embedded on the page. This form will likely include name and email fields. If it’s critical to get more information, like a phone number, then ask for it here. However, understand you may find your conversions dip slightly with each extra question you ask.

Instead of a form embedded on the page, you may find some landing page software just has a button that, when clicked, opens a pop up form. Leadpages.net, for example, uses this a lot. You may be asking, why bother adding an extra step for people? Well, psychology says that once we start an action, we need to complete that action. So when we click the button, we’ve we’ve taken the first step – the pop up form. Our brain says we need to close this, so we need to complete the fields and then click the button to send our details. Leadpages ran many tests and found that conversion rates increased when the two-step system was used.

You need to test what works for you. And, as mentioned, it’s going to depend on what system you’re using as to whether it’s possible.

Regardless of whether we have an embedded form or pop up button, the button on the page needs to be in our branded contrast colour. Take a look at the core brand colours you use on the page and ensure your contrast colour is used in the button only to allow it to “pop” on the page and draw the user’s eye to it.

Lastly, focus on the words on your button. These need to be “action” words and pique the user’s interest. Examples are:

• Download now
• Yes, claim my free spot now
• Yes. Send me the (gift)
• Reserve my seat

Compel them to click with the copy you use.

High converting landing pages examples

Looking for some website landing page examples? Sometimes it’s easier to know how to create a good landing page when you have a great example to follow.

If I’m building a page using something like Beaver Builder, where I’m often starting with a blank canvas, I might use a landing page example to guide me. There’s a benefit to starting with a page building tool like this. You see, the landing pages design you want may not be 100% possible with a landing page builder that is based on templates. This is where you need to figure out what will work best for you.

So let’s look at some examples to create high converting landing pages that use some of the characteristics we pointed out above. This one is built with Leadpages.net using a landing page template. This template was regarded as one of their top converting landing pages.

It has a:

• Captivating and benefit-driven headline
• Dot points with benefits outlined
• Landing page image that’s used as the background – in this case to conjure the feeling of being free
• Call to action button with pop up form and “action” words. In this example, the button colour could be better.

Here’s another lead page example, but this time it was built using a page builder.

This time, instead of dot points, it uses a description. There’s also two images – one of what could be a joyful sales conversation and the other of what they’re getting when they access the freebie offer.

Advanced tips to create high converting landing pages design

Before I end, I want to share some advanced landing page tips to improve your conversion rate even further. If you’re just starting out with landing pages, what’s been outlined so far is enough for you to go off and start creating your leadpage.

However, if you already have a landing page and you want to improve it further, then these advance tips might help improve your results.

Call out your audience or industry

So what we need to look at is calling out our ideal client. If you can call out your ideal client in the copy on this landing page, it’s kind of like when somebody says your name and it grabs your attention. We all love hearing people say our name (except when it’s children nagging for food!).

Obviously, you can’t say every single ideal client’s name on your page, but you can call out your market or certain demographics. Are they service-based business owners? Are they restaurant owners? Are they yoga pants lovers? Do they live in a certain location?

Now, if you’re doing Facebook ads, you will need to be conscious of the word choices as it has rules around how you identify people in your ads and on your landing page.

Stick to a single message

Have a single message you want to get across on the page. This is probably one of the biggest things I see people struggle with when it comes to doing landing pages. They want to be everything to everyone, so they have multiple messages on the same landing page. This just confuses a user.

Stick to one big idea and leave it at that. Build everything around that one big idea or that one message, rather than trying to have multiple messages.

Avoid jargon or confusing copywriting

Speaking of confusing, make sure the copy when you create high converting landing pages is easy to understand. Don’t use jargon or words only relevant to you. I’ve fallen into this trap myself. For example, I used the term “client pathway” for “marketing funnels”. That’s fine for my long-term audience, because they know what it means. But new audience members that comes from a Facebook ad, for example, have no idea what it means.

If writing isn’t your strength, have someone else write your copy or at least someone to check what you’ve written. If you can’t afford a copywriter, get a friend to read it and ask them questions to see if they understood your message.

What’s above the fold

If you haven’t heard the term “above the fold” before, it means all the information on a page that appears when you first open that page, before scrolling. We need to make sure our headline and our call to action button are above the fold. We don’t want people having to scroll to find the button to opt-in or it will start to decrease our conversion rate. Make it easy for them. Now, this might not be possible on a mobile version, but at least aim to have the key parts of your page above the fold on desktop.

Display social proof for a high conversion rate

Social proof can go a long way on a landing page. What social proof does is it allows the user to have more confidence in subscribing to your free gift. We trust you more.

There are a few ways you can incorporate social proof into your landing page:

• Share your expertise through a short bio so they understand why they need to invest the time and energy in learning from you
• Include a testimonial from a client who is like the person you want to attract. We tend to trust when someone else says you’re good, as opposed to when you tell us you’re good! And if the user can see themselves in the client you’ve chosen, they identify that this is a perfect free resource for them too.
• Use positioning statements and priming words through your copy. These signal you’re an expert in this field. For example, “After 16 years as a journalist, I understand how important copywriting is for your landing page to attract the right audience and persuade them to take action”. In this example, the “16 years as a journalist” is the key part of this sentence. I’m sharing my expertise without it being part of a biography.

Lose the navigation bar or site menu

If you’re using landing page software, you won’t generally have navigation or a menu at the top of the page. But if you’re using your own website, it’s likely your page will still have your usual menu items. If you can remove this, it’s definitely worth doing. We want to ensure we only have ONE action that people can take on our page, which is to fill in their details and click the button. We don’t want to add distractions, like menus and social media icons, or we lose people down the rabbit warren and miss out on capturing their details.

This is one of the challenges I have with creating landing pages and sales pages on my website. While Beaver Builder can design beautiful pages, my theme makes it difficult to remove the menu. This is why I opt for Leadpages.net and GroovePages.

Limit the form fields

I mentioned this briefly before, but to expand on the topic further, limit the form fields you include.

I have a real estate client, for example. For her, it’s important to capture the phone number. So we have the phone number field in our form. But generally, you want to stick to the name and email address only. Once you get to a form with 20 different fields, people give up before they begin.

You can ask for additional information through your email sequence if you need. The goal is to add the right people to your list to start with.

As with everything, if more fields are important, test to see whether your conversion changes as you add more fields.

Congruency between your marketing and landing page

If you decide to run Facebook ads to your landing page, you’ll need to think about congruency. What that means is that the image and text on your ads, need to match the image and text on your landing page.

If I click an ad in my Facebook feed and then I go to the landing page, I want to feel like I’m in the right place. The image and copy don’t necessarily need to be identical, but I do need to feel they have the same ONE big idea and message.

If the image looks completely different in the ad than it does on the landing page, then I feel like maybe something has gone wrong or I’ve arrived in the wrong place.

And, it goes without saying, don’t promise something in the ad that you then don’t deliver on the landing page. You’d be surprised how many times you might update a landing page, but forget to update the ad – or vice versa.

The same applies to your organic social media posts too. When you change something, consider the entire system and hw that change impacts everything else.

Use visual cues as you create a landing page

We’re getting into quite picky things here, but each little element can add up to a higher conversion rate. And that’s our goal. So what are visual cues on a landing page? A visual cue might be quite bold, like an arrow pointing to the call to action button. This ensures the user definitely knows where to go and what to do.

Or it could be more subtle, like an image of a person looking towards the form. It tells the user they should be looking at what the subject is looking at too. Choose which approach works best for you.

Include a hero shot

Our last tips is to include a hero shot. Now the hero shot means your ideal client arrives on that landing page to see an image of a person they identify with and someone they want to be. As I mentioned earlier, when we were talking about the image for your page, places like DepositPhotos have filters where you can include “middle aged”, “woman” etc. The goal is for someone to say “I want that, too” and then fill in your form.

So that’s how we create high converting landing pages for our lead magnets. As I mentioned, the landing page is just one element. Use my Sales Funnel Template to map out the remainder of your marketing funnel.

Download My Sales Funnel Template

And if you need help, let’s chat about your funnel. Or you can have your funnel built for you.

Please note: This blog post includes affiliate links. However, I only ever share links to products I already use and trust myself.