Traffic is not the only measure of the success of a blog or website. You also need to look at the conversion rate and other indicators of user engagement to determine the overall profitability of your blog.
As far as conversion rate goes, one of the focal points of online marketers is the effectiveness of landing pages.
In this case study of SEOmoz (now known as Moz), designing better landing pages was the first priority during Phase I. It is a campaign that ultimately raised $1 million for the company and it involved creating longer landing pages that connected with the target audience, understood their problems, and augmented communication using visual content.
What is a Landing Page anyway?
If you are new to blogging, then you should know that a landing page is where traffic from search engines, ads, social media, and other external links are directed. If you want to secure conversions, the first rule is to present the audience with a relevant landing page based on their journey. For example, if you targeted the “local bike shops in Orange County” search phrase, you do not give them a landing page on car parts in Kentucky. You should give them exactly what they want. That is how you win their trust and, consequently, turn them into leads.
Remember that it does not matter if you are looking for customers, subscribers, or social media followers. Landing pages must help the audience take action based on the information they need. Besides, only 5.1% of your audience converts during their first visit, so you should also prioritize optimizing landing pages for would-be subscribers to encourage them to visit your site again.
To build effective landing pages, you must be aware of the best design practices to maximize user experience. Today, you can borrow inspiration from the landing pages of established brands that did it right. One example is this landing page from Wistia that is kept simple, responsive, and very informative. If users have any questions regarding the service, they could just scroll down to read the most frequently-asked questions.
Notice how Wistia made the design pleasing to the eye and made the registration process fast and easy. They also leveraged the landing page to learn more about the user for future optimization. Another example is IMPACT Branding & Design’s landing page that featured clear calls-to-action, expounded the benefits of the service, and used a direct headline to capture the user’s attention.
You do not need to be an expert marketer to appreciate the number of things IMPACT did right with this landing page. In addition to the points mentioned above, notice how they leveraged simple formatting to draw attention to important page elements. They used boldface to highlight the benefits of opting in, made sure the action button contrasts from the rest of the page, and most importantly, focused on a top-to-bottom flow of experience for their users.
Recommended reading: Web Copy and Landing Pages – “How to Get Higher Conversions, Boost Response, and Increase Sales”
Building Landing Pages
Creating great landing pages does not necessarily require extensive coding. For bloggers using content management systems like WordPress, building landing pages may only take a contact form plugin and a good theme. However, it is better to use tools that are tailored specifically to help bloggers build landing pages for their website. OptimizePress, for example, works by offering a number of beautiful landing page templates and a drag-and-drop editor for customization and branding.
However, if you are not using WordPress, there are still plenty of other landing page builders you use for your lead generation efforts. Here are three of the best tools the market have seen so far:
1. Landingi
One of Landingi’s best advantages is its scalability. First off, you can go ahead and test their services using the 30-day free trial, which should be more than enough time for you to figure out everything the tool has to offer. Should you wish to expand your plan, you can use their interactive pricing page to determine how much you should pay for a particular number of visitors. For example, 3,000 leads generated equal $59 per month while 1,000 leads will only require $29.
Apart from flexible pricing, you have access to over a hundred professional-looking templates that are already preconfigured for conversions. Of course, you can still use the visual and code editor should you wish to apply more customizations.
2. Instapage
Instapage is another popular option being used by site owners for designing landing pages that convert. It offers a vast library of preconfigured templates and a drag-and-drop editor to make the landing page creation process a breeze. It also supports seamless integration with some popular marketing tools for email marketing, social media, and CRM.
To help you improve your landing pages over time, Instapage comes equipped with A/B testing and tracking features. These tools will help you gauge the effectiveness of individual landing page strategies and layouts. Lastly, unlike other landing page builders, Instapage also offers live chat support to help answer your concerns in the quickest time.
3. Lander
Finally, Lander is a premium landing page builder that’s trusted by big brands like Gameloft and Capcom. It currently stands out as one of the most reliable in the page-building space due to their commitment to offering templates that are optimized for high conversions. These templates are built by professional designers and fall under different categories—from e-commerce stores to online portfolios.
Like what you would expect in a premium tool, Lander has everything you need for your lead generation campaign. It features a drag-and-drop editor for page customization, an A/B testing tool for optimization, and extra features such as form autofill, automated welcome emails, and countdowns.
Conclusion
In truth, blogs are pointless if the bloggers behind them do not have plans for reaching a broad audience. Remember that blogging can be sweeter if you can build a large following and monetize your efforts. Hopefully, what you have learned about landing pages can point you in the right direction from this point forward.
Hello Christopher,
I’m a big fan of LeadPages to create my landing pages… do you have any thoughts on them?
And thank you for mentioning the resources you mentioned… I’ve never heard of Landingi or Lander before this post.
Thank you,
Kevin Ocasio
Hello, Kevin!
I have heard great things about LeadPages but I haven’t personally tried it yet. Do you mind sharing how it is any better/different than the ones mentioned? 🙂
There are lots of landing pages tools out there that it’s really hard to keep track of all. But if LeadPages work best for you, then you don’t have to know the other tools.
Thanks for the comment!
Hello Christopher,
Well, I have a blog and and I set my main domain to redirect it subdomain and now everyone is saying that you should make a landing page for main domain. I am little confused as I have seen lots of people have redirected their main domain to subdomain and working fine I guess. So, please let me know whats the ideal situation I should choose? Stay like this or Get a Landing page?
Thank You
Best Regards,
Saqib Ahmad
Hello, Saqib!
As long as redirecting the domain to a subdomain works for you, then it should be okay. I assume people lean towards creating a landing page within a domain (ex. http://example.com/landing-page/) as opposed to creating a subdomain that the main domain redirects to (ex. http://landingpage.example.com) is because it is much simpler to create within a domain. But again, it really depends on what works best for you. I suggest you create a landing page from a subdomain and from a main domain and see which one performs best.
Hello Christopher,
Thank You so much for fast reply. Wells I decided to stick with it as my blog is more like website and recent google changes gave a little boost so, happy with it and now all confusion gone 🙂
Thank You
Best Regards,
Saqib Ahmad
Glad that my comment helped you, Saqib! But instead of just taking my word for it, I suggest you read this post from Moz to distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of subdomain vs. subfolder: https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday
I was wondering if it is easy to gain website traffic with out actually having a consistent stream of blog posts. Blogging/website promotion is something that I just started to research and right now I’m debating whether I should start a blog or if I should launch a website and promote a bit to gain traffic. I would much rather launch a website and promote it, however I’m concerned that the lack of new content on a regular basis would not yield as much traffic. Any thoughts or opinions are greatly appreciated.
Hello, Ethan! While your question is not covered by the topic I wrote above, here’s an excellent article about blog post frequency that you should read written by Anil Agarwal — https://basicblogtips.com/never-blog-post-frequency.html
To add, I suggest you follow the 80/20 rule, in which 20% of your time must be devoted to content creation and 80% for promotion. This way, you are able to increase the ROI of your content and reach to your target audience effectively.
Hello Christopher,
A landing page is paramount for maintaining conversion, indeed. But what should I try? Is it Leadpages, Instapage or something else? I need to check these service inside out to make a decision perhaps.
Thanks for the comment, Pallab!
Best if you try all of the landing page tools above plus others that you will find online to determine the best one that works for you. Keep in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all landing page platform, so you need to get down and dirty with each to see for yourself.
Excellent post! you have discussed that building landing pages are essential for websites.You have shared some landing pages tools Landingi, Instapage, Lander which are very new to me.
Thankyou for sharing it with us.
Glad you liked to post, Katherine!
Thanks a lot for the post.
Christopher, is Instapage based on Cloud? That means we pays for it monthly or annually, right?
Thanks, Christopher.
My concern is about Instapage. Is it based on Cloud feature?
Can we pick up the plan for monthly payment or we have to go for annually payment?
Could you please help me out with this question?
I’m personally using instapage for my client blog. We started adwords campaign for collecting emails for his business and i would say we taste the success by getting around 3000+ email withing one month.
We have opt for monthly plan and it works great. We will starting second round of campaign for collecting emails from next month. Thanks for the article and we learn new things on this blog.
Hey Christopher, Very nice post. Being a webmaster have worked on few landing pages campaign. One of the main purpose of landing pages are to test. Instapage is very good tool when it comes to custom landing page templates. This articles is very well put with why landing pages to how to create one. Thanks for sharing.
Great post about landing pages and conversion rates.
I am thinking to use Landigni for my first landing page on my website.
Anyone can help with little more information, is it a good one to go?
All the best,
Francesko!
Hey Christopher,
Firstly thank you very much for the in-depth write-up I recently shared with my subscribers 🙂
However, I do feel that you have missed out a few great plugin like “Landing Pages Builder by Wishpond” it’s free 🙂 I created a similar post list more great tools like wishpond see here: https://www.wpmultiverse.com/blog/wordpress-landing-page/
Let me know what you think?
Thank You
Hey! I have heard great things about LeadPages but I haven’t personally tried it yet.
I was wondering if it is easy to gain website traffic without actually having a consistent stream of blog posts. Blogging/website promotion is something that I just started to research and right now
I’m debating whether I should start a blog or if I should launch a website and promote a bit to gain traffic.I m little bit confused with the use of lead pages but Thanks …
Thanks for the great article. I have been struggling for weeks now of: how many landing pages i should have, what they should look like, plus how to tie them in with my blog. You have answered a lot of my questions.
I learned many things from the article, thank you very much! I will keep you updated on the subject and still be visiting your blog, see you soon!