How to create a landing page in 5 minutes or less

One of the areas I see people struggle with the most when they’re building their website is how to make a landing page. Landing pages are such a great tool to get subscribers, validate your offerings and build up your waitlists.

While you can certainly buy expensive software that will create landing pages for you for a monthly fee, I’m a fan of using free landing page templates to get you started right away. And I’ll also show you a low cost way to create beautiful landing pages that give you complete control over your design.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is a landing page?
2. When should you use a landing page?
3. Landing page best practices
4. How to make a free landing page (even if you don’t have a website)
5. How to create a landing page for WordPress
6. Landing page examples
7. Tools and services used in this tutorial

Please note that I am an affiliate for some of the resources listed below. As an affiliate, I may earn a referral fee if you purchase these products based on my recommendations. I only recommend those services that I actually use in my own business.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is simply a page on your website intended to convert your website visitors into leads (a lead is an someone who expresses interest in what you’re selling or offering).

When most people visit your website, they’re not ready to buy (or contact you). In fact, it’s often reported that over 90% of people who visit your site aren’t ready to make a purchase. And unless you capture their email (or have retargeting set up) – you may never be able to convert this visitor into a buyer.

While there are many types of landing pages, I’ll focus on one of the most common ones – the squeeze page. On a squeeze page, you’ll ask for the visitor’s email address in exchange for a free gift or offer (such as a downloadable ebook, audio meditation or free lesson from your online course). Think of it like you’re at the grocery store and they give you a sample of free cheese – you’re much more likely to try (and buy) something new if you’ve had a taste of it!

When should you use a landing page?

Landing pages are one of my favorite ways to quickly gauge interest in an idea – even if you haven’t fully thought out the product or promotion. And they’re a great way to generate excitement around your next project or offering.

Let’s say you’re thinking about running a program – but you’re not sure if anyone will signup. Creating a simple landing page allows people to register their interest in your offering. While it isn’t a foolproof way to gauge how many people WILL eventually pay and signup, you can at least determine general interest in an idea and start generating excitement.

Or perhaps you’ve run a program in the past but not sure when you’ll run it again. One of my best (and cheapest!) strategy tips is this – ALWAYS keep a wait list going.

When I was offering custom website design, I would always keep a 6 month waitlist of customers – that way I would never need to worry about when the next project was coming in. And whenever I finish a promotion for a course, I immediately swap the sales button for a waitlist form – you’d be surprised HOW many people signup right after the cart closes – make sure you capture those addresses!

Landing page best practices

1. Landing pages should have one goal – and make sure you get that email signup! Keep your message clear and don’t try to confuse the user by offering other things on the same page.
2. Have a clear call to action – is it to sign up for your list? Download your freebie? Signup for a trial of your product or service?
3. Keep your landing pages simple and uncluttered. Remove any header navigation, footer blocks or sidebar sections to keep the page free of distrations.
4. If you’re using an image on the page, make sure it matches the intent of the page. And remember – this image will likely be the one that displays when the page is shared on social media – so you’ll want to make sure it’s a good fit and attracts attention.
5. Once your user has opted-in, make sure to send them to a thank you page so you can track submissions in your analytics software (watch the video below for more info on this).

How to make a free landing page (even if you don’t have a website)

In this video I show you how to create an easy, done-for you free landing page using ConvertKit. You’ll learn how you can create a landing page in 5 minutes or less and start easily adding subscribers to your email list.

Want to try making your own landing page for free? Signup for ConvertKit and start making your own great landing pages right away.

How to make a custom landing page for WordPress

In the video above, I used one of the awesome pre-made templates from ConvertKit and showed you how you could easily add that landing page to your WordPress site.

In this next how-to video, I demonstrate how to create a totally custom landing page. You’ll have total control over the look and feel of your landing page. Bonus? The Beaver Builder plugin I use can also create amazing sales pages and custom layouts for any page of your site – it’s the ultimate multi-purpose tool.

(note: I made this video tutorial a while ago – the site shown in the video is no longer active and the newest version of Beaver Builder looks a bit different – but the concept of how it all works is the same)

Landing page examples

Here are a couple of examples of the landing page builder in action:

How to attract and retain premium clients
Ideas to get paid

Tools used in this blog post tutorial

ConvertKit – Easy to use newsletter software
Beaver Builder – the plugin I use to make all of my custom design page layouts in WordPress
Ultimate Add-ons for Beaver Builder – I love this tool – especially for their custom subscription modules that allow me to easily add a form to a page (you can see it in action on my freebies page).