What Does a Landing Page Builder Do?

Learn what a landing page builder does and how it can help businesses create a personalized landing page.

Kate Neuer
August 02, 2021

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A landing page is more than just a webpage a visitor lands on when seeing your site. It is a standalone web page on your site that can offer something, such as a resource, from your business in exchange for a visitor's information.  

 

The landing page is considered a marketing stage where a lead-capture form pops up to ask for either an email, name, phone number, or any other piece of information from a potential customer or client. It is important that a few elements of your landing pages only add to your desired high conversion rates instead of deterring leads.

 

In this article, we'll discuss not only what a landing page builder is and what it can do but also what content should be in a landing page and how you can use the builder to your advantage. The look and feel of your landing page is extremely important because we all know that books are sometimes judged by their covers.

 

 

 

Table of Contents

 

Landing Page vs a Webpage: What's the Difference?

What’s the difference between landing pages and websites? Landing pages are a part of a whole. Their goal is to entice visitors to click a subscribe button or sign up for updates each month. The type of form you need depends on the type of business you run and why you want subscribers.

 

This may all depend also on what your business plan is, which often includes giving a free resource to visitors. This form could offer anything from:

 

  • A free trial
  • Subscription to a newsletter
  • A downloadable mobile demo of a service
  • PDF of tools to use for your particular service or business
  • Any type of media, such as a video where subscribers can learn how to use a product or highlight its features

The main goal for any of these examples, especially a form, is to have people reply to the offer and reply with ease. 

 

Landing pages are different from a homepage because a homepage serves multiple purposes. Landing pages are essentially pages that are just a form or CTA (call-to-action). The homepage of your business should include more information about your business or service other than a CTA button that asks for a visitor's information. 

 

Homepages are more than just marketing tools, they give a welcome headline a "thanks for visiting message", offer content to learn about your business, detail features of your product or service, and try to entice leads to become converting customers. All through this one page of your site.

 

You can see why homepage layout and text are important. Luckily for you, landing page creation is easy and can get you the best conversion rates if done correctly. Further in the article, we'll reply to the top concerns when it comes to landing page builders or landing page software. 

 

Don't worry if your marketing or SEO writing skills are not where you want them to be. Landing page builders can help you launch an effective solution to have landing pages fit your website. 

 

 

 

What are the Different Types of Landing Pages? 

A great landing page says a lot about what your business can offer and how you operate. It's important to get the basics of what kind of landing page you want and need based on what type of service you have. 

 

People see different things in sites all the time as the growth of various services progresses. So it's possible new landing page types will pop up on any website at any time, but the following are the most common types of landing pages. 

 

The few different types of landing pages you may see on a site include:

  • Sign-Up Email Landing Pages
  • Get Started Form Landing Pages
  • Learn More Landing Pages

If you search google and click on links you've never been to before, it's possible you've surfed the site to find one of the two types of landing pages above. They are clearly designed to get leads, but what are the pros and cons of each?

 

Sign-up landing pages are the simplest of landing pages since they only want the site visitor to provide an email. Usually, the email is given to receive a newsletter each month, view new deals and get updates of the business's products or services, or they are signing up for a free trial of something. 

An example: https://www.shopify.com/free-trial 

 

 

You may often come upon a landing page with a "Get Started" button, which falls under the category of the sign-up page but does request more information from the site visitor.

 

Don't be fooled. The site is asking for an email... eventually. There may be a short form of questions beforehand to better understand what the visitor may want to get from the service or product.

For example: https://www.airbnb.com/host/homes?from_nav=1

 

Landing pages with a "Learn More" CTA button can be confused with a "Get Started" call-to-action, but these types of landing pages don't often ask for an email directly on the page. In fact, there is no blatant form that suggests gaining subscribers at all. 

 

However, the "Learn More" or "Check Us Out" button will lead people to an effective page on the website consisting of more information that will entice soon-to-be subscribers. These are also known as clickthrough pages. 

Examples of these include: https://www.webprofits.com.au/  and  https://transferwise.com/us/

 

There is no "One size fits all" type of landing page since most apps will offer more than one template for page creation. What is important is the type of form (or lack thereof) you want and what you want your marketing campaigns to do for your business. 

 

Before launch, we suggest doing a google search for kinds of landing page features your top competitors have. Run a clothing business and see that others have an email sign-up landing page? You may want to do that but in a new, refreshing way!

 

 

What are the Benefits of a Great Landing Page Builder?

A good landing page focuses on a stream of traffic, such as an email campaign that is offering an ebook or a newsletter per month for subscribers. Once you understand your business plan or goal in getting people attracted to your business, you can get started on choosing a landing page builder or landing page software.

 

But why should you look for one of the top builders? How can they really help your business? 

 

You want a landing page builder to guide you in the creation process with click and drag options. This makes for a more effective page with features you want. And what the people want. If the creation is easy for you, then the form or CTA button will be easy to understand for a visitor.

 

There are more pros than cons when choosing a landing page builder. Here are a few.

 

Landing Page Builder Pros:

You'll want to reconsider settling for just any landing page app to use as your builder. Luckily, most apps are doing things to get you the best outcomes from your landing page or landing pages. Yes, you can have more than one, depending on what your business does offer. 

 

  • All team members can work on the builder

Landing page apps are focusing on giving people the best experience to their client's site, so they make sure to add the ability for multiple team members to adjust the builder. This can save any businesses of all sizes a lot of time when needing an update to the landing page.

 

  • You can add or delete any widget at any time

You'll find these features tie in with the ability to have multiple people working on the landing page. Need to offer more effective content for subscribers? It should be easy to change your landing page form from an email to a form in order to gather more information from people visiting your site. 

 

  • Ability to plan for seasonal updates

Automatically schedule a change in your landing page with this top builder feature. You should be able to have multiple landing page drafts with whichever landing page software you do end up choosing. 

 

These types of features are helpful if you need a different call-to-action button based on the season, for example. Have a promotional campaign for a free snowflake ornament for the winter holidays? You will want to plan this in advance with the ability to tie in this promotion to the rest of your website.

 

  • Focus visitor's attention on whatever you're promoting

There should be tons of options in the builder to grab your website visitor's attention, which includes the ability to edit a headline to make them more eye-catching. 

Want to get rid of an ad or insert an ad to get your audience's attention? Some builders allow for this as well.

 

  • Allows for A/B testing

This should come in handy if your business has a marketing department that wants to optimize the user experience of the landing page or increase your conversion rate based on how many subscribers you get per month. 

 

How is this testing done? Create two designs with different designs to see which one gives you higher conversions. Whichever landing page has can get you the best reply from your audience is the one you'll want to officially launch on your website.

 

  • Create a widget that includes the option for clients or customers to pay faster

Save time and effort by pushing visitors directly to payment if they want more from your business other than being one of your subscribers of "free stuff". 

 

These are the tools that all great landing page builders have. Some tools or lack of tools can prevent you from making a great landing page, however. 

 

Landing Page Builder Cons:

There are only two things to keep in mind when deciding on a landing page builder. This may not be applicable to every landing page app, though. It's important to review the tools each app offer before choosing which will work best for your business model.

 

Key tip: Do always read the fine print or any small text you see to make sure you know what you get out of the app and what the software may want in return.

 

  •  Paying per month or per year

You could be paying per month or per year for a landing page builder as one of the app's subscribers. This is because a landing page app is a SaaS model.

 

Decide what you want out of a landing page builder to see if you need the extra features a more expensive app offers. Remember that some builders are free. 

 

  • Data portability can be limited

It may be difficult to export pages from a page builder to standard HTML. But the right landing page builder will have a tutorial on how to make this process easy if you have multiple pages. A good landing page builder will have this be one of their easiest tools.

 

 

What are Some of the Best Landing Page and Builder Features?

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When looking for a landing page software, there can be a lot of unnecessary things the builders can do. It's important to focus on the main features landing page builders do. 

 

Some of the best landing page builders should have drag and drop capabilities to add blocks or widgets where you need them. If you want a simple email form, for example, you should be able to choose that and drag it where you want it.

 

  • Clickable or drag ‘n drop capabilities 

Seen above is an example of a drag 'n drop capability. Think of creating a website through Wordpress, for instance. This feature allows you to add any content in a box widget and place it anywhere you need it. 

 

  • Templates 

If you aren't tech savvy, don't worry. The top builders do offer templates or examples of other landing pages that you may want to emulate for marketing needs.

 

  • Dynamic Text Replacement

DTR is a feature that can save you time by replacing keywords based on the user's search query.

 

For example, let's say your page has the headline "Quit Paying High Credit Card Fees" but based on the user's search query, "Stop Paying Foreign Exchange Fees" is more appropriate. DTR capability will replace this so your page will show up on the searcher's SERP. 

 

Testing out different text options is also a great add-on feature to this tool. This is one of the best features on this list because it directly relates to traffic and, therefore, high conversion rates. It's a simple process; you don't need to be an SEO genius!

 

  • Should give options for marketing and campaign goals you may have for your landing page

This goes along with the templates but can't be reiterated enough. Let's say you need someone to click on a "Newsletter Sign-Up" or "Product or Service Sale" option.

 

These templates or examples may not be titled this exactly, so make sure you get to see the templates before with the ability to delete or completely change the widgets in the template you may have chosen.

 

If you don't like every element in a template but believe most of the widgets are good for your marketing strategy, it should be easy for you to edit those elements out just like you'd plan to do with any website creation builder. 

 

  • Built-in Payment systems (no more outsourcing to another software to simply allow customers to buy your product or service)

As mentioned before, if you have a clickthrough landing page, the ability to have clients pay can be easy.

 

And you'll want to do without having an ad. No more outsourcing to another software to simply allow customers to buy your product or service. 

 

Oh, and it should be easy to set up for mobile capabilities.

 

  • Mobile and tablet-friendly templates and previews 

That brings us to the point in the article where we need to backtrack and add that if every feature of the builder includes mobile-friendly tools, then that is ultimately the most effective solution in saving you time. If you're on the go, you can plan on building landing pages for your website in no time. 

 

  • Customer relationship management (CRM), analytic ability

This aligns with testing in a way but is ideally a marketing tool for every page, not just landing pages.

It is nice to have content the audience interacts with on your page. It's also nice to see how visitors reply to your landing pages. Find out the best content with the tools included in a landing page builder.

 

You can see how easy it is to use these features to launch landing pages that people want to respond to once you build and manage or edit as needed. This is a great replacement for reviews of your page if you don't have time for this type of website testing. 

 

  • Easy email integration

This isn't one of the features that require upkeep like a few listed in this section of the article, but it may be the most obvious marketing need.

 

Have you ever gone to click on an email sign-up banner but instead of entering your email, a new window opened up to advertise more things?

 

These marketing ploys are not the kind of content you want to share... yet. Your builder for landing pages should have an easy email form if that's your page CTA. The form can follow later. Make sure you don't mess up possible conversion with a bad email button. People will thank you later. 

 

 

How Do I Use a Free Landing Page Builder App to Help with Marketing My Business?

We assume you landed on this article because you wanted an easy marketing strategy for your business, whether you offer a service each month or selling products. Now that you're familiar with landing pages, we can talk about how you can integrate this page for the betterment of your entire site.

 

After all, though each marketing goal is slightly different depending on the business, the one ultimate goal is: conversion. Testing and google searching competitors are good tactics before building landing pages, but here are the best ways to make the best landing page before launch. 

 

  • Keep it simple

Leave some white space so your offer is clear. Want an email? Have a few questions in a form that visitors need to reply to? These tools to create the best, uncrowded looking, piece of content are vital. 

 

Ever fill out a form halfway through and realize how long it is so you give up? So have we. In general, don't have too many things going on in your site. This makes it easier to read the text, giving your lead time to make a decision faster.

 

  • Explore every widget available to you

You may discover features that you didn't know you could do.

 

We suggest drawing out (in your head or literally out on paper or computer) how you want your landing pages to look. If you have some features in mind, make sure your builder has that particular solution in its tools. 

 

  • Get rid of distracting backlinks

Any backlink includes a link from another page or site that directed a visitor to your page. It's just a reference somewhat like a citation. Google uses backlinks as a ranking signal for a site.

 

Though backlinks are important for conversion in a way, bad backlinks can hurt your marketing efforts if you have unrelated backlinks. If your brand is called "Mirror" (a pretend software company) but someone on your site is looking for actual mirrors for sale, they will click out of your site. Plan to get rid of unnecessary backlinks.

 

  • Social Media sharing buttons

See those stacked buttons of different social media icons on a site every once in a while? It's called a sticky social media bar. You may or may not want that on your landing page.

 

Make sure your landing page builder features this tool. It's a great tool for growth in business. Afraid it doesn't look like it matches your marketing or brand appearance? Check for other positions where your social media pages can be easily shared by site visitors. 

 

  • A/B testing 

Another testing thing, I know... I know. But it's important to understand how visitors reply to forms and interact with other content you may have on landing pages.

 

Keep in mind landing pages should get a visitor to do one action. It serves one purpose, so you should not have too much content on it.

 

A/B testing is easy if you create more than one landing page to see which positioning of your offers or sign-up banners (or forms) work best on the page.

 

  • CTA buttons

Experiment with a ton of different button options. You may not want an email form but instead just want a button to redirect potential customers to a page with an email form.

 

 

Conclusion

Now you understand the importance of a landing page and what you need to look for when choosing a landing page builder. It's the last thing you want to skimp on when marketing your business.

 

We hope you can see how the tools a landing page builder includes can be a solution for high conversion rates. It's arguably the the one page where most decision-making comes from your lead. This is because it's the first real action a visitor takes on your site, so it should be in tip top shape come launch time.

 

You can always read reviews of the best or new builders of landing pages that are out there. And you can easily start testing out a lot of features without imputing a credit card.

 

Want to see how a landing page builder really works? Go ahead and play around with our landing page builder tool for free here!