Do you use landing page software to create highly effective converting pages on your website?
If you don’t you really should consider it, because it can make a huge difference to your conversion rates and sales.
We have written a few posts on this site about how to drive relevant traffic to your website, but once you get people there you need to consider how you are going to convert those that are relevant to your business.
If you don’t have a lot of traffic, you have a traffic problem not a conversion problem. However, if you do have a lot of traffic but you want to improve your conversions, then landing page software will help.
What are the important things I need to know about landing pages?
A landing page is a page you drive visitors to on your website to convert them (persuade them to sign up to your email list, buy products etc.)
Split testing is the process of sending people to different landing pages to test out which achieves the best conversion rates.
If you build your own landing page, you will generally not achieve the rates of conversion that you could achieve by using landing page templates that have proven to to work.
A ‘squeeze page’ is a landing page typically used to collect marketing information (yes, it’s just a landing page).
Your CTA (call to action) is one of the most important elements on the Landing page. You have to clearly inform people of what you want them to do.
Value proposition – This is the primary reason why visitors will hand over their details (i.e. what’s in it for them)
In this post, we take a look at two leading providers of landing page software – LeadPages and Unbounce.
LeadPages
LeadPages is a well known piece of landing page software that is very simple to use, so you can have landing pages up and running in minutes.
They have a suite of landing page templates that you can use that will achieve good conversions. The reason you know that they’ll achieve good conversions is that they get information from all their customers about their landing page conversion rates, and they aggregate this information. You can then sort the landing page options based on the highest converting template.
So why reinvent the wheel?
Features
Templates – 54 mobile-optimized templates to choose from. These templates are for different scenarios, e.g. for pages for downloading an ebook, signing up for a webinar, joining a mailing list etc.
Conversion – They aggregate all the conversion information from all their templates from all their customers and you can sort the options based on what has achieved the best conversion rates.
Easy publishing – You can grab some code and add it to your website, a WordPress site or a Facebook page. It only takes 4 clicks to publish to a Facebook page so it’s very easy!
Split test – Easily set up split testing and measure conversion on each page.
Analytics – You can use your normal analytics programs (e.g. Google Analytics) to view performance or you can use a very simplified version within Leadpages. This will show you views, unique views and conversions, and this is essentially all you really want to know!
Integration with a wide variety of providers that specialize in email marketing or provide email as part of their platform – Aweber, Mailchimp, ConstantContact, OfficeAutoPilot, Infusionsoft, SendReach, iContact, GetResponse, GetResponse360, 1ShoppingCart, MadMimi and Interspire.
How it works
Before you select your template, you should go to the admin section and connect your email service provider to LeadPages as it’s likely you’ll be collecting email addresses at some stage.
You start off by selecting one of the landing pages as a template. There are 65 templates to choose from, and these are broken down into various categories (e.g. sales pages, opt-in pages etc).
65 templates to choose from
Once you select your landing page template you are asked what industry you are in. This is only used by LeadPages to figure out the best performing landing pages for your niche. You can then update the template.
To update any element in the template you just click on it and then change it on the left hand side. For example, if I click on the download text you’ll see this text appear on the left hand side.
Click on any element to update
You can also replace images, change the colors of each element, change fonts and hide elements on the page. You can’t move the position of sections on the page or add new elements to it.
For some of the pages you can add additional fields to the forms. For example, if you have a form with e-mail on it you may be able to add contact details to this, but it depends on the form you are using. Although this is restrictive, if you know the template performs really well already then you don’t want to try to create new landing pages that you think might work, based on guesswork. These are landing pages that do work! We’re always so tempted to make changes but, if you’re not an optimization expert, stick to the proven templates.
As well as configuring the content, there are some other settings for the template:
Opt-in form integration – If you are collecting email addresses, you need to connect the form to the relevant email providers
SEO settings – configure the basic SEO settings for the page e.g. the title, description and keywords (don’t worry about configuring keywords because Google will ignore them)
Tracking code – You can add any tracking code you want for whichever analytics provider you use
Style settings – Specify the colors for any elements on the page
Exit popup – If you want, you can configure a popup to appear when web visitors are exiting the page. You can also set up a redirect website address where the user is redirected to if they stay on the page.
If you want to split test you can just copy the original template, update the new template and that’s it. When you’re ready you can preview the page and the click ‘publish’ when you’re ready to launch it.
You can launch it immediately on a section of the LeadPages site or you can add it to your site. If you have a WordPress site you should install the LeadPages plugin which then makes it very easy to launch landing pages.
Price
The starting price for leadpages is $37 per month, which rises to $67 per month with extra features.
Summary
LeadPages is very easy to use and provides you with 65 landing page templates that are proven to convert well. Why build landing pages yourself if you’re not an expert in conversion? Why not use templates that are proven to be effective?
The disadvantage with LeadPages is that you don’t have the flexibility that some other pieces of landing page software offer, but the major advantage is that you have a broad range of templates that will convert very well for you, and you’ll have them up and running quickly.
It’s surprising how often you need to build landing pages and the worst thing to do is ask a developer to build a landing page if they don’t have strong expertise in building high converting pages.
2. Unbounce
Unbounce is a well-known tool that provides a broad range of templates and very flexible configuration options for each of the landing pages. Similar to LeadPages, you can have your landing page up and running very quickly.
Features
Templates – 83 templates to choose from.
Drag and drop – You can pick elements you want to add or remove from your pages using a simple drag-and-drop interface.
Multi-user features – You can have multiple users on your account, to help with creating, updating or viewing your landing pages (you can set the permissions for different people).
Integration with a variety of providers – Aweber, Hubspot, Mailchimp, CampaignMonitor, ConstantContact, ActiveCampaign, Spark2Leads, Zoho CRM, Salesforce and Infusionsoft.
Client management – You can manage multiple clients within one account.
CSS3 support – To get your own code so you can do what you like with the landing page.
Split test – You can serve up different variations of your landing page and see which works best.
How it works
You start of by selecting one of the templates, or you can start with a blank canvas (note: you can click on the image below to enlarge it).
This is where you edit your landing pages
The first thing I notice with Unbounce is that it provides a lot more options for customization of your landing page than LeadPages does. Of course, this flexibility means it is more complex and you have more to think about, but it does allow you to create a landing page in any way you want, which will suit a lot of people.
One thing you need to be careful of is that with this flexibility it might be tempting to take the template and customize so much that you end up with a poorly converting page. Obviously you need to avoid this!
On the left-hand side of the Unbounce interface I can drag and drop elements on the page – text box, video, images, buttons, custom HTML etc. On the right hand side I can modify existing elements on the page – size, margins, background colors.
When you want to create a split test, you simply specify that you want to set up a new variant; this can be a copy of your existing template or a brand new page. You can then specify what percentage of traffic should go to each variant.
Setting up split testing is very easy!
Similarly to LeadPages, when you launch your page it is live immediately on Unbounce, or you can copy some code to include it on your own site.
Price
Prices start at $49 per month, rising up to $199 per month. At the higher end of the pricing, you’ll probably be working or a larger company with multiple users working on your landing pages.
Summary
Unbounce is a powerful tool for creating landing pages that gives you great flexibility. However, while this flexibility is useful, you need to be careful not to customize too much or you might end up with a poorly converting page. Unbounce also gives you some useful features that will be of particular interest to teams.
Which tool should I pick?
Both tools are high quality with good functionality.
If you don’t have a lot of knowledge about landing pages and you want to get high converting pages up and running quickly, then pick LeadPages. Whereas if you want more flexibility when you are building high converting landing pages, or if there is a team of people involved, then Unbounce is a good alternative.
We have decided to use LeadPages because we just want to use what works, and having too much flexibility in landing page configuration means we’re tempted to add new elements, change around screen design etc., and this will result in us not achieving the same level of conversion.
What’s next?
Here’s your next steps!
1. Try out the software. You can open a free account with Unbounce or you can open up a fully paid account with LeadPages but if you cancel within 30 days you can get your money back.
2. Share this post – We would love it you share this post with your friends.
3. Comment below – We love to hear your feedback. Even if it is just to say you liked the post!
Thanks for your attention!!!
Ian
The post Landing Page Software: LeadPages Versus Unbounce appeared first on RazorSocial and was written by Ian Cleary