Guidelines on How to Create a WordPress Landing Page

A landing page is in literal terms the first page on your website that the user “lands” on. This applies also to your WordPress website. A WordPress landing page is all about getting the user to perform a specific action that is predefined.

This could include getting them to subscribe to an email list, buy a product or perform a social media related activity like sharing on Facebook or re-tweeting.

The goal is to take control immediately the user lands on your WordPress site and taking them through a marketing process.

You can easily create a great WordPress landing page without requiring vast coding intelligence. There are several free and paid methods you can use to do this.

WordPress landing page

Other pages built inside your WordPress site can carry out the tasks mentioned above. In fact, even the homepage can carry out lead the user to carry out these actions.

So why then should you use the landing page? What makes it so special? You may argue that you don’t actually need a landing page for this.

What makes the landing page special is the fact that it is built to perform this specific task, therefore, it brings better results.

It is built with a single purpose. The other pages in your WordPress site probably have tones of other useful information and you risk overwhelming the user if you use them to carry out the landing page tasks as well.

A lot of the landing pages built in Word press now have a minimalist design that enables the user to only focus on the specific action you set.

All the elements used are carefully thought out and maximized to lead the user to perform the specific action. Some have a completely different design from the rest of the website.

Now that we’ve looked at what purpose your WordPress landing page serves, let’s have a look at how to set a landing page in WordPress.

Setting a WordPress Landing Page – The basics

Before we begin, there are a few key things you should have in mind while creating the page.

• Minimal design- Avoid clutter and keep the structure simple.

• Unclickable logo – If you decide to use one.

• Be specific about your offer.

• Show the benefits to the user- otherwise, why should they perform the action?

• Urgency- create a sense of urgency with the wording that gets the user following your commands.

• Sidebars are a no-no. They are distracting.

• Minimal header- don’t use a great big distracting header.

• No footer. Yes, do not use footer.

Now that that’s settled, let’s dive in.

Method 1: WordPress Themes

WordPress has a range of themes which include 40+ demos that are very useful. There are over 500 live themes with customizer design options on color, fonts, page size etc that you can use to create your WordPress landing page.

Examples are the simple shift and freelancer themes. You only need to install and activate the theme once you have settled on the one that impresses you.

Method 2: Plugins

WordPress is no exception when it comes to plugins. If you do not want to look into optimizing code too much and want a quick way to build your landing page, plugins are your friend.

Since in this day and age we are used to getting a lot of free stuff online, you might be interested to know that there aren’t very many free plugins out here in the internet world.

The ones you will find if you are determined will not be top shelf in their range of features and will handicap you quite a lot in the creative output. We recommend that you do an in-plugin (yes, it’s a thing) purchase to get the features that you require for your landing page.

TIP: Always find a theme that has been tried and tested to use alongside your preferred plug-in.

Method 3: Drag and drop theme builders

We already mentioned the importance of keeping your WordPress landing page minimalistic. The tricky part is doing this while at the same time making it stand out.

WordPress themes can be very boring and be limiting in terms of design e.g. the themes only allow you to place what you want in the main content block of a page template, apologies to you if you want to use your genius outside this restricted area. That sure sucks, huh?

The drag and drop builders are customized and you can play around with design and do whatever you wish through a very user-friendly interface. The themes are very well developed and allow for creativity.

To make your work faster, especially if you are designing a site that will require a lot of landing page templates for WordPress, consider using the drag and drop builder.

Method 3: Lead pages

Lead pages, what can we say. They revolutionized the marketing landscape. If you want to build a quality landing page, which of course you do! Integrate these beauties with opt-in forms and a gazillion other things; well, not that many really, to make that landing page super user-friendly!

The tool is very easy to use. It is, however, a paid solution so it’s best for those willing to invest money rather than time while creating the landing pages.

Method 4: Template hacking

So your hair is probably all up when you heard the word hacking and you’ve already pictured yourself sitting somewhere in a solitary cell. Relax, what we are recommending is neither bad nor illegal, we got your back 😉

This is not the best solution or method of creating a WordPress landing page but it may be useful as a temporary placeholder until you can invest in a more functional page.

Pssstt… listen to this. Every once in a while, online sites release new templates as HTML downloads that are available to the public.

The only setback here is that they are purely HTML so they aren’t the best fix for WordPress but you can be smart about it and make them WordPress compatible.

Method 5: Go manual

The word manual in today’s world of instant everything immediately makes one feel anxious. It is, however, a good old school way of doing things that you can also use.

The best way to create a manual the landing page manually is to simply take the default page template and edit the CSS/HTML structure.

Thereafter, you can customize it to showcase the specific action.

Parting tips

You can use software like Photoshop or any free alternative to it to create beautiful elements that immediately catch the user’s attention for the call to action buttons, links, and other features.

A plug-in will give you access to stuff like the buttons, animation, and other elements if you do not have the time to create them manually.

We have a great team of experts at Lander who can help you with even more great tips on how you can pimp that WordPress landing page and target it to your specific audience.

There are several ways you can use to create your WordPress landing page even on an advanced level and make it spectacular because clearly, you need it on your WordPress site!