How to Create A Landing Page: Steps and Best Practices for 2020

What does it mean to create a landing page?

Creating a landing page essentially means writing content, creating designs and page wireframes, and then coding it into existence on a website. However, if you are using a landing page tool, that comes with predesigned templates, then the content is the only part you need to input. You can still make custom design changes if you wish to, although no developer intervention or coding skills are needed for any part of the landing page development and testing cycle in case of software like Lander.

Below are some popular landing page examples:

Lead generation landing page
This type of landing page is typically used in B2B lead generation operations, where it seeks to capture the essentials to establish business communication. This means name, business/work email, and company name are generally considered to be essentials, with phone number as optional. 

Webinar landing page
A webinar or web event landing page aims to capture the fields required to securely sign in to the webinar, although the ultimate goal often is to use this data for lead targeting purposes as well. Typically an email address is essential, making squeeze pages the usual go-to landing page.

Product information landing page
Creating a landing page essentially means writing content, creating designs and page wireframes, and then coding it into existence on a website. However, if you are using a landing page tool, that comes with predesigned templates, then the content is the only part you need to input. You can still make custom design changes if you wish to, although no developer intervention or coding skills are needed for any part of the landing page development and testing cycle in case of software like Lander.

How To Create Landing Pages: 5 Key Steps 

Creating a landing page requires objective mapping, page content, page design, page optimization, page testing, and finally, page deployment. Additionally, you can also hire a web developer to make this task easy for you.Let us look at each step from a 2020 context:

• Objective Mapping
  In simple words, the first step is to understand the core objective of the landing page to be created and mapping this to the right type of landing page. For example, if you are creating a landing page for running paid ads to generate leads, then the landing page must be created keeping this context in mind. This means, adequate information (not too much, not too little) on the product based on the source of the user, the keyword used in the search, and the information they are already expected to have.

• Landing page content
  The content of the landing page is key to user clarity and conversions. The ultimate goal of the content will be to convince the user to fill a form, signup for a free license, watch a demo, etc while ensuring that all key information is being presented for the clarity of the user. Content also includes tag lines, testimonials, features, pricing, discounts, etc. Even aspect of the content that needs graphics for illustration, has to be pre-planned before the graphic/web design team begin their work.

• Landing page design
  Landing page design includes all graphical elements of the page, including the form, discounts and offers, font and style of content, etc. The design of the landing page usually begins with a wireframe, which is a minimalistic sketch of the page's look and feel to make final decisions. This saves the designer time while decisions are still being made on the page design options. Once the page's wireframe is finalized, the designer will work with the content team to generate the desired page design. The content and design are then sent to the developer for deployment and/or A/B testing.

• Landing page A/B testing
  A/B testing a landing page is a key step in the development process of the page. This is a stage when you have a few options for the landing page sections, such as the color of your CTA button or swapping a few content sections based on priority, etc. A/B testing is important for any inconclusive decision based on a lack of data/evidence. The goal is to deploy the landing page with changes and noting the increase or decrease in page conversions. Typically there should be a small testing budget if the campaign is a paid one. This is to differentiate the ROI measurements from results acquired post-testing and page finalization. Once you have arrived at the final page structure, you are ready to go live with your campaign.

• Page deployment/ campaign activation
  Page deployment is the final step of creating a landing page. A landing page is not usable in the form that it is hosted while making, which is typically a staging instance for developers. To make it live, there are 2 key levels:
  Site-level index:
  Simply put, your landing page is hosted as a leaf page of your website. For example, the syntax can be XYZ.com/category/landingpage.html. At this level, your landing page may be made accessible through site navigation or maybe help standalone (only those with the URL can access it).
  Search engine index:
  If you want, you can make your landing page discoverable by search engines or not. The no-index tag is used to keep pages from being indexed by search engines like Google. The reason may be that you do not wish for this page to interfere with your search ranking pages or that the page is intended only for users from a specific channel like social media, email, or display advertising.
  Please note that if you intend to make your page search engine indexable, you will need to ensure this page is discoverable from your site map. Even a simple backlink from a blog will connect this page for web crawlers (of search engines) to discover and index.

Bonus: Landing Page Creation Using LanderApp
The above process of creating your landing page from scratch will be at least a week-long process for even a mid-to-large cap company, which may take 2-3 weeks for a small company, especially since you will need some developer bandwidth. Using LanderApp, landing page creation, and deployment time is reduced to minutes. Why? Because:

Lander has over 200 ready-made landing page templates.
Each template is pre-categorized into various objective types.
Free DIY landing page A/B testing
Additional options for UI testing from real human teams, in just a click.

Signup today!

X Best Practices To Follow While Creating Landing Pages in 2020

Ensure contextual reader experience (multiple landing pages per campaign)
Good customer/prospect experience today demands to be omnichannel contextual content- which means, that the content being read by a user must be as contextual as possible to their journey till now. This means, that your landing page needs to be contextual to the user's current understanding of your brand, rather than having a 'one-size fits all' strategy. This is also a step towards taking advantage of personalization and its positive impact on experience and conversion.

For example, if you intend to target 'engaged' subscribers of your email database, then you will need one type of landing page to convert maximum subscribers for this already engaged audience. However, if you are targeting 3rd party website users with display ads, who are new to your brand, then the content will need to be changed to be made as contextual as possible for this group of audience.
While content personalization and contextualization have many levels based on your company's technology stack, the above example illustrates the most fundamental level of use to leverage contextualization to improve conversions. Match your objective with page experience and messaging. If you want to have a live example of how this is done by professionals, you should check this out

Do you want to allow your readers to navigate outside of the landing page? Do you want existing users to be able to see this page on your site? Should readers pay more attention to the graphic or the content in a given section? Does any given line in any given location promote or detract the user from reading further?
These are the type of granular details that need to be asked and answered while preparing the page. Furthermore, when in doubt, it is never too much or too late to test your page and let user behavior stats/conversion numbers tell the facts.

• Fast page load is key
  According to Google's own insights released in 2015, every second of delay in page load beyond 3 seconds, leads to a potential loss of 20-30% of users. In other words, a page bounce, which in the case of search engine ads, will reduce your page quality score and competitiveness for top ad slots. Furthermore, even among business users, mobile usage for work-related content consumption is rising, especially since the COVID lockdowns in 2020. This means that mobile load speed must be a priority check, along-side desktop. You can also consider Google's Amplified Movile Pages (AMP) for light landing pages or Progressive Web Apps (PWA) for ones that need Java scripts. Both mobile web frameworks are easy to deploy for faster page load speed on mobile devices. Test only one change at a time. One of the early mistakes to avoid while testing your landing page is to ensure that only one change is tested per cycle to avoid ambiguity on test results.For example, let's say you want to test a better page title tag line, as well as another color for the call to action (CTA) button. In such as case, it is highly advisable to test only one of these changes per test cycle, since either of the two may impact the results, and you may not know which one had the most impact.
  Even in case of positive results, it may be the case that one of the changes may be undercutting your success. Hence, a thumb rule for any marketing team will be to test only one-page element change at a time.
• Use social and earned media proofs and testimonials
  Today, web audiences are much savvier and experienced. Thanks to way too many websites with fake customer testimonials, most readers ignore any such sections while browsing, in some cases even hindering the experience. However, social media feedback and reviews from authentic users on reputed sites are much more trustworthy to users today. Positive earned media coverage from well-known publications are another source of developing trust and encouraging conversions.
  Your landing page graphics team can create collages and other types of displays out of them, and you can even link them to the actual feedback, reviews, and articles. Ensure compliance with digital laws and design guidelinesUS, India, Europe, and several other countries have launched their own data collection, protection, and privacy laws. Landing pages come front and center of these laws since they are primary sources of user data collection through signups, subscription forms, download forms, etc. Your landing pages must be compliant with the laws of the land where your campaigns are running. A lack of compliance and resultant business penalties can be heavy of an organization. It is always advisable to consult your legal team while planning campaigns in specific regions. Use landing page templates wherever possible to save time
  Landing page templates offer ready-made, channel-sensitive landing page layouts, and designs, which cut down creation time from days and weeks to minutes. Today, as a result of the economic crunch from COVID lockdowns, even large and established organizations are seeking to cut expenses.
  Pre-designed and tested landing page templates are affordable alternatives to designing and deploying one from scratch.Signup today for a 14-day free trial.
• Identity and test maximum CTA placements
  For longer landing pages with more than 2-page folds (2 full pages based on the device screen), you will need more than 1 CTA location on the page. However, too many CTA buttons will break the experience and annoy the reader out of the page, however, too little will lead to lost conversion potential. The best way will be to test both- the number of CTAs and the best location for each.