Landing pages convert visitors to customers, encourage them to sign up for newsletters, and they increase sales for a business. So choosing the best landing page builder for your business can really move the needle.
These landing page should be direct, targeted, and optimized. But they shouldn’t take months or even weeks to develop an intuitive and effective design. And that is where landing page builders come in.
The best landing page builder is easy to use, regardless of programming experience. It should offer enough landing page features so that your pages are simple and effective.
It should also integrate into any third-party platform you use, for example, WordPress, as well as inbound marketing and pipeline platforms like HubSpot.
There are a lot of options available. To help you pick through them, we’ve listed and reviewed 10 of the best to help you find the one that suits your needs, requirements, and budget
Landing Page Builders – What You Need To Know
A landing page usually consists of a headline or title, a brief description of what you’re offering, and the benefits of your service. It may also include comments from satisfied users, typically taken from social media or a review site like Trustpilot, and your Call To Action (CTA).
Although a landing page is usually used to collect the email address and some personal details of your prospects, it can include a payment button, social media button, or another element, dependent on your chosen CTA.
Usually designed to meet your business branding, the page should be clutter-free, very easy to read, and it should guide your visitors neatly towards the CTA, of which there should only be one.
For such a simple page, the landing page is notoriously difficult to get right. Many website owners confuse their visitors by offering too much information, demanding too much data, or trying to use too many CTAs on a single page. Forms break, pages take too long to load, or they look too salesy or completely unrelated to your business site.
Using a landing page builder, it is possible to combat most of these potential problems and create a good looking and effective page.
The Benefits of Using A Page Builder
You can, of course, design and develop a landing page yourself. You can dive into the programming of your website, whether it uses WordPress, custom HTML and CSS, or PHP, and create your own pages to collect data or make sales.
But, this takes time and it demands that you have a good understanding of the programming language being used. Even if you do know HTML, a landing page builder still offers certain benefits over a more manual approach.
No Programming Experience Necessary
A landing page should be simple, clean, and clutter-free, but it may also include elements like contact forms, payment buttons, and social reviews.
Once a user clicks the submit or payment button, the page also needs to do something with the information submitted, whether this is to email them a download link or add them to your email marketing list.
All of this requires programming. While it might be possible to Google results and end up with a perfectly serviceable landing page, is that the best use of your time? And will it yield the best results? In most cases, the answer to these questions is “no”.
Rapid Deployment
It will also take a lot of time to learn even the most basic code. And, if you do have programming experience, do you have the time to keep generating and then optimizing and deploying new pages when you launch a new product, provide a new offer, or want to add a new landing page for a new campaign? A good page builder will let you copy and amend existing landing page details, so that you can design and add a new page, often in just a few minutes.
Collaborative Effort
You will also find that a lot of landing page builders detail a maximum number of users. This is done so that you can collaborate with other team members or liaise with clients to get the best results.
If you have a content writer, video editor, graphic designer, and a marketing professional working on a page, using a page builder with collaborative tools means that you can all work on the page simultaneously, provide updates at major milestones, and generate the best possible page for all team members.
Integration With Other Software
The best page builders offer templates for you to work from, and they allow the addition, removal, and editing of content blocks or page elements. These elements can include text, images, video, and forms or payment buttons.
They can also incorporate features like analytics and split testing code. Payment buttons, split testing, and even contact forms are not necessarily included as standard in basic packages, and this is especially true of payment buttons. There are many payment gateways out there, including the likes of PayPal, Stripe, and even BitPay, and you will need to find and integrate the appropriate code unless your landing page builder does this for you.
Uses For Landing Page Builders
In this context, a landing page is a standalone page where a visitor enters the site after clicking through a search engine listing, social media post, email link, or another advertisement. These pages are sometimes referred to as a lead capture page, giving some idea of their most common use. However, landing page builders can be used to create landing pages for a number of uses, including:
- Direct Sales – You can set up a landing page to offer a single product or service. The page would include a Buy Now button, rather than a more complex shopping cart. This technique is often used for digital downloads or services with no physical product, but it could be used for a physical product, too.
- Lead Capture – The most common lead capture pages gather email and limited personal details about a visitor, usually in exchange for some information or offer. They are used to build email lists, but they can also be used to build a list of physical catalog recipients or social media follower details.
- Competitions And Giveaways – Competitions and giveaways are a form of lead capture. The user is asked to provide information or perform some other action such as sharing the page on their social media account, in exchange for an entry into the competition. Competitions can involve a random winner and can generate a lot of social media interest.
Choosing The Best Landing Page Builder
There are a lot of landing page builders on the market. Some, like Hubspot, are included as part of a more extensive marketing automation platform. Some offer very specific landing page styles, like Shortstack’s competition entry page builder.
Then the likes of Elementor works as a WordPress plugin, rather than a standalone editor. Finally, we found a ton of standalone builders that are great, as long as all you want to do is to build one or more landing pages.
With so much choice, it can be difficult to find the one that best meets your needs, and you will need to consider the following factors when choosing the right software.
Platform
We found that the vast majority of page builders were standalone, web-based platforms. You sign up for an account, login, and start your design. Many of the platforms offer a WordPress plugin or integrate with other publishing platforms, or you may need to provide DNS records to allow the software to publish to your site.
Alternatively, some editors work directly in WordPress. Although these tend to have limited functionality, they are very simple to use and allow you to keep everything in one single location. Downloadable, desktop-based editors are rare.
Ease Of Use
One of the benefits of using a landing page builder is that they are easier to use than developing your own page and publishing it yourself. As such, you want something intuitive and easy to use, but that still offers effective results.
All of the options in our list use a drag-and-drop editor, but some do offer the capability to add and amend HTML and CSS details, allowing you to fully customize the look and functionality of your page. The less experience you have with coding, the more simplistic the editor you want.
Templates
Nothing offers greater simplicity than using a template, but not all templates are equal, and you will want to be able to customize the template so that it matches the branding of your website or business.
While the aim of a landing page is for a user to land directly on that page and then complete the desired action, they may want to stick around and look at the rest of your site.
If the landing page has a completely different look to other pages, it looks unprofessional. Look for templates that are easy to work with and that look professional and offer the functions you require.
Number Of Landing Pages
Most builders offer a subscription-style package and, as such, they have some kind of limitation. Some restrict the number of unique visitors per month to your pages, while others restrict the number of landing pages that you can create.
While some websites might only have one or two landing pages, others have landing pages for dozens of products, multiple different email subscriptions, and a host of offers.
Be realistic about the number of landing pages you want and, if you’re unsure, choose a subscription that allows you to upgrade and increase the number in the future.
Email Marketing And Other Integration
Lead capture forms are rarely if ever, used on their own. They gather data that is then used to send emails, catalogs, or downloads. They are used to build a list, and this list requires careful management.
If you are using lead capture pages to develop an email list, check to see whether your existing email management software offers a page builder. Alternatively, look fr a page builder that integrates with list management and email automation software. Combining the two could save you money, and it will make it easier to integrate the two packages.
Payment Buttons
Landing pages can be used to sell products and services directly, rather than gather lead data. In this case, you will need to be able to add payment buttons straight onto the landing page.
This isn’t a standard feature with all packages, so look for the builder that can integrate Swipe or PayPal, or whatever payment gateway you use, and check to see whether this integration is included as part of the standard package or if you will need a more advanced, hence more expensive, package.
Reporting And Analytics
Every marketing campaign should include tracking. This allows you to see what is working and what isn’t. If you answer to a board or, worse still, to clients, then you will need to show that your efforts and their investment are paying off.
Integrating analytics into your landing page lets you determine how effective your marketing and advertising efforts are, and which are yielding the best conversions. Furthermore, advanced analytics can allow you to improve your landing page results.
Page Testing
As well as tracking results, you need to take action according to your analytics and visitor data. To properly optimize a website, you will need to test changes, and one of the most effective ways of doing this is through split or A/B testing.
Essentially, this means serving two or more versions of a landing page to your visitors. Good split testing software will split visitors according to factors like demographics, location, and the type of device they’re using, which enables you to optimize and serve pages according to these factors, and eke out every last possible conversion.
Tips For Better Landing Page Results
It’s almost impossible to predict what your landing page conversion rate should be. It’s dependent on industry, traffic source, type of conversion you’re looking for, and much more. However, estimates suggest that a decent average is somewhere more manual approach, while the more manual approach conversions.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. – Ernest Hemingway
Rather than aiming for some industry standard or overall average conversion rate, you should look for ways to improve your own results. Whether you’re putting your first landing page design together or looking for ways to improve results, try the following tips to enjoy optimal conversions. But remember that what works for one page won’t necessarily work for another, so the most important tip here is to test, optimize, and test again.
Use Dynamic Text
Whether traffic arrives through organic or paid search results, they may be some subtle differences in the search query they used to land on that page. Dynamic text allows you to use a single landing page, but customize it to the exact wording and phrasing that your visitor used.
It will feel more targeted to those visitors and you should reap the rewards in improved conversions. However, you should only do this for differently worded phrases that mean the same thing. Different queries altogether will benefit from a better-optimized copy.
A/B Test Your Form Positioning
Moving your form from the right sidebar to the center could improve your conversion rates by nearly 50%, and with a decent landing page builder, that’s a few minutes of tweaking. Using A/B testing, you can easily check results, and move the form back if it doesn’t give you improved conversions.
Replace “Submit” As Your CTA
Complete the phrase “I want to”, as though you are submitting your own form, and then consider whether this would make a better CTA button copy than the stock “Submit”. 9 times out of 10, there is something better than “Submit”.
Make sure it’s relevant to the service or product that you’re offering. Your visitors will appreciate it, but it may take some experimentation and testing to find the best result.
Incorporate Video
Landing page videos can turn complex and lifeless messages into something much simpler and characterful. It also catches the eye and works extremely well on mobile, convincing visitors to perform the desired action.
As long as it’s done well, of course. And that doesn’t have to mean spending a fortune. Relevance is important, and no video is better than a poor quality or irrelevant video clip.
Add Social Proofing To Your Landing Pages
Research suggests that people are inclined to believe the reviews of others, even if they don’t know that person. Social proofing your landing pages means adding reviews from social media influencers to your landing pages.
Use founders, CEOs, and people that are perceived to be in a position of authority. Include pictures of the influencers that leave reviews. Even elements like social counters and share counters can impact a person’s decision and influence whether they trust you and your service.