Landing pages, also often called squeeze pages, lead capture pages or opt in landing pages, are the place where someone “lands” when they click a link to opt in for your free offer. Landing pages capture email addresses and often other information from people in exchange for something they are excited to receive, like a checklist, an infographic or even a coupon. You can find out more about lead magnets here: What is an Opt in, Freebie or Lead Magnet?

How to create a high-converting optin page using Leadpages

Creating high converting squeeze pages from scratch isn’t easy. It requires technical know how as well as graphic design experience so you can create a page that is aesthetically pleasing to your reader. When you’re first starting out in business, it’s well worth it to pay for landing page builder software. I prefer Leadpages. It’s easy to use, is fairly inexpensive and give a lot of bang for the buck. So let’s see how to set up a landing page using Leadpages. See my full review of Leadpages here. 

Step 1: Sign up for Leadpages

In order to collect names and email addresses to build your list, you need to have a landing page. The landing page is where you will convince people that you are going to offer them something so valuable, so life changing, that it is worth giving up their email address. Creating landing pages can require some high level tech and graphic design skills. After all, if you create a landing page that isn’t compelling, you’ll never know if your offer is something people are interested in, or if they just don’t like your landing paget. Using landing page software dedicated to high converting landing page design makes the process quick and easy. Leadpages is the gold standard for creating beautiful landing pages. It is one of the best landing page builders available in terms of design and ease of use. Leadpages was one of the first companies to offer landing pages and it has years of data to understand what converts. It has been around so long that often people interchange the term landing page with lead page. Leadpages is the proper name of a company that helps you create high converting landing pages. 

You can find more information on what is included on a high converting landing page here. Using a landing page template also ensure you’re using landing page best practices in terms of design, button placement, and font style.

Step 2: Pick a Template

One of the best things about Leadpages is the number of templates they offer. From sales pages, to opt in forms, video pages to checkout pages they have templates for just about any type of squeeze page you’d ever need to create. If you don’t find one that fits your exact needs, each template is highly customizable. See Leadpages’s best landing page templates here One of Leadpages highest converting templates:

Here’s a landing page created for one of my clients that started with the above template.

And here’s an example of my own landing page using a Leadpages template:

Step 3: Add your Branding

Leadpages makes branding very easy. You can add your colors, logos, and headshots right in the Brand settings making it easy to access them as you need them. Once they’ve been added in your global settings, images and brand colors are available right inside of any template you use, making creating pages quick and easy.

Step 4: Change the Copy

Once you’ve chosen a template you like, it’s easy to change the copy and graphics to match your design. The drag and drop editor and built in widgets make customizing a template fast and there’s no need to worry about whether the design looks good or not. Simply replace the elements in the template with your own and you’ll be good to go.

Step 5: Connect it to your website

If you have a self-hosted WordPress site (WordPress.org), you can use the Leadpages plug in to make it appear as the landing pages you create on Leadpages are hosted on your own website. That means instead of your page url being: https://launchtechmadeeasy.lpages.co/launch-checklist/ You can get rid of the “.lpages.com” and host it at https://launchtechmadeeasy.com/launch-checklist instead. This not only is easier for people to remember (and for you to say), but it also looks more professional. Unlike many other plug ins, you won’t find the plug in for Leadpages on WordPress. Instead, you find it on Leadpages. First you publish the page you’re working on. No worries if it’s not finished, no one will see it yet. After you get a url confirmation screen,  you’ll see your Landing Page Publishing Options. Select WordPress, download the plug in and install it on your WordPress site as you would any other plug in.

Step 6: Use your Landing Page link to promote your Lead Magnet

Now that you have your landing page completed, you can integrate your lead magnet and start promoting it on social media, on your business cards, in Facebook ads or anywhere else where people who could benefit from your freebie hang out. Check out How to Create a Lead Magnet for more ideas. Creating an opt in landing page that collects email addresses is one of the most important things you can do to grow your online business. Without a list of engaged email subscribers, it is pretty hard to even have  an online business. The first step in that process, the landing page, is your idea client’s entrance into your world. It is their first impression of you, they’ll see the landing page even before they see the lead magnet. The landing page design, then, is somewhere that you need to spend time and give attention. There are so many things to consider when putting one together, that I highly recommend you use a landing page designer to make it easier – not just to set up the tech but to create the page. Don’t leave it to chance. Increase your odds of conversion by using a solid landing page builder like Leadpages. You can sign up for Leadpages here.  Want to see how I customize the Leadpages template from above in to something I can use for my own business? Check out this video (note, because I wanted this to be a quick tutorial that you can stop and start without my chattering, there’s no sound):

But, because I know some would like a more in depth video WITH sound, I also recorded this for you…