How to Build Landing Pages in ConvertKit

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Does ConvertKit have landing pages?

Yes, it does!

Landing pages are an important part of marketing and advertising campaigns, and ConvertKit makes it easy for anyone to set up free landing pages—even if they have no coding or design background.

Read on to learn what you can use landing pages for, how to make and promote a ConvertKit landing page and some best practices for building landing pages.

I’ve also included some landing page examples to help get your creative juices flowing.

RELATED: Read my full review of ConvertKit here.


Table of Contents


What Is a Landing Page?

A landing page is a standalone webpage for people to “land” on after clicking on a link in a website, social media post, email or online ad.

While all webpages could technically be considered landing pages (because people all “land” on them from somewhere), the term “landing page” typically refers to webpages that are created as part of a marketing or advertising campaign.

Landing pages often feature a specific call to action for visitors, such as buying a product, subscribing to a newsletter or signing up for an event.


Why Should You Use a Landing Page?

Landing pages have a variety of uses. Here are just a few:

For delivering an “email hook”

Offering “email hooks” or “lead magnets” is a great way of growing your subscriber base. When doing so, you can use a landing page to deliver lead magnets to your subscribers.

ConvertKit’s “Hawthorne” landing page template illustrates how such a landing page could look like:

I’ve got more information on how to use ConvertKit landing pages to deliver lead magnets below—keep reading!

For displaying your profile

A landing page can also be used as a virtual calling card for showcasing who you are and what you do.

This certainly beats printing tiny (and easily misplaced) business cards that can be handed out only in person!

Here’s how such a profile could be done up using ConvertKit’s “Canyon” landing page template:

Source: ConvertKit

For generating sign-ups for a course or service

Do you offer a course or service? You can use a landing page to register interested course attendees or clients respectively.

For an example of such a landing page, check out ConvertKit’s “Cedar” landing page template:

Source: ConvertKit

To keep your audience informed of upcoming events

Finally, you can set up a landing page for users to get updates on your upcoming products, events or services.

ConvertKit’s “Everett” landing page template demonstrates how this can be done:

Source: ConvertKit

ConvertKit Landing Page Features

While ConvertKit’s landing page templates have different designs, they all share a few main features.

They are:

  • A page headline to catch the attention of your visitors
  • Space for your content. You can add text, images, videos and even buttons or an Instagram feed!
  • An email form for visitors to subscribe
  • An optional thank you page for redirecting visitors to after they’ve subscribed
  • A removable “Built with ConvertKit” badge

How to Make a Landing Page With ConvertKit: A Step-by-Step Guide

To start making a landing page in ConvertKit, click on the “Landing Pages & Forms” tab in the ConvertKit header menu.

Then, click on the pink “Create New” button. On the next page, you’ll be asked how you want to gather subscribers. Select the “Landing Page” option.

The next step is to choose a landing page template. ConvertKit currently has over 50 templates designed for a variety of use cases, such as Newsletter, Profile or Webinar.

You may preview a landing page template in full when deciding whether to use it.

Your chosen template will form the base of your landing page and it can’t be changed later on. So choose wisely!

When you’ve chosen a landing page template, the next step is to customize it in the landing page builder.

You’ll be able to customize the landing page in a variety of ways, such as:

  • Adding your landing page copy
  • Changing fonts and text colors
  • Uploading your images

Once you’re happy with the look of your landing page, click on the “Settings” option.

This will bring up more settings for you to:

  • Select what happens when someone subscribes to your landing page
  • Set a custom domain for your landing page
  • Enable or disable the double opt-in feature for subscribers
  • Change what users see if they visit your landing page after subscribing to it
  • Optimize and track the performance of your landing page in Google search and various social media platforms

If you’d like, you can also make a thank you page for your ConvertKit landing page.

To do so, click on the “+” button next to the name of your landing page.

This will create a thank you page which you can customize using the same landing page builder.

To redirect visitors to this thank you page after they’ve successfully subscribed, enable the “Redirect to thank you page” option in your landing page’s General settings.

Note: At the moment, it is not possible to delete the thank you page for your landing page once it’s been created.

If you don’t want to use the thank you page, make sure that “Redirect to thank you page” hasn’t been selected. You can enable either “Show a success message” or “Redirect to an external page” instead.

Finally, don’t forget to add your landing page to any necessary email automations too!

For example, if you send all your new subscribers a welcome email sequence, you’ll need to add your landing page to the automation that sends them that sequence. You can do so in the “Automations” tab of the ConvertKit header menu.

And congrats—you’ve successfully made a landing page in ConvertKit! 

ConvertKit has done a video to walk users through the process of making a landing page using its software.

You can watch the video here:


How to Promote Your Landing Page

Just making a landing page isn’t the end of the story.

To get subscribers, you’ll have to promote your landing page too. This can be done by:

  • Sharing your landing page with everyone you know (such as your offline friends and social media followers)
  • Adding your landing page link to your social media accounts
  • Buying Google or social media ads that link to your landing page

In ConvertKit, you can grab the link to your landing page by clicking on the “Share” button in the landing page builder.

You can also embed your landing page on an existing WordPress website using ConvertKit’s WordPress plugin (more on this later).


Best Design Practices for Landing Pages

1. Design eye-catching “above the fold” content

“Above the fold” traditionally referred to information that is displayed on the upper half of a newspaper’s front page, above the newspaper’s fold line.

Newspapers would put the most important news of the day above the fold to attract a potential buyer’s attention (such that they would buy the paper).

Similarly, in the online space, “above the fold” refers to the area of a webpage that is immediately visible to users when the page loads.

If a visitor isn’t hooked by what they see above the fold of a landing page, they’re unlikely to read the rest of the landing page—no matter how useful it may be for them.

So make full use of this space to grab attention, state your main value proposition and give visitors a reason to continue reading!

2. Remove all unnecessary clutter from your landing page

As landing pages are generally used as part of marketing or advertising campaigns, you’ll want to make sure that they singularly drive visitors towards the action that you want them to take.

Visitors should not be distracted by irrelevant content or links that may divert their attention elsewhere.

Here’s an example: if your landing page is for generating sign-ups for your upcoming course, then it should have only one call to action: an invitation for visitors to sign up for your course.

Your landing page should not have calls to action for your visitors to check out your latest social media post or to download a free lead magnet, for example.

Even just having links to other webpages on your website can reduce your landing page’s conversion rate, so get rid of those if you can.

3. Ensure your landing page is mobile-friendly

With so many people accessing the Web from their phones now, your landing pages absolutely need to be mobile-friendly.

For example, the text of your landing page may need to be larger for easier reading on small screens, and your buttons made bigger so that they’re easier to tap on.

(ConvertKit’s landing page templates are designed to be responsive, so they will look good regardless of whether they’re viewed from a desktop or a mobile phone.)


Landing Page Tips and Tricks

1. Test the look of your landing page on mobile

Many people spend tons of time making sure that their landing pages look pixel-perfect on their computer screen…but forget to check how these pages look like from their mobile phone.

This is a big mistake, considering how mobile traffic is a significant source of Internet traffic (and which is only growing every year)!

So after perfecting your landing page’s desktop design, check that it looks great on mobile as well—and make any necessary tweaks—before you officially roll out your landing page.

2. Keep your landing page URL short and memorable

Is it easier to remember a URL that looks like this:

https://mywebsite.com/3248134/saratotaco/l3h4o234nla

Or a URL that looks like this?

https://mywebsite.com/register

Chances are, it’s the second URL. Because it’s shorter and more readable than the first URL—which looks like a string of gibberish!

Hence, try to keep your landing page URL short and memorable. This makes it easier for others to share, which in turn can boost your page traffic and conversion rate.

3. Check that your landing page loads fast

If your landing page takes too long to load, a user may get fed up and decide not to visit it at all. As a result, you lose out on a potential subscriber or customer.

The solution is to ensure that your landing page loads fast—the faster the better.

According to a study done by Google in 2016, 53% of mobile visitors quit a page if it takes more than three seconds to load. This indicates how fast your landing page needs to load on mobile to avoid losing traffic to impatience.

You can also use Google’s Test My Site feature to check your landing page’s loading speed on mobile, as well as get tips on how to improve it.


Examples of High-Converting Landing Pages

1. Twitter: Keeping it simple

Twitter’s homepage is designed to get visitors to register for a Twitter account—and it does a great job of this.

Source: Twitter

It states, very simply, what the social media platform is about and its value propositions. The “Sign up” button is also prominently displayed to make it easy for users to create an account.

Twitter’s homepage also fits completely above the fold.

There is nothing else for a user to check out, because Twitter’s intent is clear.

If you don’t already have an account, it wants you to sign up.

2. Elementor: Hinting at more content below the fold

Sometimes though, you may need to provide a user with more information to help them decide whether to heed your call to action.

Naturally, your landing page will need to be longer. But if so, you’ll want to hint to visitors that there’s more information below the fold of your landing page.

Otherwise, they may not continue scrolling to read further.

Web page builder Elementor does this by only partially displaying an image above the fold:

Source: Elementor

To view the rest of the image, you’d have to scroll down—and Elementor will have gotten you hooked on reading the next part of the landing page (and hopefully all of it).

3. I Will Teach You To Be Rich: Packing in a lot of content to get the big-ticket sale

The more that you ask of your landing page visitors, the harder you’ll need to work to convince them to take action.

Personal finance blog I Will Teach You To Be Rich (IWT) understands this, which is why the sales landing pages for its big-ticket courses are really long.

For example, the sales page for IWT’s “Find Your Dream Job” course (costing $1,997 for its lowest tier if paid in full) contains approximately 14,000 words.

Source: I Will Teach You To Be Rich


How to Deliver a Lead Magnet With a ConvertKit Landing Page

As mentioned above, you can use a landing page to deliver a lead magnet to your subscribers. There are at least two ways of doing so using a ConvertKit landing page:

1. Via the incentive email

When setting up your ConvertKit landing page, you have the option of sending landing page subscribers an incentive email.

This email is usually used as a double opt-in to confirm a visitor’s subscription to your email list, but the email’s “Confirm subscription” button can also help deliver a lead magnet when it’s clicked.

To deliver your lead magnet via an incentive email, enable the “Send incentive email” option in your landing page’s settings.

Then, choose whether users should be redirected to a URL or a download after their subscription has been confirmed.

If your lead magnet is in a PDF, you could upload it to ConvertKit and redirect visitors to download it after their subscription has been confirmed.

On the other hand, if your lead magnet is accessible via a URL (for example, if it’s an exclusive webpage on your website), you can redirect users to its URL after their subscription has been confirmed.

2. Via an email automation

Note: Email automations are available only on ConvertKit’s paid plans. For more information, refer to this guide on ConvertKit pricing.

Alternatively, if you’d prefer not to use double opt-in, you can disable the incentive email and deliver your lead magnet via an automation instead.

First, publish a new email sequence in ConvertKit, with the first email being sent to subscribers “After 0 days” (i.e. immediately—you don’t want to keep subscribers waiting to receive your lead magnet!)

This first email should also allow subscribers to access your lead magnet (this could be through a download or a URL, as discussed in the “incentive email” method above).

Then, set up an email automation with your landing page as one of the entry points for subscribers, and your email sequence as one of the next few steps in the automation.

Turn on your automation, and you’re all set!


What’s the Difference Between a ConvertKit Form and Landing Page?

Apart from a landing page, you also have the option of creating a ConvertKit email form to collect subscribers.

The main difference between the two is that:

  • A landing page is meant to be a standalone page that works out of the box, while
  • A form is meant to be embedded within an existing webpage (instead of being used on its own).

For example, if you don’t have a website, you could create a ConvertKit landing page to build your audience.

Not only will the landing page include form fields for visitors to sign up with you, but it will also contain more information on what you do or what you are promoting.

On the other hand, if you have a website, you can set up webpages with the necessary information to promote your cause(s).

Then, to collect subscribers, you simply need to embed a form into these webpages.


ConvertKit Landing Page Integrations

ConvertKit offers over 90 integrations with third-party platforms. Here are some that integrate with its landing pages:

WordPress

If you have a self-hosted WordPress website, you can use ConvertKit’s WordPress plugin to embed your landing page in a page (but not a post) of your website.

Download the ConvertKit plugin for WordPress by searching for it in the “Add Plugins” screen of your website:

Source: WordPress dashboard

You’ll then need to set up the plugin with your ConvertKit API Key and API Secret. Refer to this ConvertKit webpage if you need help with this.

When the plugin has been set up, create a new page in WordPress (or navigate to an existing one).

Scroll to the bottom of the page editor until you see the ConvertKit settings box.

Source: WordPress dashboard

In the Landing Page setting, look for the ConvertKit landing page to be embedded. Select it, then click “Publish” to update your page.

Your landing page will then appear when you navigate to the URL of that page!

Unsplash

Want to spice up your landing page with an image (or two)?

Take advantage of ConvertKit’s native integration with stock photo database Unsplash, which gives you access to stunning photos for free!

To access Unsplash from the ConvertKit landing page builder, click on anywhere you’d like to insert an image. This could be the Background Image option for example:

When the media browser opens, select “Unsplash” in the left sidebar. Use the search bar to find a suitable image, then click on it to insert it into your landing page.

Segment

If you use Segment to track customer data, you’ll be glad to know that you can integrate it with your ConvertKit landing page.

All you need to do is to insert your Segment ID into the Segment field of your landing page’s settings (click on “Settings”, followed by “SEO & Analytics.”)

(To get your Segment ID, copy everything that’s between the quotes in a “Javascript” source embed code in Segment.)


Create Your ConvertKit Landing Page Today

With ConvertKit’s landing page builder, creating professional-looking landing pages has never been easier. Just log into your ConvertKit account to get started!

If you don’t have a ConvertKit account, you can use one of the options below to sign up:

The landing page feature is available on both the free and paid plans, so pick the plan that works for you.

If you’d like to learn more about ConvertKit’s other features before making a decision, check out my detailed ConvertKit guide and review.

Happy landing page creating!


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