hey guys today I'm going to talk to you about landing pages and specifically how to create design user experiences for landing pages that will convert and specifically in the context of this video we're going to talk about essentially what most Founders in early stage startups are going to kind of have as their use case meaning that they're driving traffic from somewhere to a specific page and this is going to kind of bring up our first point is context is really important so let's kind of go to the Whiteboard here and start to outline the important
pieces to building that first landing page right so like I said context is everything chances are again for new Founders early stage startups we're probably coming from another platform something like LinkedIn maybe we're doing you know a post here got some some content then we kind of push people down to the comments and then we put uh a URL here which is Ely going to push them to have a pin to work here to one of these landing pages that we're working on uh another possibility of course is Twitter Reddit and you can kind of
see a theme here again early stage we probably don't have a website that is actually attracting its own traffic so we're going to have to go find our audience and we talk about this in uh a lot of our other videos is kind of going where your ICP is um getting inside of that audience kind of seeing how they behave what they react to um becoming a part of that community and then extracting from that existing audience the icps and kind of moving them or getting them to move over and make that click to your
particular website or landing page now we're going to talk about this on the concept of a landing page but this landing page could be on a website could be you know uh unbounce there's a variety of these kind of landing page sort of Builders could be something um as simple um as oh what the heck is that one there's a couple of these like kind of onepage Builders um even notion actually has just kind of come up um with a really interesting so um oh and then of course my favorite um especially when you're getting
started is gumroad right um so you can kind of build the landing page and the delivery system inside a gumroad so it's kind of on one uh complete platform and doesn't anything you can charge for things um it doesn't cost you anything if you are actually charging for something just takes a little piece of that so anyway um a little bit of a um I'm not sponsored by gumroad but little sort of promo for that it's kind of a really easy way to get a lot of this landing page stuff right because they also have
some of the features but I want to go from scratch here so again context is important and the context in particular is what did you promise what was the offer um so often times when we're building landing pages and those sort of things the offer is the the beginning point right and in that offer is some sort of promise or value prop or benefit and this usually has to be really substantial right in order to get this click there's a ton of friction on the web so to get them to go from one place to
another place can be really challenging right so this offer has to really be dialed in and this is one of those things that you're probably going to have to test to figure out you know what's kind of going to work the the most effective okay so now that we're on the landing page itself what needs to be on here you've heard me talk a little bit about the context so we want to make sure that there's continuity between what the context was originally and ultimately what they're going to see on this landing page when they
land there and so couple key elements right off the bat you want to have a strong headline I don't think you need to get too cute with this from a copywriting perspective obviously copywriting and sort of understanding how to compellingly put together words and sentences and uh and these sorts of things copyrighting is is essential but the headline because it's going to be the largest thing on the page you know it's going to kind to be your your heading one it needs to be short succinct but it needs to pop from the page and be
very clear to that visitor that that click that just happened that they're in the right place so whatever you promised them in in that other context when they move over here got to be really clear that they're there and then within this copy is some sort of reiteration of the value proposition or kind of instructing them as to what they're about to get the benefits and the value proposition again don't have to be terribly clever should be short couple couple lines in the context of kind of how this is laid out but again doesn't have
to be overly complex and then the next thing very clearly should be the form right so for the most part uh again for a landing page you're trying to invoke a conversion right you could just give away the item but that makes it difficult to kind of track conversion and engagement and just the you want to create a little bit of friction here so sometimes people kind of pull back from this and say oh well I just want them to get the content and that sort of thing don't forget that in the context of again
being an entrepreneur or doing a startup you're trying to start to figure out whether or not your value proposition and a lot of times things like ebooks and Lead magnets and those sorts of things are your MVP for that product or service so you do want to invoke a little bit of friction to see can I actually get a transaction can I get an exchange of value I might not have them paying yet but I you know giving me an email address is a little bit of a proxy so yes I totally get um the
the argument that I just want to get my content in the world and uh and I'll give everything away for free and then I'll charge later I believe in gating this just for the purpose of understanding and starting to practice within my startup how to get a transaction how to actually exchange something of value and to understand that what I'm I'm giving again this lead Magnet or this proxy for my eventual product or service I want to get a sense of like is this really valuable enough for them to exchange some value so uh I'm
a big believer in doing the form and I actually do one step further for two reasons one I like to not use a standard kind of web form where you know the little boxes and you type things in I like to use what I call a survey style or Progressive or multi-part form uh to collect some information even on my lead magnets and here's why one a lot of times you'll see people do these little boxes so you'll have name um I'm not going to write it all in here cuz I'm going to do something
a little bit different you have name email and then you have this little description box which people get stuck on so no reason to to undermine your ability to get a conversion because you have something that just doesn't make sense right one most of these leads these forms are filled out on a mobile phone so it's really hard to get in that little box and type your information in there and then when you get to the description box like what am I supposed to put in there or I have to think about what I'm going
to put in there and so instead what I prefer is that we do something like this where we essentially start with a survey right so this is really easy give them two or three choices and this is a great way to collect information like you know what is your role list some choices what is your biggest challenge list some choices again these are things that you would anticipate so it's a kind of a multiple choice and that's important I I always say when I'm advocating sort of these multi-part forms forms is which would you rather
do take an essay test when you're in college or take a multiple choice test right everybody would opt for the multiple choice uh just because it's easier right so same thing goes with this so I encourage you to build out a survey sort of a multiple choice uh and then ultimately you get to that submit at the end okay so that's the type of form I like to use and then I always love to to kind of put that top hero that usually gets everything that I need hey they're in the right place they're going
to get what they expect if they give me this information but then I like to kind of give weight to the page with everything underneath of it and then underneath here a lot of times I will maybe do a picture I'm going an ebook some sort of image or visual of what I'm giving them you don't have to be a design wizard here for giv a checklist take a screenshot of that Google doc if you're doing an ebook maybe a screenshot of whatever you've concocted as the kind of the cover page or works really well
is just a you know a screenshot of some interior page or a little piece of that makes it feel really and again there's a variety of different ways to do here you can also go to upwork and get somebody really cheap to design you something clever but I think a visual to give them an indication that the thing that you're getting ready to deliver is real and give them some context that that it's valuable and it's you know worthwhile and then that I add in uh sort of my value proposition in bullet points or maybe
some bullet points as to what is going to be inside of there and again you're just building this value proposition to get them to essentially go back up here and fill it right cuz if they they have any questions or they're kind of a little bit um hesitant the rest of this page is going to kind of build that out now there's a couple different things here too some people are into squeeze Pages they don't give any navigation I don't really have any strong opinions there quite honestly you know you can do squeeze page if
you don't I always just go ahead and put the navigation here usually it's easier a lot of times I'm launching these on WordPress and it's just easier to make a page it's like all the other Pages um and I don't see that it hurts conversion so it's not terribly important this footer section it's kind of a trust and credibility don't get crazy don't do all the little Badges and stuff but I think some trust and credibility down here give a real address maybe give some some basic links maybe to uh some people like the executives
or the founders or even put your your own picture on there I I think too often we dehumanize these Pages or we build SAS websites entirely that there there don't seem to be any people um I'm really an advocate of trying to put some people into that web page right or into the page itself there should be a phone there should be an address there should be some somewhere where you can kind of investigate people that are behind the company I think this also starts to build a tighter connection right they're like oh that's kind
of interesting kind of he or she looks like me and and you know maybe I'm interested in their journey and those sorts of things so I like to do uh again something down here that adds some trust and and credibility to the whole operation right okay so now I've done um the submission and now the next thing that I need to do is to bring them to the thank you page now a lot of people call this thank you page I actually prefer something oops I actually prefer calling this a Next Step page because I
don't want them to just start stop here right essentially what I'm doing with this thank you page is I'm accounting for the conversion so it it serves a technical function as well this is going to indicate that I've gotten a conversion as a submission went through the other thing that I like to do here that is a little bit contrarian is I like to go ahead and give them the thing right again often reinforcing something like this again I'm I'm a real big believer in having sort of visual reinforcement that you're in the right place
or the right thing happened and this is a good way to do that so take a little bit of that content from the landing page or even going all the way back right a little bit of that content from LinkedIn comes over to the landing page comes over to the thank you page or the next steps page again confirms they're there I don't like to obviously I'm going to collect their email but I don't like to you can deliver it in their email but I also want to deliver it here on the page I don't
want that distance I don't want to have to again friction in the right places is good this is a place that I don't need friction right I don't want them to go off into their email box and get lost and trying to find this thing or whatever I want it to be right there I wanted them to to jump right in and start consuming it right there so clear download now and then they hit that button and it's going to pop up a PDF which is you know for the most part the delivery mechanism it's
something different you want to just drive them straight to that thing so that they can start using it whatever that may be and then in addition here I like to to overd deliver if at all possible chances are you've done several lead magnets or you have some valuable content I like to kind of do a little bit of a notion Style ined here of some other relevant content right so uh and again these would be more PDFs another uh approach to this might be to embed and introduce them to your YouTube channel right and so
I put put a video in here I have an example of one of the YouTube videos that I have so they can see that there's more information and then they can jump off to YouTube and join And subscribe I want them to to do something next and what I'm essentially creating here is what I often refer to as rabbit trails and rabbit holes right I want them to binge my content I want them to get deeper and closer to my product service my personality in particular for most part especially early stage a lot of that
initial traction is actually just kind of the sheer personality and effort of the founder so I want them to in invest in me I want them to be connected to me I want them to want me to win because I'm helping them in some way with some value proposition the other thing that's that's um nice to put on here uh and again depending on how this becomes laid out uh sometimes it's in between it could be at the bottom I would probably Advocate kind of getting it in between here is try to go for a
meeting right and have my little schedule link in there again this could be a discovery session a demo whatever but I want to try to get them on my calendar if they've made it through they've taken my thing they've consumed a little bit of content they should at this point clearly understand um what I'm offering and this could be anything from a demo a discovery meeting a adding them to my BA beta list whatever that sort of next step is that is closer to that final purchase and transaction again I want to test that and
so for me for the most part uh again early stage startups um even if you're selling a service more sophisticated Enterprise type product again often I want to engage into uh some sort of conversation get them scheduled onto a meeting and so this essentially is kind of a mini sales funnel but there's a lot of things that I get to test here early on to assess whether my product and service is going to work and I'm starting to understand and learn how to create transactions online which is ultimately what I'm going to have to do
with a SAS product and landing pages are kind of the the core of that so hopefully this little ux exercise again just some simple pieces I use the same formula over and over again but again uh doing these simple things right and not doing what a lot of folks do which is just like throw a bunch of copy on a page and then forget calls to action the actual ability to transact uh a web form a value proposition you know all these little things that get left out but use this very simple form formula um
there's all kinds of tools to get you there if you're not technical if you are go ahead and throw it on your website s ite as a landing page don't forget the form experience again there's a lot of tools that make that really easy it could be as simple as type form it can be as complex as gravity forms and and WordPress or again you can use um some sort of landing page builder but start practicing this because this is going to be your earliest test of how to create revenue on the web so hope
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