The Basics
of a Landing Page

This is the first chapter of the free landing page course from Tilda. The course consists of five chapters. If you study them and complete the practical tasks, you'll be able to design a landing page from scratch. This course will be useful to anyone who wants to develop design skills and who would rather not hire a design agency. You'll be capable of designing landing pages even if you don't know how to draw designs, create page layouts, or conduct research.

Unlike a regular website, landing pages suggest taking a single action. Lots of different people could be visiting your website. Some are there to find out about the company, others want to read up on its products and services. However, only those looking for a job will go to the recruitment page. If the "We are hiring" page is designed according to certain principles and contains a call to action inviting people to apply, it is also a landing page.

These pages target a specific audience. They are effective when used in advertising and when you have a single purpose in mind such as making a sale, providing information, or inviting to sign up for a newsletter.

If you have a business or you work with people, you may need a landing page.

In this course, you'll learn how to analyze your audience, write convincing copy aimed at your target audience, find the right arguments, and put together a narrative for your website.

In this chapter, we will walk you through the landing page basics, you'll learn how landing pages work and when you should use them.

Well, okay. You sign up for their newsletter. May be you'll buy a conference ticket later. Then you return to Facebook.

You've just visited a landing page and did exactly what you were supposed to do.

Call to action can be anything. You can sell concert tickets or discounted watches, ask for a donation, or offer to sign up for a newsletter.

Traffic. The landing page is there to attract specific people, those who're interested in this particular offer. Your audience determines how you'll present the product.

Say, a bank launches a credit program "Your first business". Its main clients are large businesses but this product is aimed specifically at start-ups. The bank changes its formal tone of voice to a more human approach. Instead of publishing their top clients success stories, the bank tells about regular people who started a business.

Call to action button. A landing page is driving visitors to take a specific action. For a regular website, it's enough if the user reads and remembers some pieces of information. This doesn't work for landing pages. There's no landing page without a button.

Let's come back to the bank and its program "Your first business". Visitors are invited to leave their phone number several times while scrolling the page. Later, a bank manager will call them back and tell what kind of documents are required to apply. It's a simple, low-risk call to action. Leaving a phone number is easier than filling an application form.

There're some classic formulas for creating a landing page:

AIDA: attention, interest, desire, action. Attract attention, arouse interest, create desire, achieve action.

PMPHS: pain, more pain, hope, solution. Identify the problem, aggravate the problem, show hope, and offer a solution.

These formulas help build the wireframes, or scenarios that users will follow. These formulas are useful but may look intrusive and fake if used needlessly.

A landing page unpacks the benefit of a specific offer. All the copywriting wizardry comes up when you don't have any benefits, nor a concrete offer. In the following chapters, we'll teach you how to phrase them and how to offer them properly. Now let's talk about how the landing page differs from a regular website.

This is what makes a landing page stand out. A website can offer lots of products and services; people would have various reasons to visit it. Someone's looking for contact details, others want to buy something.

Let us show how it works. Here's Alex who will take this course alongside you and will show you how to apply the information we're giving you. We hope you'll become good friends.

A landing page is normally created for a specific occasion: while the tickets are on sale, to sell out the collection, or hire an employee.

Are there permanent landing pages? Yes. For example, you can sell toys or bags until the items run out.

A landing page is dedicated to one thing. We're asking the user to buy a ticket, register for an event, or leave their email address. If we're asking the user to perform more than one action, they're likely to get confused.

Alex doesn’t always ask his website visitors to buy a ticket. He used to offer personal consultations about conference planning for a while. He was addressing a new audience that knew nothing about him.

To build trust, Alex launched a landing page inviting people to submit their emails. In return, his subscribers received a series of useful messages and a free invitation to his webinar. After proving to be a professional, Alex sold his consulting services during his webinar.

Choices are hard, and people don't enjoy making them. They want to be convinced of their choice. You know how tough it can be to decide which movie to watch or which pizza to order. A landing page helps you make a decision. It feels like the choice has already been made, we're only reaffirming the user that this choice is right and necessary.

You need to put all the essential information on a single page. Each click distracts the user from the target action, so don't split the content between several pages. Otherwise, you won't be able to track how the reader gets the information.

Don't worry if your landing page is getting long. If it's interesting, the user will read it to the end.

Alex has an agency website with the information about himself, reports from past events, and announcements of the future ones. It won't be a good idea to advertise one particular conference here. The user will start browsing, looking up reports, images and very soon will forget about the conference. This is why Alex will create a new landing page to sell tickets to his next event. It will only contain the information that will help the user make a decision.

This is important! Build the story logically and consistently. Take a look at this.

Alex is launching a new landing page for the advertising campaign. It could have the following structure:

This doesn't mean that all landing pages are built according to this formula. Sometimes you can fit everything you need into a single screen.

Here's an example. This is a subscription page for Spotify newsletter. It's build like a landing page even though it occupies only one screen. Users immediately understand what they need to do and why. They leave their email in order to receive weekly news.

Clear: Social media marketing online consultations for entrepreneurs

Unclear: Setting up advertising, website and apps development service for medium-sized and large businesses

Married men, 35-50 years old... This is too broad. These men may need any type of service or solution.

People who can fix their car by themselves is a more precise description. At the same time, all kinds of different people can be a part of this group. For example, a retired man who enjoys disassembling his old Fiat, or a student who occasionally replaces wipers and lights in her Peugeot.

Let's look at some other examples.

You can use your landing page to sell pretty much anything you want: designer watches, theater tickets, consultancy services, or teddy bears One important condition is having a limited number of product types. If you offer more than10 categories, you're better off creating an online store.

A lead is a website visitor who's likely to buy from you. For example, you had 20 website visitors, 10 of them scrolled down and saw the presentation, two of them downloaded it. These two people are the leads, and you can continue working with them by sending emails, ads, and selling additional services to them.

If you already have a website, you can use the landing page for advertising campaigns. For example, you own an event agency. Use the website to provide info about yourself, what you do, and your past projects. Use the landing page for advertising a new event.

You don't really need it. If you're making leather bags, you don't need to pretend that you have a big studio. A small website advertising the bags will be enough for the moment. Later, if your business expands, you can build a proper website.

A landing page can help people understand whether the market needs your product. You can design a one-page website in a few hours, and ads will bring first buyers. If there're no sales, you might have an issue with the product or target audience. Don't worry, we'll help you select the correct audience and improve your website.

Alex started his business with a single landing page. He sold some tickets, held an event, and realized he was good at it. Later, he made a website to keep records of his past events and future conferences. It keeps creating a landing page for every new event.

Pay attention to the size of the page. It's quite large with many pictures, facts and inserts. It looks like a magazine article. This means that the size of a landing page isn't limited but is dictated by a reader's interest. If you have something to say, your readers will read it.

Alex conducts educational conferences so he uses a lot of text on his website: he posts lectures and speakers' presentations. There are some photos as well–to show the venue and attendees. Think about how you can showcase your product in the best possible way. Use words to describe what career coaches or franchisees do, for example. Instead, tangible goods need to be visualized. Images of toys and bags work better than just their descriptions.

The main page of the website is created just like a landing page. This is a sequential narrative about the company's services, experience, and expertise. The first screen features a clear CTA "Get started". The menu is fixed on scroll, so that a visitor can navigate directly to the most relevant page of a website.

Alex wants to sell event planning courses, and he wants to charge people money for attending it. People know him as an event organizer but not as a teacher. To gather a new audience, Alex launches a separate landing page for his course.

Selling a new course is hard. Especially to people who aren't sure you're an expert. To prove his knowledge and skills, Alex decided to organize a free webinar. He'll talk about himself and his experience and explain what people will learn during the course. He uses the landing page for webinar sign-ups. This is a simple action because the user isn't risking their time and money.

Alex will be able to use the database in the future for sending newsletters or offers to attend a course.

What Alex wrote:

How to organize a conference from scratch

A practical event planning course for marketing and PR specialists and entrepreneurs