WordPress Plugins That Make It Easy to Develop Landing Pages

June 28, 2014

The more we learn about how people use the Internet, the clearer it becomes that if you want to get somebody’s attention, you’ve got to do it in about half a second before they click or scroll away.

The value of a great landing page, squeeze page or sales page is that it communicates a single message, clearly and quickly. This gives your visitor the option to easily choose whether they would like to find out more.

They do not need to do extra work or research; everything is laid out in a format that is easy to understand and act upon without a single second of lost time.

 

I’m going to discuss three tools that work with WordPress, which will allow you or your team to develop sales, landing or squeeze pages rapidly. These services that I review below are, in my view, designed to allow you to develop somewhat “quick and dirty” campaigns. These are particularly useful when you are working on a short timeline – whether you are  responding to a time controlled market window that doesn’t allow days and weeks for you to mess around with settings, or whether you are just trying out different ideas before you settle on a particular look or layout.

Obviously, creating and testing these pages is a bit of an art, and that’s why it can be helpful to choose a WordPress plugin that will do most of the heavy lifting. Here are three excellent plugins well worth the investment for your website and your business.

First, some definitions.

Let’s quickly review the differences between the three types of pages you might be using. Each has a different purpose:

  • A landing page is a single page of your website that speaks to a specialized audience: For example, if you are a realtor who works in short sales, you might set up a landing page with information on short sales specifically. The purpose of this page is to offer value to potential customers, but generally you will add opt-in offers that request those customers to give you their email address in exchange for certain resources.
  • A squeeze page is very similar to a landing page, except that it focuses solely on the opt-in offer. The entire page will act as a sales funnel, directing the potential customer to fill out the form and give you their email.
  • A sales page goes a step beyond, and instead of just asking for an email, its purpose is to sell a product. Sales pages can be quite long, with several sections all dedicated to various product pitches.

Many websites use all three of these page types together. Your choice will depend on what works best for your business. Likewise, you should choose the plugin that will best serve your needs and your skill level.

 

OptimizePress is the granddaddy of sales page plugins for WordPress. It has been in existence for some time, and was instrumental in changing the way people use WordPress for sales and business.

Available as a website theme or as a plugin, OptimizePress comes with a laundry list of features, design elements and integrations. It can do just about anything you would want it to do, and of course you could even use its theme for your entire website if you liked.

Most website owners will choose to use OptimizePress in theme mode instead of as a plugin, particularly if you are running a membership site. In fact, for membership services, this plugin is probably the best on the market currently.

OptimizePress licenses are good for life with a one-time payment of $97 (for 3 self-owned sites), $197 (10 self-owned sites) or $297 (developer license; unlimited).

 

LeadPages is a fantastic service that really focuses on user friendliness and making it simple for people with fewer technical skills to really create a bang-up site. However, it can be pricy for some.

This service is also available as a plugin or as a self-hosted theme, and LeadPages also offers to host your sales pages on their own server. With a full line of integrations, design options and functions, LeadPages should serve any need you might have.

In addition, LeadPages offers conversion tracking and analytics, a highly useful feature. And the LeadPlayer feature makes it very simple to embed your YouTube videos directly onto your page in a pleasing format. The trade-off for all this simplicity is a that you lose the ability to customize every detail of your page; however, for most people, this will not be a problem.

LeadPages is a monthly membership product, with two membership levels:

  • “Standard” ($37/mo or $197/yr) offers unlimited landing pages or domains, all templates and integration with WordPress.
  • “Pro” ($67/mo or $477/yr) offers a free course on creating landing pages, access to premium features and the affiliate program, ability to use custom themes, and split testing.

 

Premise is a new and very interesting service offered by Copyblogger, which takes a very different approach from the other two here. It is currently in beta, and you can preview it on

The WordPress Chick’s podcast site.

Based on what I’ve seen of Premise, it does not have all the bells and whistles of the other two. It offers six types of pages, which you can customize as usual, but where Premise really stands out is in the free images and copywriting help it provides.

Instead of just a blank template, with Premise you get a page that is already filled in with suggestions for copy. In addition, the “get copywriting help” button pops up a library of lessons on how and why you might use certain tricks to make your pages more effective.

In addition, Premise offers a massive library of over 1,000 pages of free clip art that is high quality and pleasant to look at.

These features are bound to save you lots of time if you are looking to do as much as possible on your own. However, this service might not be as well suited for those who are looking for a more plug-and-play experience.

 
WordPress Plugins That Make It Easy to Develop Landing Pages was last modified: by