Landing pages are very useful tools for boosting your online marketing campaigns, and they are essential for capturing leads, that is, new potential customers.
You can always drive traffic from Google Ads campaigns, social media or newsletters to your website, but there are distractions there.
It’s very easy for those people to never end up signing up. They might start looking at other things.
Sometimes that might suit you, but other times all you want is for them to sign up.
For that, it’s best to use a registration page, commonly called a landing page.
There are many good tools out there for creating landing pages. Although most of them have a rather important problem:
- They don’t integrate with Mailrelay
And that is a serious problem, because it generates many limitations.
That’s why at Mailrelay we have created our own landing page editor. It is very easy to use and fully integrated into your Mailrelay account. This way, all the new sign-ups you capture can receive your newsletters immediately.
First, I’ll tell you a bit about the definition and general concepts of registration landing pages, and in the rest of this article we’ll go through the first steps you need to create your page in no time:
What is a registration landing page?
Although I’ll focus mostly on explaining how to create a registration landing page, we first need to lay the foundations of this concept so that, later on, you understand the steps involved in the process.
The first thing to do is to define what a “registration landing page” is. The goal of this kind of page is to collect data from visitors (their name and email address, for instance).
In other words, their main purpose is to capture the data of the people who reach the page. This way, those people become leads or prospects for the company or business.
A registration landing page is the gateway to your business. The number of leads or potential customers you can have will depend on its structure, elements and texts.
It features a clean, simple design, with no links or buttons other than the one used to subscribe. It also has no navigation menu and barely contains a headline, a benefits section and a form.
The easiest way to create them is with a builder or visual editor like the one Mailrelay offers, which we’ll look at later on.
It’s also important to note that the offer promoted on this type of page is usually free and of interest to its target audience. This is how you persuade visitors and capture their data.
Usually, this free gift is called a lead magnet. Depending on the nature of the business, it will be of one type or another. Some examples are:
● Ebooks.
● Courses.
● Software trials.
● Templates.
● A free first session.
● Other discounts.
A lead magnet is a valuable resource given away in exchange for people’s data, in order to get prospects who will become potential customers.
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Key elements for creating a registration landing page
When we talk about conversion on a registration landing page, we mean the % of people who left us their data or, in other words, the page’s success rate.
In order to encourage your visitors to leave their data in the form, this page must include certain elements. I will describe them all below.
But, first, I would also like to mention that a conversion can have different objectives depending on the type of offer and the type of business. For example, we could talk about:
● Subscriptions for an event.
● Registrations for a free session.
● Material downloads.
● Software trial.
● Get discounts and bonuses.
Header
When creating a registration landing page, you must take into account that the first thing the user will see will be the header. It should be attractive enough for them to keep reading and, at the end, complete the subscription form.
The header consists of:
Title:
The title corresponds to the main promise of your offer or lead magnet. It should be powerful, but at the same time credible. To create it, I recommend basing it on the main benefit of what you’re offering.
That is, the number one reason why your visitors need your offer. Another recommendation is to use questions, for example “how” and “why”.
You can also create sentences that include an objection. For example “How to optimize the performance of your PC without any technical knowledge”.
Subtitle:
Next, you can expand on the information in the headline. If it were an event, you could use the subtitle to show the most relevant information. In any other situation, it will serve to specify who the lead magnet is for.
Button:
Finally, the header should include a button that will take visitors directly to the form on this same page. It is essential that it stands out from the rest of the elements and that its copy is aligned with the promise.
If we are trying to promote a free event, the button could say something like “I want to register now”.
Benefits
After the header, the reader will need to find more reasons to access the download, event or promotion you are offering. That’s why you should add a section on the benefits of the offer next.
Ideally, show 3 to 5 benefits. If we include too many, we may lose visitors’ attention. In this case, less is more, and it helps clarify the advantages they will enjoy if they complete the proposed action.
On the other hand, it is better to create the text in the form of bullet-pointed lists or some other visually appealing and easy-to-read layout.
Form
If we talk about creating a registration landing page, the form will be the key and fundamental piece. Through it, visitors will be converted into leads or commercial prospects. Therefore, we can’t forget about it.
As a main tip, I would say that it is best to keep the form short and to the point. So only ask for the data you really need. In principle, a name and email address could be enough.
It is important to note that a form with only two fields has a higher success rate than one with five, seven or ten.
No matter how juicy and attractive your offer is, if the form is too long and asks for too much information, users may abandon the registration process.
Other aspects you should consider
So far we can say that we have described the key elements of a registration landing page, but there are other factors that should be considered. For example:
● Images. If you are going to add images, choose good quality ones that are really related to your offer. That is, if the image adds value to your objective, yes, you should include it. Otherwise, it’s better to go without images.
● Fast loading speed. Another important factor is page loading speed. Remember that users abandon slow loading websites.
● Testimonials. Finally, if you have testimonials you can share, it’s a good idea to add some to give visitors another reason to sign up.
How to create a landing page with Mailrelay, first steps with the landing page editor
Now we are going to see the most common steps for creating a simple landing page with a registration form.
Something you need to keep in mind first of all is that the form must be created beforehand in the “Subscribers” – “Signup forms” section, since those existing forms are the ones that get inserted into the landing pages.
If you don’t have any form yet, create a basic one by following the steps you can see here.
Once you have it, you can go to the “Landing pages” menu and use the “Add” button to create a new one.
After naming it you will get a screen like the following one:
This page is divided into three main sections, from left to right:
- Elements section. These are the different blocks that you can add to the landing page. You only need to drag and drop them in the central area (content).
- Content. This would be a visualization and work area where we can add content to the landing page. We’ll see how it’s coming along.
- Options. The right column will show the different options for the selected item, or for the page as a whole if no item is selected.
We will now work through these options, step by step.
Select background color
One of the first options we can use is to select the background color of the entire registration landing page.
You can keep the default color (white), but sometimes you may decide to use another background color that fits better with your brand. This will be done from the options block:
In this case, as I mentioned, we’ll go to the right column, document section and then choose the “Background color” option.
This selection will change the background of the page to the chosen color.
Selecting the background color of the main container
To do this, we’re going to look at another of the editor’s main tools, the list view.
This list view is a very useful tool, and is something you will constantly use to better edit your landing page, so let’s see:
The list view is displayed by clicking on one of the icons in the upper left area, the fourth icon. When you click it, it shows a list of all the elements of the landing page organized hierarchically.
This lets you display the block options for each of the elements, and even move them so they appear earlier or later in the editor. Group them inside each other, etc.
Once the element is selected, you’ll see the right column show the options for that specific block. For example, we can select the background color, or change the width.
In the previous image you can see, on the right, how the arrow points to the “background” option.
The default structure we have as soon as we create the landing page is
- A larger main column
- With another, less wide inner column
Why are we using this structure with one column inside the other?
We use this layout so that the inner column always remains centered on the screen. It is possible to see two options in the right column:
- Content. This would be the width of the content.
- Width. This would be the maximum width of the column.
This way, by setting a slightly smaller content width, we get a margin between the edge of the container and the content itself.
On the right of the image you can see how the maximum width of the column has been set to 900px, while the width of the content has been set to 850 px. Thus leaving a small margin.
Dragging elements onto the registration landing page
Now let’s see how to easily add new elements to the work area:
The first step is to select the element in the left panel, a separator in this case, and drag it with the mouse to the desired location in the content area.
By moving the mouse over the content area, we can see a blue bar, indicating the intended location of the content.
Structuring the landing page contents
Even though your registration page will probably be quite simple, you’ll most likely want to add a certain amount of content to it. One of the easiest ways to structure the landing page is through the use of columns:
As you can see in the image, there are multiple column options. A very useful option is the three-column feature, because it will allow us to use the middle column as a content separator.
Now you will see what I mean:
After adding the columns you can go to the “list view” and select the middle column, on the right in the block column, you will see that the “width” field is empty. But if we define here a width of 50px that column will be reduced and can act as a separator.
That way the columns will not be joined together, which could make reading difficult.
Then you just need to click the “+” symbol to add content to the columns.
Note that when you click the “+” symbol, you can choose from the available blocks, in this case a paragraph, for example.
And if we add content to it, the design would look like this:
In the example we have also added a “List” block below the paragraph. It is possible to continue adding elements to this column by following the same steps. For example, more paragraphs, images, etc.
Now we’ll repeat the process, but with one change: we’ll add a form in the third column:
As I said at the beginning, we will only be able to choose among the existing forms. Therefore, it is necessary that you have previously created the forms that you will use:
Once selected, the form will be embedded in your landing page:
The background color of the form, as well as the rest of its elements, is configured in the forms section itself; it can’t be changed from the landing page.
That is, the form will appear in this section exactly as you have set it up at the source.
If you change anything in the future, keep in mind that any changes made to the form will be reflected in the landing page.
Adding images to the page
Images are an essential part of any sales or registration page. Adding them is simple, now let’s add an image with a text next to it. To do this we will first add two more columns below the previous ones:
What we are going to do is to use the left column to add an image, and the right one to add a paragraph. This way the content will be correctly structured and legible.
You can use an image that you have already uploaded to Mailrelay, or upload a new one from your computer.
However, keep in mind that the editing capabilities of the landing page editor are limited, so you should upload the images already optimized.
When you click on the image, you will see two circles. This option will allow you to stretch it to the size you want. Although, as I mentioned before, it’s a fairly limited feature, so it’s better to upload the image already prepared.
On the right, in the block options, we can also change the width or set an alternative text attribute for the image.
Although it’s not advisable to add elements that may distract visitors from the main action, since this is an example article, we’ll see how to add a button.
In the image we have highlighted the elements that let you select the button’s alignment, for example to center it, and the option to add a link to it so that it can perform an action.
Now I am going to show you an image with the final result:
In short, a useful tool for getting new leads
We have created a simple registration landing page, but with the essential elements to fulfill its function.
We recommend that you run several tests, but don’t forget to publish the page, so that it offers you a URL that you can share in your campaigns:
We hope that this feature will help you a lot in attracting new contacts.
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Pay special attention to the call to action (CTA) on these pages, since a large part of the final conversion depends on it.
Jose Argudo
CMO at Mailrelay. Writes about email marketing, copywriting and conversion for small businesses and entrepreneurs.