So you want to create a high-converting landing page but don’t know where to start. We’ve all been there! Crafting an effective landing page from scratch can be overwhelming and time-consuming. You have to make sure the design is attractive, the copy is compelling, and the calls-to-action guide visitors to convert. That’s a lot to juggle!
Luckily, using pre-made templates can make building landing pages a breeze. Landing page templates allow you to skip right to customizing and optimizing since the basic structure and design elements are already in place. Templates have revolutionized the way businesses create landing pages.
But not all templates are created equal. You want to find flexible, conversion-focused templates that also follow the latest landing page best practices. Quality matters when it comes to landing page templates. The last thing you want is to spend time customizing a template only to have it hamper your conversions!
This guide will walk you through the world of landing page templates. You’ll learn how to find high-quality templates designed specifically for converting site visitors into leads and customers. We’ll also cover:
So if you’re looking for the most effective templates to turn your landing pages into lead-generating machines, you’ll find everything you need right here! Let’s get started.
In our previous article, we discussed about using Emotional Marketing. Today we talk about landing page templates – these are pre-designed page layouts that allow you to quickly build attractive, conversion-optimized landing pages without needing design experience.
Unlike basic website templates that focus mainly on content structure, landing page templates include more strategic visual elements to influence visitor behavior. We’re talking:
In essence, high-quality landing page templates give you a jump start on creating pages that grab attention, convey value, and drive conversions. They let you skip ahead to the good stuff – customizing the design and content to match your unique brand, offer, and audience.
Many templates also feature mobile responsiveness and template management features right out of the box. This saves you even more time on development and technical optimization.
With pre-optimized templates guiding your design, you can have gorgeously converting landing pages up in no time without needing to code them from scratch. They provide beautiful (and functional) foundations to build upon rather than starting with a blank, conversion-clueless canvas.
And if you choose your templates wisely, they adhere to best practices that improve lead gen and sales without requiring you to have a degree in landing page optimization! More leads with less work? Music to any marketer’s ears.
If you’re on the fence about using pre-made templates, consider these compelling benefits:
Top reason right here. Quality templates enable you to skip the time-consuming process of designing and building landing pages from the ground up. No need to hire a web designer or developer (and pay for their precious time). Templates come thoughtfully laid out and optimized for lead conversion.
Plus, it takes significantly less effort to tweak something existing than creating it from scratch. With templates, you simplify revision work as needs change too. Overall, a major time and money saver!
Even if you have design chops, DIY landing pages rarely achieve the polished, trust-building aesthetics of pro templates. Templates create consistency across your landing pages rather than one-off designs. This bolsters your brand image.
Visitors find well-designed pages more appealing and credible. And appealing, credible pages convert better!
Reputable templates bake in optimization best practices such as:
Optimized templates help you create high-performing landing pages without needing to master intricate optimization techniques. Let the template do the heavy lifting!
Almost anyone can customize and configure landing page templates without coding know-how. No developer required. Template-based sites are also easier to update as needed.
So templates allow less tech-savvy teams to publish gorgeous, optimized landing pages on their own. No need to bog down your developers or wait on production schedules!
Not all landing page templates are primed for high conversion rates. When template shopping, keep an eye out for these crucial elements:
Your templates must adapt across devices to create positive experiences. Mobile traffic accounts for 50%+ of all website visitors today. Non-responsive site templates lead to poor mobile UX which equates to missed conversions.
Ensure any templates you choose are mobile-friendly with responsive page layouts. No pinching or zooming necessary!
The primacy of your CTA buttons can make or break conversion rates. Weak CTAs blend into busy page designs instead of commanding attention.
Look for templates with strong visual contrast on the buttons and strategic positioning in the page layout. This guides visitors to take your desired actions.
Speaking of desired actions – seamlessly integrating lead capture forms into the page design removes friction in the conversion process.
Templates with built-in, customizable form elements make gathering contacts, emails, and other info a cinch.
Flawless typography, ample white space between elements, strategic use of visuals, and clear content hierarchy also influence conversions.
Choose templates with balanced, distraction-free page composition to frame your persuasive copy.
While pre-designed templates offer lots of value, you still want to adapt the content to fit your unique business needs.
Ensure the templates you select allow customization of images, text, colors, fonts, and layouts through easy-to-use configuration settings or included files.
Quality landing page templates don’t always jump out at you in simple Google searches. The best conversion-focused templates come from these trustworthy sources:
Popular digital marketplaces like TemplateMonster, ThemeForest, and Creative Market offer an extensive collection of premium templates for landing pages and full websites.
These marketplaces cover many industries and niches so you can find tailored templates for your specific business needs. And competition breeds quality – standout templates vetted by thousands of buyers.
While marketplaces host templates from various designers and developers, they enforce standards of usability, optimization, documentation, and more. So reliability comes built-in.
Those no-code website builders designed for non-technical users? Many feature professionally designed templates too!
For example, Unbounce and LeadPages – two of the top landing page builders – offer templates meeting all the conversion best practices we’ve covered. Canva is also a platform to consider when looking for templates
Their templates easily integrate with your existing website pages as well. Useful for consistent branding across channels.
Open source collections like Bootstrap and Foundation provide developers with free frameworks and code components to build websites.
While intended for web developers, open source tools do include basic page and layout templates you can access. These require more customization expertise though.
The open source route fits those with some design and development chops looking for a solid starting point. But access to template support varies.
The real value of landing page templates lies in customization. Templates handle the layout, but the content and messaging must speak directly to your products, services, and ideal customers.
When adapting templates:
While branding commonly gets overlooked on one-off landing pages, in reality they represent your business! Be sure customized design elements align with your brand guide covering:
Consistency strengthens brand recognition and perceptions over time – critical for conversions.
Templates are thoughtfully designed, so drastic changes can negatively impact usability and conversions. Instead, focus customizations on:
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to achieve results. Refinements go a long way!
Cluttered pages full of conflicting design elements distract visitors from taking action. Always ask:
Simplifying guides visitors effortlessly through your customer journey. Remove anything extraneous that doesn’t support conversions.
Don’t assume your changes will improve performance. Proactively gather feedback from stakeholders and run A/B tests with target segments pre-launch.
Identify confusing areas and technical bugs so you can optimize further. Testing ensures customizations hit the mark!
While landing page templates simplify creation, marketers still make easily avoidable mistakes that sabotage conversion performance. Steer clear of these:
Often in the eager rush of template customization, the legal fine print gets tossed aside. But template licensing establishes guidelines and restrictions for use.
Failing to follow rules around modifying branding, integrating with certain platforms, transferability, attributions, etc puts you at major legal risk.
Always thoroughly vet licenses to ensure compliance from launch and beyond. Violating terms can mean lawsuit-worthy copyright infringement.
We touched on this already but too many marketers skip or skimp on testing customized templates. Without gathering insights from real website visitors, you operate on assumptions instead of evidence.
Always recruit representative customer segments for feedback. Invest time in proper A/B testing as well. Identify friction points through heatmaps and session recordings too.
Testing efforts clearly reveal optimization opportunities for improving conversions. Never assume templates work “well enough” without testing!
Some marketers don’t know when to quit adding elements to template pages. More features! More content! More videos! More testimonials!
Problem is that overstuffed pages lead to distracted, overwhelmed visitors. Streamline templates to the essentials for guiding visitors to convert then get out of the way.
Carefully consider if each addition improves or hampers experience and removes excess elements. Less is more!
We want to inject brand identity throughout templates but take care not to undermine performance. For example, swapping properly positioned, high-contrast CTAs for branded buttons that blend into layouts.
Branding plays a supporting conversion role. Lead generation principles take center stage. Prioritize optimization first during customization then sensitively integrate branding.
When selecting landing page templates, a natural question arises – should you opt for paid template marketplaces or free template resources? Let’s compare:
Premium templates from leading marketplaces offer many advantages:
Yes, costs add up especially at volume but the ROI often justifies the spend through higher converting landing pages. And you tap into experienced landing page designers rather than settling for free.
Websites builders or open source tools do provide free template options. Benefits include:
Limitations however include cookie-cutter designs, limited configuration options, lackluster support, and inconsistent updates. Fine for early testing but gauging their ROI long-term can prove tricky.
The Verdict? Both routes hold advantages situationally. Free works initially when validating concepts but paid unlocks more industry-specific customization for refined, high-converting pages at scale.
If budget allows, paid premium template providers enable fully customized landing pages fine-tuned to your niche audiences. And happy customers make it all worthwhile!
The template-based approach to building landing pages and websites isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But where might templates be heading in the years ahead?
Audience targeting and personalization rise each year. So does niche marketing. We foresee even more tailored templates catering to specific sectors and buyer personas.
For example, templates could package elements speaking directly to healthcare, real estate, nonprofit, and other verticals complete with associated imagery, messaging, compliant forms, etc.
This minimizes the brand customization lift for companies in specialized industries. Template personalization will mirror wider content personalization trends.
Stacks Best-in-class templates don’t end at one-off page creation – they tie directly into your broader marketing technology stack.
Expect deeper connectivity with email service providers, CRMs, analytics programs, and especially marketing automation software (MAS).
For instance, templates can populate forms and presentations using segments from your CRM then automatically trigger workflows in MAS when visitors fill out forms.
This unified view coupled with process automation optimizes engagement further post-page visit leading to higher lifetime value.
Speaking of personalization – artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming marketing capabilities. AI can already dynamically serve tailored landing page experiences based on visitor attributes and behaviors.
Soon AI may directly enhance templates themselves by automatically swapping out, highlighting, or suppressing elements on hosted templates based on who is visiting at that moment.
The tech handles the personalization work so marketers simply manage the AI behind the scenes then watch it work real-time magic!
The possibilities keep expanding but one thing is certain – optimized templates will continue playing a leading role driving conversions for years to come.
Let’s wrap up with answers to some common landing page template questions:
Most templates come in editable file formats like Photoshop PSD files, Sketch files, or HTML/CSS code. This allows for visual customization before exporting optimized web files.
Photoshop PSDs work great for graphic design changes. HTML/CSS templates enable quicker coding tweaks. Many sellers offer multiple file types.
Customizability varies by template but quality designs enable personalization of images, graphics, icons, color schemes, fonts, shapes, layouts, forms, etc.
Some even let you add, remove or rearrange sections for major structural changes. Just check what’s customizable before buying so no surprises later!
Again – specifications differ across templates but many work seamlessly with popular CMS platforms like WordPress and website builders like Squarespace.
Some sellers create templates specifically for these sites. Just filter search to find compatible options.
Quality templates encapsulate content changes. You shouldn’t need to touch actual template coding much. Easy-to-update admin settings, separate CSS files, or modular content blocks handle revisions.
No need to keep buying new templates unless undergoing a major redesign. Great for evolving needs!
Little to no coding expertise required for most templates! However, editing app files like Photoshop PSDs needs graphic design experience. HTML/CSS customization requires some web development chops too.
But most allow non-technical folks to update content through admin panels or simple config files. User-friendly all around!
Let’s recap the core lessons for leveraging pre-made templates to create high-converting landing pages:
The bottom line? Templates form the fastest path to creating optimized, professional landing pages tailored to your needs and audiences. Let templates provide the framework – you provide the magic!
Ready to start leveraging conversion-focused landing page templates for your business? Here are some recommended next steps:
Professional templates accelerate landing page creation, but methodical testing and customization unearths the true conversion opportunities. Use this guide as your template optimization blueprint – the only limit is your imagination!
Where Creativity Meets Simplicity - Customize with Ease! Forget about Coding and Enjoy Designing Your Website.