CONVERTa 1% conversion rate; meaning that fewer than 1 person out of 100 wants to hear
from you again!
Does Ugly Still Work?
Now, over the years, landing pages have gotten a tad bit more sophisticated
because of the user experience that certain ad networks force on us. For the
most part though, they’re pretty straightforward.
Sure, best practices change from time to time. Do we put up ugly pages with a
big headline? Do we need graphical pages that look pretty? Does a double-
click opt-in work better than a straight up form?
In the rest of this section, I’ll share some of our best practices for generating
leads and the nuts and bolts of setting up landing pages. For the time being
though, we’re going to take baby steps. We’re going to start our conversation
talking about the psychology and the tools you’ll need to start getting leads!
The first thing we need to get through is where your landing page will be located
online. Typically when you put your opt-in box in the sidebar, you’ll get less
than a 1% conversion rate; meaning that fewer than 1 person out of 100 wants to
hear from you again! (Also, many people just ignore sidebars because that's
where so many sites put ads.)
Self-Hosted vs. App-Hosted
There are two different ways to set up a landing page – on your own domain
with your own web hosting (AK self-hosted). Or with a service that takes care
of that for you (AKA app-hosted).
There are advantages and disadvantages to each, and you’ll have to decide for
yourself which you’re more comfortable with. After all, the leads that you get
will be going into your own email marketing software, so those are yours for
good.
First, let’s talk about self-hosted landing pages, or setting up and maintaining
your own website.
To create and host your own website, you absolutely need two things:
- A domain name
- Website hosting
The easiest and fastest way to get set up is to go through HostGator. Choose the
domain that you want for your website, pick a hosting package, and then install
WordPress.
At the end of the day, the software industry understands that setting up and