A custom landing page is an invaluable asset to have as a creator online.
It acts as your own little space on the internet to promote something you've created. It shows your audience what your product is and how it can benefit them. It's also a place for people to buy your product directly.
In fact, more and more people are moving away from the default landing pages services like Gumroad offer in favor of unique and highly customized options.
The process of creating a custom landing page today has never been easier. You just need some time and a little knowledge of landing pages and you can create something that will encourage sign-ups and purchases.
In this blog post, I share with you the exact 7 step process I used to build the landing page for my latest eBook: Design Faster, Design Better. This landing page is used to drive sales and inform potential readers what the book is about.
You can follow along with this post to learn how to create your own landing page from scratch. This implementation is FREE and requires knowledge of web development (HTML, CSS, Tailwind) but there are no-code options out there which I'll mention.
Here's the landing page I created to promote my Design Faster, Design Better - Landing Page.
Step 1 - Define A Goal
You've no doubt heard this before but you need to take the time to write down the goal of your landing page.
Believe me, I've skipped this step in the past only to realize how much time and effort would have been saved if I had taken the time to understand the meaning behind what I was creating.
There is so much value in physically writing down the goal of your landing page:
- You'll focus your mind on what you're doing.
- Your mind will continue to work on this in the background so you'll come up with excellent ideas when it comes time to write them down.
- You'll understand your intrinsic motivations for wanting to build the landing page. This allows you to continue working even when things get tough.
Here are some examples of goals you might have for your landing page:
- To sell an eBook all about growing on social media
- To make enough money to buy a new laptop
- To help people who struggle with low motivation
- To encourage people to sign up for my newsletter
Of course, your goal can be whatever you want, the more specific the better as this will help you when you do your research.
It's also important to focus on one goal per landing page. Any more than one goal and your message becomes lost. Stick with one main goal and your message will be more direct and easier to understand.
Here's the goal I picked:
My goal is to create a custom landing page to promote my new eBook - Design Faster, Design Better. I want readers to learn about exactly what my book will help with and allow them to buy it if they would like. I'd like to achieve this at a low cost and I'd like to build the landing page myself from scratch to practice my web dev skills.
Step 2 - Perform Research
The second step is likely where you'll spend the most time and that is: doing research.
Now that you have your goal in mind there are a few key areas you'll need to understand:
- Your target audience
- What you want to say - your message
- Writing effective copy
- Landing page designs
Target Audience
Your goal and the product you're selling should help you to hone in on your target audience.
There are tons of great resources out there to help you with this process, here are some examples I would recommend:
- Steps to Find Your Target Audience
- How to Find Your Target Audience
- UX: Identifying Your Target Audience
After a lot of researching and digging into my social media, I felt my target audience for my book is: people looking to improve their design skills productively.
I wanted to keep this relatively open as I believe anyone can make use of design knowledge to improve what they're working on.
Writing Effective Copy
I'll be honest, copywriting wasn't and still isn't my strongest suit. With that said, I've done enough research and practice to be competent at it.
If I can write effective copy, you certainly can.
In my case, Twitter is an excellent resource for finding amazing people that share everything they know about writing copy.
Some notable examples include:
- Jeremy Moser - @jmoserr
- Charles Floate - @Charles_SEO
- Alex Garcia - @alexgarcia_atx
- Nicolas Cole - @Nicolascole77
Your Message
Your message or what you want to say goes hand in hand with learning how to write compelling copy.
As you research copywriting techniques, try to apply what you learn to your own message and what you want to say on your landing page.
I'd recommend starting a blank page or a new file somewhere and writing everything you can think of about your product. You can always refine it and cherry-pick the best stuff when you're ready.
This will take some time but if you remain patient and consistent you'll end up with a repository of writing to draw from when you start writing the actual copy for your landing page.
You can also re-purpose this copy in other ways. For instance: with social media posts, blog posts, videos, podcasts. It's worth taking the time to write everything down.
Landing Page Design
I'm a lot more confident with web page design than I am with copywriting so this one was great fun to learn about.
Your goal here is to find a number of landing page designs that you like or find interesting. You can then take the best parts of each design and emulate them to create your own unique landing page design.
In my case, I wanted the challenge of building a page from scratch so I went down this route.
With that said, there's always the option to simply buy a landing page template. You can easily find a well-designed landing page to fit your needs at a reasonable price so you don't have to worry about this step.
Here are some great sources of inspiration I used to find great landing page design ideas:
- Web Design Wizard - @luisthewiz
- Logan - @LoftedLearning
- CAM - @camduncannnn
- Tailwind UI - @tailwindui
- 11 Landing page examples that convert - ConvertKit
Step 3 - Write The Copy
Now you've done your research, know what you want to say, and have a general idea of the layout of your landing page, it's time to write!
Of course, if you've been following along with me, you'll have a file filled with potential copy to use so this makes your life a lot easier.
I would recommend writing the copy before you start designing your landing page as you can easily get distracted by design elements when you should be focusing on writing.
Start a new document and write out the headings of your content. Then fill out each section with copy. Don't worry about this being perfect, you'll have plenty of opportunities to come back and refine things.
Here's a sample of my rough copy layout:
- Hero section,
- Title: Create Brilliant Designs In Half The Time
- Subtitle: Improve Your Design Skills, Learn How To Prevent Burnout, Unlock Unlimited Creativity
- Call to action: Get My Copy
- Introduction
- What is the pain point I'm trying to solve
- How does my book solve this problem
- Chapter Breakdown
- Free Sample
- Download My Free Sample
- Final CTA
- Improve your design skills, learn how to prevent burnout, and unlock unlimited creativity with Design Faster, Design Better.
- Get My Copy
Step 4 - Design + Build The Structure
With your copy ready to go, it's time to design and build your landing page structure.
I built my landing page using HTML, CSS, Tailwind CSS, and hosted it for free on Netlify. This solution worked well for me as it allowed for complete customization and free hosting (with a Netlify domain name for now).
With that said, there are a number of no-code, low-code options that would work equally as well:
- Pre-built templates on ThemeForest or Gumroad
- Carrd
- Webflow
- fromNotion - build a landing page using Notion
In terms of which option to choose, I would recommend sticking with what you know. If there's a tool or programming stack you're familiar with, just use that if it will get the job done.
Don't over-complicate things by trying to learn a completely new piece of software.
If you have no clue where to start, Carrd is a great option.
Step 5 - Deploy + Test
Once you've built your landing page it's time to hit publish!
This part was extremely hard for me as I always found small tweaks to make or typos that needed to be corrected before I made the landing page live.
With that in mind, I'd recommend giving yourself a realistic launch date to work towards. This also allows you to build hype in your community about your new landing page ahead of its launch.
Once you have launched the website it's important to make sure it works well on different screen sizes. In this day and age, a website should work well on most phones, tablets, and computers.
Go to your landing page on your phone and test it out on your computer and ask some friends to do the same. Make any tweaks as needed.
It's also a good idea to sanity check for spelling and grammar just in case there's a typo or something missing.
Don't be afraid to make changes on the fly, it's your landing page and you can do what you want with it.
Step 6 - Iterate
If you've been following along you should now have a brand new live landing page. Congrats!
Be sure to send a post to your following on social media or your newsletter to encourage them to check it out.
Keep in mind though, your work doesn't necessarily end here.
Your first iteration should be good enough to publish. But over time you'll see things that can be improved, things that can be added, and things that should be removed from your landing page.
Don't be afraid to make updates based on what you continue to learn about landing page design.
Step 7 - Continually Improve Over Time
You're landing page may never be 100% perfect but that's OK. Realize that you will continue to learn and build your skills over time and you can apply that knowledge to improving your landing page.
With my landing page, for instance, there are no customer testimonials or reviews of my book yet which is something I'm eager to include. I'd also love to eventually add my book to Amazon via KDP and include links to it on my landing page.
I keep a running list of potential improvements I'd like to make to my landing page and try to implement them when I have the time.
Here's the link to the landing page I made once again if you're interested:
Design Faster, Design Better - Landing Page
My Key Take Aways
- A clear goal will help give you the motivation to continue working even when things get tough.
- The more time spent researching before design and implementation the better.
- You may not be good at writing right now but if you never practice, you'll never improve.
- Design on paper before you build. You wouldn't build a house without blueprints!
- Always test landing pages on more than one device. At the very least test on a phone, a tablet, and a computer.
- Don't be afraid to hit publish when something is good enough as opposed to perfect.
- Continue learning!
I hope you enjoyed reading this post as it was extremely enjoyable to write. Let me know what you learned and what you'll apply to your own landing page project!
Original thread on Twitter: Original Thread
This article was originally published over on my website: The 7 Step Process I Used To Build A Landing Page To Promote My Book
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