{"id":170951,"date":"2018-03-02T13:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/premium.wpmudev.org\/blog\/?p=170951"},"modified":"2018-02-23T19:27:30","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T19:27:30","slug":"how-to-create-a-landing-page-template-for-your-theme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/how-to-create-a-landing-page-template-for-your-theme\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Create a Landing Page Template for Your Theme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Landing pages are everywhere. If you’ve investigated SEO, or online marketing, or email list building, you’ll have been told to create a landing page for your website.<\/p>\n

But what exactly is a landing page, and how do you create it? In this post I’ll explain what makes a landing page different from a normal page on your site, and show you how to create a page template file for your theme so you can have your own landing pages.<\/p>\n

What is a Landing Page?<\/h3>\n

A landing page is a special page on your site which is designed to sell something. An effective landing page will be simple and sell just one thing. It isn’t the same as your products page, or your services page, or your ‘about our company aren’t we fantastic’ page.<\/p>\n

Your landing page has one job to do, and that’s to sell just one thing.<\/p>\n

The thing you’re selling could vary. It could be a subscription to a service or course. It could be a single product. Or it could be something that doesn’t cost anything – signing up to your mailing list, for example.<\/p>\n

You’ll use your landing page in conjunction with SEO and other online marketing to get people to come to your site and arrive at that page. Once they’re there, you want them to buy or sign up to the thing your landing page is pushing – nothing else. Once they’ve done that, you’ll direct them to another page thanking them and letting them browse the rest of the site.<\/p>\n

The thing that makes a landing page different is that laser-like focus on achieving just one thing. For many of us, it’s getting an email address to add to our mailing list (this is how I use landing pages), or it might be getting someone to subscribe to a service (such as a WPMU DEV subscription).<\/p>\n

Your landing page could have a lot of content or just a few paragraphs. Generally, the more expensive the item or service you’re selling, the more copy you need. If you just want people to sign up to a mailing list you’ll need information on the sign-up magnet (a freebie as an encouragement to sign up, such as a download) and a link to click for people to sign up. For a longer page, you’ll include multiple buttons (all linking to the same place) and lots of copy helping visitors make that decision to buy.<\/p>\n

Here’s the landing page on one of my sites:<\/p>\n

\"Example <\/div>\n

As you can see, it’s really simple. It has no links and just one button, which takes you through to a signup form. I need to refine the copy (the site is still under development) but you can see how simple it is.<\/p>\n

You don’t want to give people the option to do anything else on your landing page, which is why you need a dedicated template for it. The page will have no links taking the visitor away from the sales or subscription process. The only links on that page (and they should be nice obvious buttons) will represent the top of your sales funnel.<\/p>\n

This means taking out all other links – and I mean all of them. That includes navigation menus, sidebars, the logo link to the homepage – even the colophon link.<\/p>\n

If you use a standard page template to create a landing page, you’ll increase the chances of a visitor getting distracted and moving away from the sales process. So let’s start creating a custom page template instead.<\/p>\n

Creating Your Landing Page Template<\/h3>\n

To do this, you’ll need the following:<\/p>\n