Landing pages: A Necessary Evil...

It's so overwhelming to build a webpage from scratch. Looking at that blank slate can be crippling - especially when you're excited about an event or campaign and want it to be successful.

Today I'm going to walk you through a killer formula for building a landing page that educates and excites viewers.

Come back to this whenever you need to build a landing page.

The ingredients:

Take an hour to pull all these elements together before you ever open the backend of your site.

• A pithy, to-the-point, one-sentence statement about your event/campaign
• A three-sentence paragraph containing the 5 Ws of your event/campaign (Who, What, When, Where, Why)
• Three reasons why someone might not want to participate and the three ways you're combatting these objections (Ex: someone may need childcare // childcare is provided)
• Two quotes about the event/campaign from your staff/congregation or previous participants
• One short story related to the development or success of this event/campaign
• ONE way for visitors to take a "next step" (register, read more, etc)
• As many related pictures as you can find
• Bonus points: a YouTube video of you talking about your event/campaign

The recipe:

Take an hour to put it all together. Keep the design simple to support the impact of your message.

HEADER:

Put your one-sentence summary statement atop an image as your header.

BODY:

Offset all other ingredients with an image. Here's my favorite way to format all of these elements...

FOOTER:

Provide ONE clickable button toward the bottom of your page with a link to the "next step" for the viewer.

Not too painful, right? Hopefully this gives you a solid jumping-off point next time you need to create a landing page. Proceed to break these rules creatively - make it your own.

Until next week!