What’s the difference between a landing page creator and an online form builder

Why is a landing page different from any other page on your web site? It differs because it has a very specific purpose: it's your first point of interaction with visitors. Its design will determine if visitors stay “on ground” or bounce away within seconds from landing. Landing pages are so important, that you’ll find platforms dedicated only for their creation. In this post we’ll address the needs from such a platform and how (if at all) it differs from general purpose online form builders.

What’s in a landing page

All landing pages share several components: graphic design, text message, a call to action (CTA) button and usually a small number of data input fields. So in reality, a landing page is simply a private case of a simple online form. There are many types of online forms, e.g newsletter signup forms, registration forms, online surveys, etc. Each one of those also needs to have a graphic design, some text, data fields and a CTA button. The main thing that distinguishes landing pages from any other online form has to do with conversion rates. Some even refer to landing pages as golden opportunities.

It’s all about conversions

Conversion rates and optimization are two sides of the same coin. The reason to optimize is to have better conversion rates. i.e. improving the ratio between those who stay on page and submit out of the overall number of visitors. conversion useslly translates into form submission or a sale, but it could easily be  a page view or a download depending on your goals. Each one of your landing page elements needs to be optimized: starting with your graphics, background images or videos, through your key message and onto your use of data input fields and CTA button. Most form builder platforms are geared to help you quickly set up forms that collect data, with emphasis on making the creation of good looking forms a quick and easy process. Most form building platforms do not offer optimization features which are critical for creating landing pages that convert. So while it's true that any form builder can be used for creating landing pages, if it does not support optimization features, it will not do the job.

Important features

When selecting your platform for landing page creation, these are the main features you need to look for:

Start with creation: Most platforms offer drag and drop functionality to choose your elements and place them on page. Some of them will let you place the element exactly where you want it. As discussed above, the common elements for most landing pages are text, images and some data fields. The platform should also support style controls and easy selection of background images or videos either from a library or for uploading.

In-line data validation: an important feature to look for. A common use is to make sure that keyed-in phone number or email address are in the right format.

CRO features: There is only one service (FormTitan) that offers you a built in CRO engine which goes over your landing page and looks for things you can fix. (anything from location of labels, size of fonts, type of CTA button, etc)

A/B testing: This is probably the one essential feature that differentiates a from builder from a real landing page creator. a/b testing is a critical part in the design of almost any landing page. With a/b testing you can easily try out several copies of your key message, your use of fields or your background image and select the one that yields the best results.

3rd party integrations: Many times you already have in place systems to manage your leads, email campaigns, newsletters, etc. A good landing page creation platform will make it easy for you to seamlessly integrate with such a platform so that data submitted by your users will be mapped and stored directly in your service of choice.

Maybe this could help you along - You can do an Audit Checklist to see where you stand...Good Luck!

Building landing pages with FormTitan

While FormTitan is a general purpose form building platform, it's built in optimization features make it ideal for landing page creation. Furthermore, since it's designed to do much more, it offers flexibility and creation capabilities that other landing page creators don’t have. (e.g. advanced logic enabling the design of dynamic pages.) Last but not least, FormTitan’s pricing makes it ideal for anyone seeking value for their $$ without sacrificing performance.