By Danny | 3/15/2015 | Product Analysis

A Review of Instapage – The People's Landing Page Builder

A Review of Instapage – The People's Landing Page Builder

So you finally decided to go for it. You invested all of your time and most of your money into your business, spent a small fortune building a website, and you now feel prepared to conquer your industry. There is just one problem. You aren’t getting much traffic or customer engagement.

So what’s next?

A little bit of research shows you that the best course of action is to build a landing page. Your heart starts to pound as you prepare yourself to invest what’s left of your resources into building a landing page.

Lucky for you, there is an easy, affordable way to create a landing page.

Instapage was developed with one goal in mind: to enable anyone with a computer and internet access to create and publish a landing page. The application features a large selection of beautifully designed templates, an intuitive drag-and-drop page builder, and an in-depth analytics tool to help you attract new customers.

Check out our in-depth look at Instapage and how it can help your business.

Let’s Get Started

Signing up for an account on Instapage is easy. Instapage gives you the option to do so via various social networks or via e-mail. Best of all – no credit card is required. Their signup process is as quick as it gets.

Instapage’s Warm Welcome

If you sign up with your e-mail address, Instapage sends a welcome email with a link to their new user guide. I highly recommend taking a look at the guide to better understand the software. The new user guide features explanations, videos, and GIFs to help you learn all of the ins and outs.

What do I get?

Instapage’s free account includes access to the builder with one free landing and 100 unique visitors per month. If you decide your campaigns will need more “umph!” than that from the get-go, I’d suggest upgrading to a paid plan [more on that in the sections below]. All in all, whether you’re an experienced marketer, a new startup founder or designer who’s just starting out, the application has the capabilities required to get the job done.

Tour the Tutorial Video

As I mentioned, Instapage does a great job with their help documentation and tutorial videos. The introductory video is straightforward and highlights how easy the software is to use.

The first time you build a landing page, Instapage provides a short tour explaining each part of the menu, and then puts you in the driver’s seat.

Instapage 1

The Instapage Interface

When I began using the software, I noticed how intuitive and smart the User Experience (UX) is. Everything made sense, each function and tool was easy to find, and I felt as if I had already been using the software for a long time.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is based on a drag and drop functionality and a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) builder. This made it easy to add, customize, and reorganize my landing page in a matter of clicks. The toolbar at the top of the app is persistent and gave further editing options.

Instapage 2

Building a Landing Page: The Templates

So you’ve signed up, and you’re ready to start building your own page. To create your page, you have a few options to choose from. You can either start with a blank slate and build it exactly as you like, or you can choose a pre-built template. Templates are categorized by the following options: lead generation, click through, webinar pages, mobile app, and thank you pages. Instapage offers 70+ striking, professional templates which are desktop and mobile compatible.

Instapage 3

If you aren’t satisfied with the free templates offered, that’s not a problem. Instapage is partners with Themeforest, so you have the option to purchase premium templates. While several of the templates are more intricately designed with 3-D images and eye-catching color combinations, I wouldn’t say it is necessary to purchase a template, but it’s worth taking a look.

 

What If I Already Have a Landing Page?

Instapage just released a great new feature, the Instapage Template Importer, which can transform any landing page URL into a perfectly mirrored template. The total time for the import takes about 2 minutes, and it’s ideal for companies who are looking to get branded landing pages out fast. By keeping the messaging and branding experience congruent throughout your campaign(s),  you’re creating seamless experiences throughout your funnels, thereby building your brand’s recognition. That’s a huge marketing plus.

Instapage 4

WYSIWG (What You See is What You Get) Editor

The Instapage Editor is where all of the creation happens. The drag-and-drop functionality makes sure that your landing pages meet your vision. The menu bar is situated at the top of the editor and contains all the functions needed to build your landing page. The left hand side of the menu bar is where you can add elements and edit the landing page. There is a button to create different page variations (for A/B tests) and also an option to preview how your page will look on a mobile device.

On the right hand side there is a help button where you can restart your tour, read further help documentation or contact someone from the Instapage team. There is an undo and re-do button, as well as buttons to save, preview and publish your page.

Creating Variants – The Blue One or the Red One?

Having trouble deciding which picture to use? Want to include two buttons…or just one? Instapage lets you perform A/B split tests with as many variations of your page as you like. When creating variations, you can choose to create a completely new template or duplicate the same template.

Instapage 5

After gathering some data, you can check your stats to see which page is performing better. Because Instapage makes this process so easy, make sure to continually perform A/B tests to better understand your customers and meet your business goals.

Let the Building Begin: Adding Elements to Your Landing Page

Instapage offers many options which can be added to your landing page. To choose which elements you want to include on your page, select the Add New button located on the left side of the menu bar. I won’t go through each of these as they’re pretty self-explanatory.

Instapage 5

Changing Page Settings For Your Landing Page

The settings feature gives you the tools to put the finishing touches on your page. The goal of these tools is to help you manage and improve the performance of your landing page.

Instapage 7

Again, I won’t go through each one of these as they’re easy to use, but I will highlight one that I really like: “Page History.”

The page history view logs each and every change that was made to your landing page. If you made a few changes that you don’t like, you can save yourself the trouble of clicking the undo button thirty times and revert back to any page in the log. The log includes the date, time and the ability to preview the page before reverting back.

Instapage 8

The Dashboard

The Instapage dashboard is your landing page command center where you have a summary of all of your landing pages, what’s happening with your active landing pages, and access to high-level account settings.

On the top of the dashboard, you have the ability to create and sort through your grouped landing pages. This is especially useful for designers and agencies who are managing landing pages for multiple clients or business owners who are offering several different products and services.

Additional things that can be done from your command center include monitoring your analytics, checking your leads via form submissions, viewing your visitor meter, accessing help and support, getting an overview of your account settings and logging out. The dashboard is well organized and just like the builder itself, easy to get the hang of.

Instapage 9

Adding Team Members

Instapage makes it easy to loop in any relevant stakeholders in the process of building landing pages. This can range anywhere from a designer, to a marketing manager, to your data analysis team. New team members can be added from the main dashboard. When adding a new user, you will need to include the user’s name, email address, permission role and which landing pages they can view and/or edit. There are two user roles available:

  • Admin – this type of user can manage the account, add users or domains and edit all the pages in the client account.
  • Member - this type of user can view and/or edit pages that you give them access to in the client account.

Once added, new team members will be notified by email.

Publishing Your Page

You have several options for how to publish your landing page. If you are already hosting your own site, Instapage will work seamlessly with major name registrars such as GoDaddy, NameCheap, 1&1, and more, which will let you use your own domain and create a smooth transition from the landing page you built to your site.

Instapage also offers a free subdomain option they will provide you with (mypage.instapage.com), ensuring that your landing page can go up immediately without having to fuss with hard to understand technical processes.

You can also publish directly to WordPress with Instapage’s integration, making it extremely simple to get your landing page online as a natural extension (URL) of your site.

Finally, Instapage lets you publish your landing page directly to a Facebook Business Page Tab. Within Facebook itself, you can manage your tabs so the landing page is the first thing your users see when they access your page.

Instapage 10

Page Stats

Your page stats can be accessed per page via the main dashboard. If you are comparing multiple pages in an A/B split test, the page stats will display the results of the test. These results should be checked often to optimize the page’s performance and increase conversions. You are also provided with separate analytics for mobile pages.

Instapage 11

If you are not performing an A/B test, the page statistics provides you with a graph that shows the following metrics: visits, conversions and conversion rate. This can be viewed over a range of 7 days, 30 days or 3 months, and all of this information can be downloaded as a .CSV file.

Lead Generation and Email Autoresponders

You can view your generated leads by clicking on the submissions icon in the main dashboard.

Screenshot_10

The leads table provides an overview of how many subscribers you have, the date they signed up and which variation (if applicable) was used to collect the information. This list can be downloaded as a .txt, .csv. and/or .xls file.

An email notification feature is available so you can be updated when someone fills out your form, allowing you to determine the effectiveness of your campaigns in real time.

Instapage 12

Marketing Tool Integrations

Instapage offers over 20 seamless integrations with other SaaS tools your business may be utilizing, including CRMs, email service providers, and live chat services. This will save you a lot of time as you manage and track your leads (…think automatically populating data from 1,000 leads into your CRM…pretty cool, right?)

Support

Instapage features a great help center which contains a large number of how-to documents as well as a Youtube channel that displays step-by-step instructions. I was able to get all of my questions resolved by reading the documentation and/or watching the videos.

Fun fact: they also include a “Vote on Features” section for users. Check it out:http://feedback.instapage.com/forums/95853-suggest-and-vote-on-features

Email support is provided for all user levels, including those on a free trial, and phone support is provided for users who purchase the profession and unlimited packages.

Pricing

Aside from the free trial option, Instapage offers three other account types. Users can choose a monthly or yearly payment plan [with the yearly plan being much cheaper].

If you are using Instapage to build landing pages for multiple clients, the unlimited plan would be your best option, as it doesn’t limit the number of client accounts you can create.

Instapage 13

It’s the People’s Builder

If you’re in the business of online marketing, you’re going to need to build eye-catching landing pages and effectively manage each campaign, ideally without shelling out huge amounts of cash to hire experienced web developers and designers.

Instapage provides marketers with a way to creatively express their business’s offerings, generate leads, and manage campaigns with no technological know-how required. It’s a package of tools that provide you with the ability to masterfully craft, host, and track web pages as if you were an experienced web developer.

Marketing tools like Instapage are a must-have if you want to make your business standout in the online clutter. The free trial is a great place to start and get a feel for the software’s capabilities, and upgrading isn’t even a necessity depending on your needs. So give Instapage a go and let us know what you think in the comments. Happy building!

By Danny | 3/15/2015 | Product Analysis

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