18 things to try in the Leadpages Drag & Drop Builder
1. Add or delete any page element you please.
Now, there’s no need to flip through templates looking for the ones that have (or don’t have) video players, countdown timers, background images, or other components. You can simply grab a page element from the widget or layout panel and drag it where you want it, or click the trash can icon to axe something that’s already there.
You could even start with one template and turn it into a completely different one (if you ever got really, really bored).
2. Build a totally custom page from the ground up.
While there’s no blank-canvas template right now, it’s quite easy to start from a clean slate. Simply choose a template—one of the basic squeeze page templates is ideal—and click to remove everything you don’t want there (though you probably will want to retain, at the very least, a background image or color). Presto: a page that’s 100% you.
3. Turn your page upside down.
A few months ago, Bryan Harris of Videofruit dropped by the blog to talk about his homepage strategy—which was an upside-down version of what most businesses do on their front page. If you want to make radical reversals to a landing page of your own, now it’s easy. Every section of our drag-and-drop templates can be moved simply by clicking an up or down arrow, so you can try sending call-to-action buttons higher up the page or shifting text blocks toward the bottom.
4. Experiment with the look of your page much more quickly. Previously, changing things like colors, fonts, and borders required jumping from your page over to style menus. Now you can simply click on the element and try out different styles just by selecting from a popup menu.
For instance, this is how you change the styling of a block of text:
5. Give your page a custom structure by adding columns.
If you’re the methodical type, you can lay out a grid for your page before you add any of the content. Just drag an array of one to six columns onto the page, then add content within those columns—everything will snap right into place.
6. Make your page more dynamic with timing control.
With the new timing control feature, you can let any section pop onto the page after a time delay. Try this with elements you want to grab extra attention, such as call-to-action buttons and countdown timers.
7. Make your page more sociable.
Think your page has viral potential? Now you can add social share icons anywhere you like—and change the order and orientation of those icons in the widget. Consider adding social sharing buttons to your event pages and limited-time offers in particular, since they give visitors a natural motivation to share with their friends.
You can also embed a Facebook “Like” button to any part of your page. In either case, you can decide whether the share or like is attached to the landing page itself or to a different link (such as your homepage or business page).
Another social innovation: the ability to add Facebook comments to your page. This can be especially useful if you’re soliciting feedback on a launch, gathering questions to answer during a webinar, or collecting testimonials from past customers.
8. Control what happens when you share your page on Facebook.
The page title that’s best for a search results page isn’t always the most compelling title for a Facebook post. Likewise, the image that makes sense as your page background may not stand out as much as you’d like when it comes to the forefront in that post.
With the drag-and-drop builder, you now have total control over both the text and the image that appear whenever your page is shared on Facebook. Inside your Leadpages SEO settings, you can designate a title, description, and thumbnail image of your choice—just for Facebook.
9. Control how your page appears in search results.
Of course, we haven’t forgotten about how your page appears in ordinary search results (such as on Google). SEO tag fields allow you to choose an appealing title and description designed aimed at getting clickthroughs from search pages. You can also select keywords to give search engines even more data on what your page is about
10. Make your images more accessible (to humans and bots).
Both people and web crawlers can learn a lot from the metadata you attach to your images, and now there’s an easy way to add that metadata in Leadpages. Every time you upload an image, you’ll be prompted to enter an image title and alt tag—that is, the descriptive text that appears when you hover over an image.
These fields are useful for visitors who may have limited eyesight or who use screen readers—or who are accessing your page on extremely slow connections and can’t load the images. Increasing your audience in another sense, these tags are also signals that tell search engines what your images are about, since they can’t (yet) just glance at a photo and recognize what you’re selling.
11. Create opportunities for interaction with new HTML fields.
One of the very coolest parts of the Leadpages drag-and-drop builder (in my opinion) is the ability to drag plain HTML fields onto your landing pages.
That doesn’t necessarily sound very exciting at first glance. But the magic happens when you fill those fields with embed codes from other sources: calculator tools, polls, surveys...interactive widgets of all kinds.
And even though a few lines of code are involved, you actually don’t need any technical know-how to make it work. In most cases, you’ll simply create your widget in the tool of your choice, grab the embed code, and paste it into your Leadpage.
If you’ve ever created a lead magnet and added it to a button on your blog or a banner on your website, you already know how easy this process is. Now, the possibilities are nearly endless.
Let’s look at a few of those possibilities in greater depth.
12. Let customers book appointments straight from your landing page. Online scheduling services such as TimeTrade, Acuity Scheduling, and Square Appointments let you embed their calendar widgets into external sites. Now, you can drop your calendar into an HTML field on your drag-and-drop page and shorten the path from your landing page to an appointment.
13. Turn your landing page into a more powerful point of sale.
You’ve always been able to use Leadpages to create highly effective product sales pages. Now, with the drag-and-drop builder’s HTML fields, you can let customers add products to their cart right on your landing page. Just grab your buy-button code from your e-commerce platform and drop it onto your page. (For extra credit, you can even style your cart panel to match your landing page, or vice versa.)
14. Show off your multimedia talents.
Another category of cool HTML widget you can add: music and podcast players, most of which will generate the code you need at the click of a button. Now you can send your landing page visitors an audio message, or just share your work in audio format.
15. Add forms and progress bars directly to your landing pages. Leadboxes are powerful little opt-in forms, but in some circumstances you may want to create a longer sign-up process—think event registrations or surveys—that requires more than a pop-up form.
Now you can handle this with a Leadpage. Embed form fields directly into your page (and, of course, integrate them with the email service provider or webinar platform of your choice). Then, to guide prospects through the process and encourage them to reach the finish line, add a progress bar. The drag-and-drop builder’s new customizable progress bars allow you to select the “percentage complete” to display so visitors know exactly where they’re at.
17. Enhance your lead magnet with video.
Lead magnet opt-in forms also gain from the drag-and-drop page builder’s enhanced flexibility. One thing you can do: add a video.
You’ll likely want to keep your Lead magnet video short—a brief, friendly personal message or a short video loop demonstrating how your product or service works could fit the bill. This is relatively unexplored territory so far, so if you try this, come back and drop us a comment letting us know how it went!
18. Add just about anything else to your Lead magnet, including “opt-out” buttons.
Calendars, countdown timers, and extra text, images, and HTML fields are all ready to be added to your opt-in forms (though we wouldn’t recommend adding all these things at once).
One especially intriguing possibility: adding an additional button to let visitors opt out (at a small psychological price). You could take the dark path and embellish your secondary button with an unappealing claim—"No, I hate knowledge and money”—or more subtly encourage visitors to give your offer another look.
That may be plenty to keep you busy for your next few pages, but we’ve got even more new features on the way. Here a quick (and partial) look at what you can expect to see pop up in the drag-and-drop builder in the months to come.
14 more things you can with the Leadpages Drag & Drop Builder
1. Undo and redo your changes with the click of a button.
2. Edit any classic template by dragging and dropping.
3. Split test drag-and-drop pages.
4. Duplicate widgets, columns, and sections.
5. Select global page style settings to easily start out with your preferred colors and styles.
6. Add fully customizable exit popups to any landing page.
7. Coming soon: Animate your call-to-action buttons.
8. Coming soon: Add photo galleries to your pages.
9. Choose from an array of icons to add to your pages, buttons, and bulleted lists.
10. Coming soon: Drag an interactive Google Maps widget onto your page.
11. Make your countdown timers smarter with new settings, including the ability to restart the timer for each visitor.
12. Coming soon: Embed your Twitter timeline on your landing page.
13. Coming soon: Add new social networks to your social sharing widgets.
14. Coming soon: Let people follow (not just like) you on social media right from your landing page.
What’s your favorite new Leadpages feature? What features would you like to see added to this list? Tell us in the comments.