Leadpages Review: The Best Small Business Landing Page Builder?

Leadpages features

This landing page builder started as a template and all you could do at the time was change the text, font, and a few of the colors before publishing. Now, it has a range of features that makes it worth more than a quick glance for any small business. Let’s look at what those are.

Drag and drop landing page builder

The Leadpages page builder has improved by leaps and bounds over the last decade. As mentioned before, it used to be a template where you could change text and colors.

Currently, it’s a drag and drop editor that allows you to choose from a wide range of elements such as:

• Social sharing
• Buttons
• Images
• Videos
• Checkout
• Custom code
• Etc.

It works by utilizing section blocks that contain the different elements which it refers to as widgets. The sections have a specific layout like 2 columns, one column, 2 columns with a CTA, etc. and you’re forced to use those layouts. If you don’t like it then choose a different layout (Note: you can make small changes to the layout by adding elements next to each other but the overall layout will remain intact).

Within sections, you control things like padding, background images, how it displays on different devices, minimum height, etc. Though it’s a drag and drop editor, the elements you place on the page snap into containers.

This makes it easier for you to get the proper alignment but it limits your design choices. You’re unable to do anything truly spectacular since you can’t put elements exactly where you’d like. It’s a tradeoff between speed and proven templates and your own creativity.

Taken together, it’s a solid page builder that’s geared towards allowing you to get your landing page out the door quickly as opposed to pixel perfect design. This isn’t a bad thing for most people because the landing pages can still turn out great without having to spend countless hours working on them.

Website builder

The website builder is divorced from the landing page builder and is, in essence, a separate product. With it, you can build every page of your website from over a dozen templates that are designed to convert visitors.

You can create different types of pages such as blog articles, contact, portfolio, about, blank pages, etc. Like with the landing page builder, you have the ability to add sections and widgets and there are two ways to organize pages. Either they’re part of the main menu or they’re hidden from the main menu.

The main difference between the website builder and the landing page builder is that you can create global elements like menus & footers which, when updated, are reflected across every page. You can also control global styles so every page on the website is consistent.

Popups

The landing page builder also allows you to build popups which are triggered based on different conditions such as:

• When exiting a page
• After a certain amount of time
• And after clicking

The interface is the same as that of the landing pages. The only real difference is that the canvas to create the popups is smaller. It also doesn’t have the Leadmeter feature to help you nail best practices for popup creation.

Useful analytics

The Leadpages analytics tracks two main things – page visits and conversions (typically form submissions). Page visits are further broken down into total page visits and unique page visits. Conversions are displayed as a total number and a percentage. Finally, if you’re using checkouts, you’ll be able to see how much you’ve earned from the page.

An interesting feature is the ability to reset all of the analytics on a landing page and start measuring data from scratch. I wouldn’t use it but there are certain instances where this might be useful like when you’ve been testing the page and your own visits are skewing the data.

Of course, you can change the timeframe of the data you’re viewing to better understand performance and also see graphs of individual data points over time.

Leadmeter

This is a feature unique to Leadpages that I’ve not seen any other tool use (I’ve used a lot of page builders). Using their years of experience with landing pages, the team behind the product created a simple tool that would help gauge the efficacy of your pages.

There are 14 parameters that each landing page must meet to get a score of excellent. It includes things like the visibility of CTA text, length of the title, number of videos, number of form fields, and more. Of course, all of the Leadpages templates have a perfect score.

If you’re new to creating landing pages or don’t have a system in place, this can be the difference between generating new leads and falling flat. Of course, if you’re a veteran, you can do things your way. The good thing is that the parameters of Leadmeter are regularly updated to reflect current best practices.

Leadpages split testing

Split testing is one of the most important features when it comes to building landing pages because it makes it possible to improve performance over time. Leadpages delivers a simple A/B testing engine that gets the job done.

You’re able to go in and make a copy of the original page or choose a completely different page to use. You can test multiple pages at once in what’s known as multivariate testing. Keep in mind that it requires a much larger amount of traffic to test two variations than it does to test one variation.

After tweaking the variations, you can determine how the traffic should be distributed between each one. For example, if you have a page that’s gotten thousands of visitors already and you’re confident in its conversion rate, you can send a large percentage of the traffic to the new variations to quickly understand how it’s converting.

Online checkout

This is where Leadpages pulls ahead of the other landing page builders aimed at small businesses. Instead of forcing users to get a different tool to handle checkouts, you can simply connect your Stripe account to Leadpages and make it a reality.

It only supports one product SKU per checkout so Leadpages checkout is ideal if you have few products like consulting packages, digital products that can be easily fulfilled, or even recurring subscriptions.

The fields can be customized to collect specific information like address, quantity, phone number and more. It can be embedded on a page or hidden behind a button click. Finally, it can be designed to match your brand.

Leadpages templates

There are hundreds of professional-looking templates to choose from but, as I’ve noticed with other landing page tools, they all start with the same color palette. I don’t know who thought that would be a good idea or maybe it’s easier for the designers to work with a color scheme. Leadpages uses something minty.

I digress.

The tool asks you a number of questions within the creation wizard before presenting templates. That way, you can be sure what you’re seeing is relevant. While this can be a good idea to prevent people from being overwhelmed, I’m a picky user and want to see a lot of options before choosing a template.

You, on the other hand, may heave a sigh of relief because of this feature. We’re all different. Of course, you can change the template after you’ve selected one so the only thing you’d lose is a few minutes of time.

Leadpages integrations

Leadpages has a large library of integrations with various types of tools. All of the major email marketing and CRM tools like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Campaign Monitor (note that some are available through Zapier) are available. It also plays nice with analytics tools, live chat, eCommerce tools, and more.

Whatever native integration you can’t find, it may be available through Zapier so make sure you double-check if you don’t see it on the official integrations page.

Leadpages pricing

Leadpages has three pricing plans

• Standard costs $37/m or $25/m paid annually
• Pro costs $79/m or $48/m paid annually
• Advanced costs $321/m or $199/m paid annually

All plans come with a 14/day free trial and are divided based on usage and access to features. With the Standard plan, you can only build one website while the Pro plan and Advanced plans allow you to build up to three or fifty sites respectively.

Another thing to note is that the level of support you’re given varies by plan. Pro users get live chat and email, Standard gets email, and Advanced plan customers get access to phone support.

Ease of use

When you first sign up for Leadpages, it drops you right into the page creation process.

If you’re brand new to building landing pages, I can see how this would be useful to you. You’re not distracted by a bunch of options you may not be familiar with. For me, I felt like I was being pigeonholed into using aspects of the tool I didn’t want to interact with yet (I like to set up my account first).

Personal gripes aside, I think this is a useful approach for new users because it focuses them on what they signed up for. Once you get to the actual page builder, it’s just a matter of dragging and dropping the elements you want to use.

It’s a straightforward tool to learn and master so it get high marks for ease of use.

Leadpages review – Pros & Cons

Pros

• Integrates with Stripe for checkout
• Large number of professional-looking page templates
• Integrates with major email marketing, analytics, and CRM tools
• Beginner friendly and intuitive interface
• Leadmeter makes sure you’re following conversion best practices

Cons

• Level of support is tied to the pricing plan
• Elements snap into place based on blocks instead of being free form
• Coupon functionality from Stripe doesn’t work

Leadpages customer support

Leadpages has multiple forms of customer support such as email, live chat, and phone support but, as mentioned in the pricing section, it’s tied to your plan tiers. Their support is a mixed bag. When I reached out, I got a templated response but other reviewers online have expressed how awesome the support is.

I think it’s generally decent but, as will all services provided but humans, there’s the chance that you’ll encounter someone on a bad day.

The good news is that unless you experience a technical glitch, most things can be solved with the comprehensive knowledge base.

• Offers email support
• Live chat is available
• Phone support is also available
• It has a comprehensive knowledge base
• It maintains a blog that deals with company updates and marketing guides
• There are multiple tutorial videos on YouTube
• There’s a library of training content

Leadpages review verdict

Is leadpages right for you?

I can’t answer that question but what I can say is that it’s a solid landing page tool with a long track record. It has gained tens of thousands of customers over the years because it does what small businesses need.

Can it create pixel perfect designs? No.

Can it create designs good enough to boost your conversion rates? Yes, all day every day.

My final verdict is that Leadpages is a solid tool to build landing pages that’ll consistently generate leads for your brand but there are better tools when it comes to checkouts and websites.

If landing pages are your main goal then you can’t go wrong by signing up for Leadpages.