Are you looking for a way to increase course sales like never before? An online course landing page is the perfect solution!
A dedicated landing page is one of the best ways to market your course and boost your conversion rates. People will find your online course landing page through your website, social media platforms, or search engines.
A well-designed landing page will offer crucial information about your online course or eLearning product and demonstrate precisely why it is perfect for your visitors and what they will gain from it. They’ll be so intrigued they won’t be able to wait to sign-up or get started!
In this post, we’ll explore how to create a winning online course landing page on WordPress.
What is a Course Landing Page?
A course landing page is a specific web page dedicated to promoting and selling an online course. It typically includes key elements such as a header, pricing, social proof, video testimonials, a call-to-action (CTA), and an FAQ section.
Ultimately, the main goal of a course landing page is to generate leads and convert them to paying customers through a sales funnel. In turn, this page must be optimized for SEO and UX, so it ranks well in searches and can draw in as many leads as possible.
It’s extremely important to think about the structure of your landing page and the copy you write for it. You ideally want site visitors to read through the entire page or click on one of the included CTA buttons to sign up for your course. To that aim, you need to make sure that your landing page includes information about:
- What what skills your students will learn
- Who you are and what your credentials as an instructor are
- Your course syllabus, broken down into modules and lessons
- Your course pricing and whether there’s a discount involved
- The time window available for students to sign up
Landing pages are important because they let you focus your site visitor’s attention on a specific target, which in this case is signing up for your online course. A dedicated landing page makes your course more visible, in the sense that people are more likely to be aware that it exists, and it also condenses all relevant information about your course to a single page, which makes it really easy for people to understand the value of your course.
By contrast, let’s say you don’t have a landing page for your course. Site visitors might land on your homepage, see your course list, not really understand which course is right for them, and leave. It’s clear to see that a landing page helps reduce the bounce rate on your website and increase sales.
Moreover, you can use these pages for more than just generating sales. Some course operators use them to build email lists and gain more information on prospective course students. For example, a visitor might not convert immediately, but you can collect their email address to let them know when the course will next be open.
Why You Need a Landing Page for Your Online Course
Do you want to sell online courses? We’ll assume the answer is yes. In this case, landing pages are a vital part of drawing in your target audience, keeping them engaged, and converting leads into paying students.
Even if you’re using an online course platform LMS like Sensei LMS, and have a dedicated course sales page and a homage informing your website visitors of your unique value proposition, it’s still important to have a dedicated landing page for your course because it helps you focus on one goal – promoting your course – rather than just hoping that random visitors will buy it! It also helps you improve your conversion rates by removing distractions from your main website and focusing on one goal.
A landing page serves as a dedicated course sales page, separate from your website’s homepage. A well-designed landing page specifically targets the needs and interests of potential students, using effective web design, interactive content, and a strong value proposition to generate leads and increase conversions.
It can be used as part of a broader marketing campaign, including SEO, email list building, podcast promotion, and social media outreach, to drive traffic and build a subscriber base. Additionally, the landing page can incorporate lead capture forms and opt-ins to capture visitors’ contact information and grow the email list.
The benefit of using an online course platform like Sensei LMS is that it can help you design your landing pages. Most of Sensei LMS’s features and blocks can be used all over your website, so you can create a really compelling landing with elements like:
- The Interactive Video Block: Place a section on your landing page introducing yourself, the course, and why your course is so valuable.
- The Course List Block: Show off all your courses on one landing page, making it easy for users to scroll through and pick a course that appeals to them the most.
You get the idea, but how do you design a killer course landing page?
Designing Your Course Landing Page: Tips and Best Practices
One course landing page may look different from another based on what the course entails, the brand, etc. However, we can provide some general advice and best practices that anyone can follow. Look at the tips below, and they’ll help you design a landing page that helps you reach your goals.
Decide What Your Goal is With Your Landing Page
As we’ve said, in most cases, you’ll be trying to get visitors to convert into paying customers, though this isn’t always true. You might be trying to generate interest in your course before it launches, or before the next access period is open. To that aim, your end goal might be to get people to sign up for your email list to nurture them as leads for your online course.
The example below shows the landing page for the Art of Accomplishment. Their courses, which are made with Sensei, are available to the public in different access periods across the year, so the primary goal of this landing page is to collect email addresses.
Once you’ve defined your goal, yourself in the minds of your target audience. You need to think about how they’re going to reach your landing page and create a customer journey around it. Will they find your landing page through your website? Are you going to set up paid ads? You also need to think about what content you need to add to your landing page to convince them to take the action you want them to take.
Choose a Template
If you’re using a WordPress theme built for online course creators, it will likely include a few landing page templates that can quickly be used to help you form this page. You need to ensure that the template is responsive, visually appealing, and customizable.
These features will mean your landing page is suitable for all web browsers across all devices, offers a great user experience, can easily be found via search engines, and can be altered to add your own branding and content.
As touched upon before, Sensei LMS offers multiple block options you can use, each designed to meet different needs and goals to create a template. Our advice is to look at some online course examples and see how the landing pages look. Then, make a template that fits your course and target audience. The example below showcases the landing page for the Conversation Mastery course by Science of People, an eLearning platform that uses Sensei to create courses.
With Sensei, this can easily be done by identifying which blocks are needed, then dropping them into place. Additionally, Sensei LMS is completely compatible with the free Course WordPress theme. Course was designed to pair with Sensei, and comes with a multitude of block patterns that you can use to customize your landing page, as well as the rest of your online course website.
Structure Your Course Landing Page
The structure of your course landing page is vitally important to its success. Think about when people visit a website – what do they do? They tend to scroll down, taking in information as it comes. With a landing page, you want to provide a constant conveyor belt of useful information that engages the audience.
The big caveat is that you need to hook your site visitors in the ‘Above the Fold’ section, which refers to the first section of content they see before they scroll down. An engaging Above the Fold section will determine whether they will keep reading, or bounce.
As a general rule, landing pages should be structured in this order (from top to bottom):
- The headline and initial CTA: A clear and concise headline should instantly show what your course is about. Include a big CTA button at the top to attract more attention, but also to encourage a sense of urgency in the user.
- A course description: After the headline and initial CTA, there should be a compelling description of your course detailing what it offers and how it benefits the user. Focus more on what the course does for students and what they’ll gain from it – ensure you address the key pain points.
- Visuals: Next, you need some visuals to support the description and keep the audience engaged. Too much text will bore them, so throw in images or screenshots from the course pages. Videos work extremely well here too – a short demo of the course will keep eyes on your page for longer.
- Social proof: By now, the user is interested in your course and they believe it could be right for them. But, they need an extra boost. Include testimonials, reviews, and any other social proof you can find to demonstrate your course is as good as you claim.
- Final CTA: Lastly, you need a strong CTA button that tells users what they need to do to sign-up. Make it easy to see, so they click it right away.
Keep It Simple
Looking at the previous tip, you may assume that landing pages are crowded and full of information. This isn’t the case – well, it shouldn’t be. Never overcrowd the page or make it too cluttered as it draws the focus away from the main message and goal.
Keep it brief, and make your points, but don’t go into too much detail. Rely on visuals to add information to course landing pages without adding hundreds of words. Also, be sure there is only one core message per page. Don’t try to promote too many things or seek out multiple desired actions. Are you promoting your course or trying to build an email list? Pick one per page!
Optimize and Test Your Landing Page
Never launch landing pages without checking that they’re optimized for SEO and UX. The good thing is, a page that’s optimized for user experience tends to be well-optimized for SEO as well. Still, be sure that everything is perfect so more people are likely to click on your landing pages and visit your site. This gives you more potential students to convert!
A big thing to check is your linking structure. Make sure all links within the content on your landing pages are internal links, so users are taken directly to the right area of your site when clicking on them. This does two things. Firstly, it improves the structure of your site, which boosts SEO. Secondly, it helps when people arrive on your site via search engines, so they may visit your homepage first, and click on internal links to visit the landing pages.
When it comes to testing your landing page, try different versions – this is called split testing or A/B testing. Effectively, you have one version of your page that includes certain elements. You then remove or add an element, and launch the page again. The idea is to compare the outcomes from both pages to see what yielded better results. For example, split testing may help you realize that emphasizing social proof led and reducing your course description word count led to more conversions. It’s the best way to see what works for your audience without using guesswork.
Finally, if you’re running PPC campaigns, be sure to track conversions from each campaign to know which ones are working better than others. When you figure this out, you can focus on these campaigns to avoid wasting money on sub-optimal ones that aren’t converting.
Use Sensei LMS and the Course Theme to Create a Landing Page That Converts
In summary, course landing pages are a key way to improve sales and get more people on your course. They work as dedicated sales pages that engage your target audience and convince them to become students. The key to a great landing page is to set a goal, then structure the page around this goal. Keep your audience engaged the entire time by ensuring the page isn’t too cluttered or busy. Always test, so you know what works best!
Ideally, you’ll want your courses to be hosted on the same website that your landing page lives on. The best way to make that happen is to create online courses on WordPress using Sensei LMS. This LMS platform is very user-friendly for WordPress users and has the capability to build advanced courses without the need for any coding or design skills. You can also use Sensei’s interactive features, such as Sensei Blocks, on your course landing page. Not only does this help your landing page look great but offers a great representation of the experience your students can expect from your courses when they sign up.
Additionally, Sensei pairs with the free Course theme, which has lots of styling options and several block patterns to help you build your landing page and the rest of your website.
So, if you’re interested in maximizing sales and getting more people to buy or sign up for your online courses, you need some brilliant landing pages. Get started today and see how Sensei LMS can help you design stunning landing pages and even better online courses.
