Landing pages (and landing page hosting) are an essential part of the marketing strategy of any successful business, allowing customers to quickly view your product or service.
The importance of landing pages means you’ll want to take extra care when choosing where and how you want to host them. After all, they’re likely to be your first point of contact with hundreds if not thousands of potential clients!
This article will start by breaking down the basics of landing page hosting before offering three essential elements to look for when choosing how to host your landing page.
How does landing page hosting even work?
Landing pages are simple, one-page websites that have a singular goal in mind – to be a marketing tool.
While traditional websites are jam-packed with information on everything from FAQs to blogs to company history, landing pages strip all of that away. Instead, the content of the landing page – or microsite – serves the purpose of guiding visitors to a single course of action, usually via a CTA (call to action).
There are two main types of landing pages: reference and transactional.
Reference landing pages share important information with visitors about a specific topic relevant to the business. Transactional landing pages, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, prompt the visitor to complete an action, such as clicking a link, filling out a form, or sharing their email.
Once you know what kind of landing page(s) you need, you can start thinking about where you’d like to host them.
Does landing page hosting differ from website hosting?
All landing pages and websites need to be hosted somewhere — it’s how your files and pages are stored so they can be delivered to browsers all around the world. But because landing pages serve significantly different needs than websites, it doesn’t always make sense to host them in the same place.
Websites are often substantial and full of evergreen information. Landing pages, on the other hand, often take up a fraction of the space and are a much better place for campaign-specific or time-sensitive information. From a business perspective, this often equates to a need to also create landing pages more regularly than you might make updates to your main website.
Sometimes, a different team might be responsible for the creation and maintenance of landing pages in collaboration with the team that works with the main website. Everyone from your marketing or product team to outside creative agencies may need the ability to draft and publish your landing pages quickly and efficiently.
Their use of different functions, purposes, and teams is a key reason why it often makes sense to select a landing page-specific hosting platform for these crucial microsites.
How to host your landing pages and websites correctly?
To make sure you get your landing page hosting done right, you’ll want to take your time selecting a hosting solution. There are tons of landing page hosting services out there, but they’re far from created equal. As you search for the right landing page hosting solution, you’ll want to consider:
- Tool types
- Interface
- Page loading times
Choose a hosting provider that offers various landing page tool types
As you consider the type of tools you might need in a landing page hosting service, think not just about what you need in the current moment, but what you might need in the future. If you opt for a bare-bones solution, you might save some money upfront, but you equally run the risk of hitting some road bumps if you scale. One type of tool that is worth keeping an eye out for is a tool with drag-and-drop page-building functionality – this can make the entire process run more smoothly.
Choose a landing page hosting provider that offers an intuitive interface
To a similar end, your hosting solution should be intuitive enough that almost anyone could create a landing page with little to no issue. If tools are buried under layers of menus or confusing headings, you could be in for a rough time.
Choose a landing page hosting service with low page load times
According to a 2022 study by Portent, a site that loads in a single second has a conversion rate that’s up to 3 times higher than a site that loads in 3 seconds, and up to 5 times higher than one that loads in 10 seconds. Springing for the faster landing page hosting solution could help you edge out your competition, meaning you’ll quite literally get what you pay for.
The 3 things you need for landing page hosting
Your landing page hosting should be simple to set up
As discussed previously, almost anyone should be able to create a website landing page because – in many cases – almost anyone might need to! A good landing page doesn’t need to call on technical know-how, and the hosting process should be straightforward.
What does that look like in practice?
To prioritize ease of use, look for features such as drag-and-drop tools, an intuitive interface, and a super quick setup so pages can be up and running in no time. You’ll also want to consider how easy it is to make templates or duplicate pages, which can help with streamlining processes down the road.
You’ll also want to pay attention to how simple pages are to customize to your needs, whether it’s uploading custom fonts or changing the copy layout. If you need to get your hosting solutions tech support on the phone every time you need to make such a change, it’s probably not the right fit for you.
Landing page hosting should be high performance
Just because landing pages are smaller and contain less information than your website doesn’t mean it’s any place to skimp on performance – quite the opposite!
Portent dove deep into the numbers and discovered that a lag of a mere one or two seconds can dramatically drive down your conversion rate. If your landing page is aiming for a transaction, then you’ll want a page-load time of no more than 1–2 seconds – tops.
When selecting your landing page hosting solution, don’t just pay attention to the promised page-load times, though. Make sure you know what protocols are in place if a server ever goes down and your load time suffers.
Find hosting with integrated landing page builder tools to save money
There are plenty of cheap landing page options out there that ultimately feel lackluster, but that doesn’t mean you need to blow your budget, either. Thanks to the prominence of landing page builder tools, there are plenty of options out there that can get you what you need without costing a fortune.
To make sure you’re getting the most for your money, definitely keep an eye out for flexibility. To that end, it may even make the most sense to search for hosting solutions that can build microsites, as opposed to just landing pages.
While similar to landing pages, microsites offer slightly different functionality, such as the ability to host multi-page content.
If you want the best landing page hosting service, Zoomforth has you covered
Zoomforth is a robust microsite hosting solution that can help you take your landing page game to the next level.
With drag-and-drop tools, an intuitive site editor, and real-time in-app support, it’s never been easier to build and host your landing page. Zoomforth offers easy access to real-time customer analytics, helping you to keep track of your pages’ performance metrics and make adjustments as needed.
Live video coaching and biweekly drop-in training sessions mean you can get your entire team up to speed on how to create a great landing page – and host it – in no time. Once you’re up and running, you can create as many pages with as many themes as you want! There’s no cap on on-site visitors, either, so the sky’s the limit with how far your microsite can go.
Zoomforth is the smart and simple solution to all your landing page creation and hosting needs – request a demo today!
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
