Episode 29: Creating Clarity in Your Landing Pages

In this episode, Ben gives an update on the upcoming features in both Kadence Blocks Pro and Kadence Blocks 3.1, and an overview of the teams working on new blocks as well as Kadence AI. As well, the team looks at the purpose of landing pages, elements that make a landing page effective, as well as things that make landing pages miss their target.

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Timestamps and Links

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:36 Update on Kadence development
• 9:30 The two teams working on Kadence AI & Kadence Blocks
• 12:00 Landing pages
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Transcript

Kathy: Welcome to episode 29 of the Kadence Beat. I am here with my good friends, Hannah and Ben. How are you guys?

Hannah: Good. How are you doing?

Ben: Feels like it’s well been a little while since we’ve done this, so this is fun.

Kathy: Yeah, it has been a while. Yeah, it’s good to be back in the saddle. And let’s talk about Kadence.

How are things, we have a lot going on, Ben, do you wanna give us a low down on everything that’s in the hopper? We had our little episode with Shane Pearlman from Modern Tribe last week. Talked a little bit about ai, but I know there’s lots of other things happening with Kadence, so I’ll just tee you up with

Ben: that.

Yeah certainly we. We have multiple teams working on different parts of the Kadence products. And so while we are working on AI a lot with Modern Tribe and kind of some of the architecture around how we even do the design library, we’ve just in the last couple months added like 340 now patterns to our design library.

And then each pattern has three different styles. So there’s a lot of benefits. Non-AI related that are coming through that project. As well, we have blocks pro beta out right now that’s gonna go live soon. And then we’re currently looking at potentially two weeks till we release the beta version of blocks.

3.1, which will have the advanced form block, the progress bar block. It’ll have some cool other features involving like how we handle some of the unique IDs inside of all of our blocks. And then the ability to rename stuff in the list view and, things like that. And then, as we project out some.

There’s more blocks coming. We’re working on a repeater field block for a c f and other plugins that give you MeBox controls. And then an advanced query block that will be filterable and template and that kind of thing. So you can create real custom filters and custom templates for query loops inside of WordPress.

So that’ll be probably the most advanced block we’ll we’ve ever tried to tackle. And that’s, that one is getting exciting in terms of the architecture planning. And then as we like even project out even more, then there’s like advanced navigation block for mega menu building in your header and things like that.

And that’s just on the like Kadence blocks part. Then of course we’re doing stuff with the Kadence theme shop kit. There’s some new UI stuff in Shop Kit for the admin as well as new features we’re looking at releasing inside of shop Kit coming up. So it feels like typical of Kadence.

There is a lot happening all at once all the time and, but also it’s starting to feel like we’re really gonna hit our stride in terms of like consistent releases for new features. Over the second part of the year. Whereas so much has been on just really big projects, it’s now moving to like projects that are a little bit more, a little bit easier to define and scope and say this is the project, and then get that out and release it, which is nice.

Because some of the big stuff like let’s rewrite the entire way that we code blocks is just so hard to scope and creates Yeah. Yeah. A lot of work. So that’s, exciting from the dev perspective. And I think as we move along, the stuff with AI is really cool, but just even the stuff with the design library and page templates, like that’s just gonna be A significant improvement.

Like one thing we’re doing within that is the ability to search Pexels for images that match whatever industry you’re in. And that’s gonna come into our advanced image block and all things like that where you’ll be able to instantly pull from Pexels, it’ll drop an already optimized image.

So where it’s like right now, if you’re getting into pixels and you download it, then you gotta resize it and you gotta compress it. We do all that process and you just search, pick, and install which is gonna be, that’s amazing. Awesome. And mapping that out to work with AI content, it’s like you’re gonna be able to build your own collections, have that automatically replaced in all of the design library, so even the images are really custom to what you’re working with.

So yeah, really fun.

Kathy: Hannah. The Kadence group. I see all of these requ. Hey, when is this gonna happen? When’s that gonna happen? Uhhuh, what do you think? Does this sound pretty good?

Hannah: Yeah, it’s coming. That’s the answer. It is coming. It is in the works. I’m excited to hear that we are.

Gonna get to a place where things are more level, I balanced cuz then I often worry if you ever sleep and actually I know for a fact you don’t sleep that much. But also I just think that’ll be super helpful for the community, just knowing okay, now this is like a more set structure of when they can expect releases and things like that.

But it has been a huge year and I think that’s a good reminder, especially for a community Changing the entire way that blocks is written is a huge deal. And so it makes sense that things have been delayed and all of that. But I’m excited for what’s coming.

Ben: Yeah, and I always want to try to get our roadmaps more like solid and defined as we’re looking forward, but it’s so important to be able to pivot.

And we have to do it all the time based on what’s going on. Yeah. So we got into the design library project and it was like, Hey, we’re making all these patterns. But we really would want like a dark version of all these patterns. And so we did a pivot where it was like, let’s make that something that we can automatically have with every single pattern we make with a click of a button, rather than making two versions of every single pattern or three versions of every single pattern that we have to manage and update anytime we want to change anything in those patterns.

And so it’s stuff like that where it’s like, This is a huge thing to pivot because it’s gonna save so much in the development as well as like instantly give our customers that much more to work with. And so stuff like that happens all the time where I’m like, I think I’m gonna be working on this week.

And then it’ll be like, Hey, you know what, we actually, we talked about this. This seems like a quick win. We gotta dive in and just do it now. So that this team can keep moving here. And yeah. It’s so hard to project out a roadmap that’s like really time sensitive because stuff happens and we move and yeah. Two weeks ago I spent a day of my time trying to figure out why on certain websites the mobile menu was closing automatically. And eight hours of time, like I spent a whole day doing every kind of test imaginable and following every single event that happens in JavaScript to try to figure this thing out.

And in the end it was a cloud flare, has a ation tool and they had a bug in it and they push out an update and that fixed it and Wow. So there was literally at the end of that whole thing, there was nothing I could do other than to say it’s already fixed. Yeah, but thank you for taking a day of my time.

That’s that’s painful. That is exactly yeah. What we have to run into sometimes is I spend, yeah. We have to spend time to figure out what these issues are because Yeah. If it’s an issue, we need to fix it. And sometimes it’s things like that where it’s like someone else pushed out a bug and it, we need to figure out why.

Yeah.

Kathy: And it affects our customers. But, foundationally you made changes to Kadence blocks. Just the entire foundation of that plugin was rewritten. Now, I’ve been on dev teams where that doesn’t happen. Where you just like layer another thing on and then layer another thing on top of that.

And you don’t do the foundational rewrite. And that’s where you get into like software bloat and it can cause so many problems, right? Have you seen that type of situation and is that why you tried to avoid that?

Ben: Yeah, especially in software that’s moving as quickly as Gutenberg is right now.

Yeah. That’s part of the real trick is that Gutenberg is changing so much all the time and so that kind of need to like, okay, we gotta go back a little bit. I, ideally you don’t, you shouldn’t have to do like a complete, let’s dig it all up and rebuild it. It can be more iterative. Like it can, you can be like, Hey, we’re gonna do this section first.

And there, looking back like there were wins we could have done throughout that project. That would’ve been like, let’s just push this chunk in and make that work. It’s still tricky to do with all of the testing and everything like that, but that could have been a bigger win. I ideally, we, you don’t want to be in a place where like we need to tear this out and start over.

But just given the nature of Gutenberg and the way that core has changed so quickly, and the time at which we wrote and the time and where we are now. That became necessary as we dove into Hey, we want to do more advanced stuff. This is a roadblock for like how optimized we’re gonna be able to make code in the editor, and so much came down to the editor and not even the front end, which always gets frustrating when you’re like, Hey, we did all this work.

But it doesn’t actually improve the front end cause like that’s not what we’re trying to solve for, trying to solve for the editor. So the structure we have now does have a lot of optimizations for the front end and gives us a really good place to be like we can more iteratively update from here a lot easier than we previously could.

By adding in like our whole components library and just rechanging the way that blocks are loaded and saved and Presented on the front end. It really does a whole lot of stuff that makes it easier to build on, and unlikely that we’ll need to do something like that again, because Gutenberg is a much more mature product, so we’re following a lot of their core structure and then able to just move on from there.

Kathy: Great. Sure. Great. And to get some clarification, cuz I know there’s been some questions, we’ve talked a little bit about Kadence AI and there’s a wait list ready for it. We had Shane on our last podcast to talk about that entire project that Modern Tribe is leading. The Kadence AI project is very separate than what’s happening with blocks.

Ben: Yeah, there’s two different teams. There’s two different project managers, there’s two different, all that. So obviously I jumped from team to team, but in general we have people including myself who are working on Blocks 3.1 and at the same time, people, including myself who are working on ai.

And they’re different people. Obviously same company, but just different teams. The Modern Tribe team, the team that works on internal projects. And so that team is the team that’s helping Kadence right now with the, a number of different things that, that are exciting.

Kathy: Yeah, I’m very excited about it, but it’s not slowed down the pace of everything else that’s happening within Kadence and, I love to see it cuz I am excited about some of the things coming. I am just like so excited that the advanced form block is gonna be in Kadence free. And I know a lot of other people who are going to be extremely excited about that too.

Can’t wait to test that out and start playing with it. And the design library has been amazing. So I. Just to tell you the story cuz I’m all about the stories. I had to do this presentation about how to build landing pages. Here’s mys had to build landing pages with Kadence. And I’m like, I’m gonna wait for this design library and do it with that because it’s gonna be so much e And sure enough, It was, I literally in this demo, like 10 minutes Kadence landing page built out with the design library.

Because the design library, if you haven’t played with it yet, has pages in it where you can just like homepage, all right, and you can just pop in your own images and text and it’s really super fast. But the design library going through each individual section and deciding what I wanted to do it.

It made everything so fast. So I was really happy to have that as I was building out landing pages. So I just keep seeing more and more benefits coming out of the stuff that’s developing, but I’m from both teams and I think that’s amazing. Yeah. Thank you.

Ben: Yeah, it’s exciting.

Kathy: Yeah. So let’s talk about landing pages.

Since it’s in my head. I’d love to. So what is a landing page? What is, if people talk about landing pages, is it just your homepage or what’s a landing page?

Ben: Yeah. I feel like the marketer should be the one who answers this, but I can’t.

Kathy: It’s a leading question. I’ve, I want your guys perspective, cuz you guys browse the web, Ben, you develop Yeah.

So that people can design for the web. So I wanna get everybody’s thought on what’s a, what is a landing page and what makes it effective. Yeah. Hannah, do you wanna take that?

Hannah: Sure. Yes, this, I feel like I’m like, this is like an essay question. I’m like a landing page, but it essentially should be a page that tells viewers what their.

Therefore, so if you’re selling something, what you’re selling, what your mission is and then you should al it should also be beautiful and engaging and make people want to stay on the site and see what else is going on. And it’s your like, Your two second moment to capture somebody or not.

So it’s a big deal, should load very quickly. I think when I think of landing pages I just have to go to DOMA Miller because he’s so ingrained in me what’s your mission and is your mission obvious on your landing page? If somebody goes to your website in two seconds, can they, do they know what you’re selling and do they want it?

Kathy: Yeah. What about you, Ben?

Ben: A landing page. I often hear about it as different from the homepage or different from any other page on your site because it’s a page specific to a certain customer that you’re trying to land there. So I’m doing an ad for this and I want them to land here, and so I create a custom landing page that’s, Not to say that all the rules of like your homepage, which is also like a page people land on or whatever, don’t apply to your landing page, but sometimes people create landing pages where there’s no nav.

It’s literally I want you to just focus on this one thing. And I’m not trying to take you to my website as much as I’m trying to get you to go from clicking an ad to purchasing or putting in your email or whatever. And so like sometimes you’ll build custom landing pages that literally don’t have the header and footer and just have a very I just want to draw you right to this button to.

Do the action. And so then they’re coincided with a marketing campaign. Of some kind.

Kathy: It’s got a specific intent, so the way now the marketer gets to talk, right? Yeah. There you go. So you have to meet your customer.

Kathy: here’s the real answer. You guys are exactly right, but it’s okay, so let’s talk about a couple that I was looking at.

There’s Spotify. And Airbnb. So Spotify, the two landing pages I was looking at, and I’m gonna link them down below if you’re watching on YouTube or if go look at the show notes. Spotify has a landing page that talks all about free, and then they have one for premium because people are in different mindsets then, right?

So you have to meet your customer where they’re. Where they’re at. If somebody’s just I don’t know who hasn’t heard of Spotify, but let’s imagine this mythical person somebody who has come out of the forest Rip Van Winkle and is I think I’d like to listen to music on this thing. And they.

Look at Spotify free. Very simple website. Get started, listen. But then once they are in the mindset of I would like to drop some cash on it so I don’t have to listen to ads now, what kind of cash do you want to drop on this? What are the benefits of each tier? What are the things that you’re going to get if you drop monthly payment on having Spotify on your phone with no ads. What is all that you’re going to get from it and which tier is right for you? So it’s like a different mindset. Each customer is a different persona, is a different mindset, is interacting with the brand very differently.

And then the other one that I looked at was Airbnb. They have their landing page of. For people like you and me who are like, get me out of here. I want to have an experience. And you go to airbnb.com and that homepage, that landing page is like, look at all of these experiences. Where do you wanna go?

And then you can search and get into what you want. But they also have a landing page for hosts. And looking at that is so amazing cuz they really meet you where you’re at. Cuz they have this slider that tells you how much money you can make and they’re doing IP detection and geolocation and saying, okay, you’re in this town, in Texas, , how much money you can make from your house in Texas, cuz that’s where you’re coming from.

Talk about meeting people where they’re at. And connecting with them. So if I ever land on that page, obviously I’m searching perhaps for how much money can I get for renting out my son’s room, who left me? What? What can I get for that? I’m not gonna rent out your room, max. Really? It’s still there for you.

Come home, but. Look at how it meets you. Exactly. Where it was amazing cuz it’s just like this, it’s a perfect example of some designer who’s looking at this landing page and I wanna meet this person exactly where they at. Not only geolocating, but what are they thinking about? And then it’s just oh, you’ve got this objection, we’ve got that handled.

And it’s just like handling every objection about strangers coming into your home. It’s it was. It’s beautiful if you build landing pages, it’s in the show notes. Go look at this page for hosts for Airbnb. It’s it’s really good and there’s a lot of things that you can learn from it just by.

How it’s meeting customers, your site visitors, your hosts, where they’re at. So I thought that was a really great example. Any, any site that you’ve landed on where it’s just wow this company knows me.

Ben: I would say more often than not, I get frustrated by landing pages.

Really? Because I don’t feel like they know me, like you do a Google search and I’ll like search for the name of the company that I want to find, right? Like I want to get onto your website, and I will click the first one because it’s just the default, which happens to be an ad because people put ads for their own keywords, and then it will take me to a landing page without a menu driving me, and I’m going to find something out.

I typed in your name. I’m not like a. Potential customer in the sense of I’m looking for a feature I typed in your name, and I’ll get on this landing page where I’m like, no, I’m actually looking for information. I’m not like here to commit or whatever. I already have an account, whatever.

I actually just want to get to a certain page. And so I always find that like incredibly frustrating when people don’t have a nav and on a page outside of a checkout. I’m like, adamantly opposed to like Korean pages without nav. So oftentimes I feel like the ones that are meant to be targeting a certain person’s experience, it’s so easy to not get that right.

And then you end up with a customer who’s I back out and go find their actual link and Google. Cause just let me go to the page. Or I’ll manually have to like, Change the url. Cuz even the logos on those page don’t take me to like their home age, which is what I want to do.

Kathy: There ahead is a place for squeeze pa they call them in the marketing vernacular, a squeeze page cuz you’re trying to reduce the number of decisions that a site visitor could possibly make. That where you don’t have navigation to the biggest example I would say would be like Amazon’s checkout.

Once you click checkout, it’s like, all right. Let’s get to business. You’re checking out we don’t wanna talk about put adding anything else to the cart. You’re not gonna go look for discounts, you’re not going back to the homepage. You are checking out and we’re here to help. So that’s all that’s there.

So there’s a time when you want to reduce the number of decisions that a customer or a site visitor could possibly make. Yeah. And just get them through that process. But when you’re in the initial stages, when somebody. When Ru Van Winkle comes out of the forest and says, how do I listen to music?

You wanna make it extremely simple, but you don’t wanna take away the exploration of the brand. You want to give them the, all of the possibilities to get started and to get started free you can upsell them later. You just want somebody to just Immerse themselves into the experience of your brand.

And so your website and that landing page better do that. So I can see how that would be like extremely frustrating when, especially when you’re just getting to know a brand.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. When I follow Instagram ads, often landing pages and those are like, I’m not looking for the nav in that experience.

I think it’s the Google ads that go to a landing page that get me. Yeah. Whereas From Instagram. I don’t wanna be taken to your homepage if you just showed me a product. Yeah. Or if you just talked about a certain deal. I don’t wanna be taken to a different page and have to go find the deal on your site.

It’s always nice to land on the landing page there cuz you know I followed the link. that context, that specific link you just talked about, this specific feature. Make sure it’s front and center when I get there. And wanna learn more. I’m trying to think of what Instagram ad I recently just got trapped into.

I fall for him.

Kathy: Yeah. It’s so funny. Yeah. I keep seeing Jot and I think of you every time. That’s

Ben: funny. Yeah.

Hannah:

Speaking of sites that keep things front and center, have what you need right there. Charity water.org. They are a nonprofit and I’m like obsessed with what they do. But basically their mission, which is to right there on their landing page, is help bring clean and safe water to every person on the planet. And then right there, you even have to scroll. There’s do you want to give once, do you want to give monthly?

And then how much do you want to give? And it’s so easy to do. So if you were like, At all inspired to give to Charity Water. It’s not like you’re having to search at all. They could not make it easier for you to give. And then there’s like this beautiful video of these beautiful kids in Africa getting clean water and it’s like just so inspiring and engaging and it’s all, you don’t even have to scroll at all.

That’s all. Just like when you open the landing page, that’s what you get. So

Kathy: I feel like they’ve done an excellent job. Nice. I love it. Yeah. Is there What are you looking for when you’re researching a product? Are, what elements on a landing page are the things that really draw you in, that help you engage and you feel like you got what you came for?

Ben: I like your, I always think prices. I like.

Kathy: Sorry. Pictures and pricing. Go for it.

Hannah: Yeah, totally different. Go ahead. I love pictures. I love like a photo that either is oh, I want to be there. That person sitting there in that place with that product, or else just like a picture that’s inspiring where you’re like That looks amazing.

I wanna be a part of this. I think for me, images are huge. They like go such a long way versus if people have images that are like clearly stock photos or just poor quality, it’s really hard to want to engage with that.

Kathy: the aspirational type of thing that we’ve talked about before.

Where it’s something that makes you feel like you want to be a part of, you wanna be a part of that picture. You want to, whether if it’s charity, water, you wanna be the one supporting that picture. So there’s something like I something I want that’s a part of that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Cool.

And Ben, you mentioned pricing.

Ben: Yeah. I want to know I wanna see the tears, don’t hide anything from me. I always get frustrated when it’s like I can’t find it right away, or it’s just it’s hidden.

Like it’s not gonna be something that affects my decision. Let me tell you all the features and all the reasons why, and just click the buy button and just click the buy button. And there’s no and this is what this will end up costing you. Or a lot of products that are like just heavy on free trial.

Until you’re at the checkout and then it’s oh, by the way, and this is seven days and we’re gonna go ahead and charge your card until you’re, it’s gonna cost you this much. I just, yeah, I’m like, give it to me upfront. Let me see that right away as I’m looking at your features and stuff.

Cuz it’s just I don’t know. Oh.

Kathy: Yeah, that’s where I wanna start. There. There’s a lot of subscription services that do that, that where you don’t know what you’re getting. You’re they’re like, oh, and come with us on this journey and it’s all wonderful and fine. And then it all of a sudden it’s yeah, no, I don’t have $400 a month for this.

Yeah. Fun thing, if it was, gonna help me pay my mortgage, maybe I’d do it. But yeah, they, you are like adding all of these things to this box and then all of a sudden it’s eh, stop writing the tracks.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I think assuming it’s coming in through an ad, like where I’ve, you’ve already given me that basic pitch of what it is.

Like you’ve clarified what it is you’re offering. Because otherwise I haven’t even clicked on your ad if you haven’t gotten that clarifying thing. But then on that landing page, it’s still so critical that you clarify exactly what it is you’re offering to me, what are you asking of me?

It’s Here’s what we’re gonna give you, and this is what we’re asking of you. And then you can sell me on the along with that, like the aspirational identity of I wanna be like that person and all the other stuff, but what problem are you gonna solve for me? And how much. Is it gonna cost me?

Or like the two I need to know those,

Kathy: right? Yeah. Yeah. And if you have a complicated product or you have a number of different tiers Canva comes to mind. I looked at their landing page as a part of this project, and Canva’s got, Like three major tiers.

There’s free, there’s pro and then there’s teams. But the features they had, they so much text, they hid it all, and it’s too much to read, and that almost threw me because I love Canva. It’s really easy to use and it’s great for like featured images and for YouTube thumbnails and stuff.

There’s definite, I know how to use it. I’ve used the free product, but then their homepage like almost too much. Don’t make me have to work to understand what you’re giving me. I’m just gonna click pro and trust that what I need is there, I guess deciding between pro and teams is, you’ve got other people you’re sharing things with.

I guess that’s the only determination, but there’s a lot of products out there that they try to make their differentiation, their product differentiation. Very Robust and they tend to overcomplicate things. any kind of page where you’re asking somebody to make a decision, you have to take away the work that they have to do.

You have to make it so crystal clear in terms of like how you position your products and how you talk about them. So that it’s like super clear. It’s just like extra people, teams pro you get everything free. We’re gonna keep some stuff from you, but don’t make me have to read A paragraph or 30 bullet points or something like that.

It’s just gotta be extremely simple.

Ben: Yeah. And some kind of we land on landing pages all the time. Any way you can make yourself credible when you’re making one. Through testimonials and some kind of Hey, featured here, and like independent review or whatever, like that stuff goes a long way.

And just building the confidence of okay, you’ve clarified what your offer is, I see the price, and now you’ve built some trust with That makes a really good, in my mind, a really good landing page of you haven’t overcomplicated anything and Right. I’m ready to commit.

Kathy: And making it very easy for people to understand what the future looks like with this product in their hands, in their software toolbox, whatever this product or service is going to be. That the picture of what their life looks like after this what they’re getting themselves into just needs to be.

Crystal clear clarity, I think is the biggest thing that you need on a landing page. Make things just so clear. Understand who your audience is, what the problems they are trying to solve. Help them understand very clearly how you’re solving those problems. And then boom, call to action, right? Big flashy button.

Ben: Exactly. Yeah.

Kathy: And it makes it easy. Don’t overcomplicate.

All right, cool. We have a lot coming down the pike for our Kadence. Thank you guys for so much for listening in. So much exciting stuff happening. If you’re part of the Facebook group, thank you for watching us and if you are not, come on, join us.

Lots of fun stuff happening in there, and we will see you on the next episode of the Kadence Beat. Thanks so much.