If you have a Weebly website, you're one of the millions who have enjoyed the ease of their simple website builder. Every website I've designed in the past 15 years has been a Weebly website for the ease offered to my clients in updating their websites.

Change is in the Wind
As with all things, change is in the wind. Weebly was acquired by Square in May 2018 and will no longer offer support for websites built with Weebly by July 2025. That's effectively three years from now and should give everyone enough time to prepare for the transition. I have a few Q&As below to help provide some tips on preparing for the change.

The essential goal of landing pages is to convert visitors into customers. Marketers, designers, and copywriters work closely together to achieve leads and conversions. The difference between a website’s homepage and a landing page is the information they gather and its purpose. Where homepages share general information about the business, landing pages seek an intention from the visitor. It can be to offer a new subscription plan, download a freebie, or to sign up for a newsletter.

Whatever it is the purpose of your landing page, make sure it sticks to just one. One of the most common mistakes is to ask visitors to do many things at the same time.

Below we tell you how you offer your visitors the right information they were looking for and convert them to customers.

Purpose
Determine the purpose of your landing page. What do you want users to do at it? Are you offering a new subscription plan? Are you launching a campaign to obtain new users? Or do you just release new functionality and want people to discover? After answering these questions, you’ll get the main purpose of your landing page and you’ll be able to adjust it seamlessly.

Tip: Landing pages can only serve a single purpose. Don’t try to fill your page for two different things. The more you try to sell the fewer chances of getting leads.


Copy
Creative and original copywriting is a must. Write a compelling headline and subheading to attract readers to your product. Keep it simple and use no more than 10 words to achieve a great performance to avoid confusion on your visitors. Apart from a creative headline, there are other relevant aspects related to copy that will determine the success of your landing.

One of them is the Unique Value Proposition. The UVP is what you offer and it’s also what sets you apart from the competitors. And it should be seen throughout the texts of your landing page. Outline the benefits of your service and reduce it to the minimum, just a few powerful words will have more impact on your users. Another aspect you have to bear in mind is SEO and keywords. This will determine the success of your landing page, do research of the most-used keywords related to your business and competitors, and make sure to include them. Finally, regarding text and copy, grammatical errors or typos cannot happen. Would you trust a company that contains spelling mistakes in the first sentence you read from them? It’s a simple and easy thing to do, just spell-check your landing page before it’s too late.

Visual content
The visual content is one of the key aspects when designing landing pages. An eye-catching image or video of your product or service that perfectly matches the copy will help you drive conversions. The images must relate to the copy to have a greater impact, and should go with the brand’s personality.

Check out freepik resources, whether you opt for photographs or illustrations, we get you covered! Browse collections to refine what you are looking for and make your landing page visuals stand out! 

Use of color
The first thing that visitors will see is colors. First impressions matter, so make sure the color palette you choose matches the overall purpose of the landing page and is nicely picked. From the images or illustrations, you’ll use the background color or the CTA button. This aspect has to be carefully picked in order to achieve harmony throughout the site. Make the most of colors and its psychology, depending on your product or service, the emotion you’ll want to evoke, or the brand’s personality.

CTA
A Call-to-action is needed to convert our visitors into leads. Subscribe,  sign up, apply now, free trial, these are some of the most used CTA actions businesses use to convert visitors. They should always appear above the fold and the size, color or form are aspects to have in mind. They should be bold and striking, they are action-oriented so they need to stand out from the rest of the text. The button color should be in line with the whole site but the ones that report better results are orange and green.
Responsive design

Today, more than ever, we interact with phones and tablets more than with the computer itself, so thinking the mobile UX design first is not a crazy idea. Make sure your landing page looks good in all devices, as most users navigate the internet while on their smartphones, so it would be a mistake to not include them in your strategic plan. From filling a form to signing up for a new service, you should make visitors’ life easy, or you will lose all chances of converting them into customers.

Benefits
This is your chance to list all of your features and benefits. Keep your benefits in bullet points in order to make it more visual and appealing.

Tip: Some businesses offer a freebie in exchange for the email information. Think of what your visitors would really want, is it a free guide, a checklist, make this an opportunity to get some information about your users!

Testimonials
Providing testimonials from happy customers can improve the chances of getting newcomers. And it can be reassuring for the ones who are doubting. That testimonial can come in a video format, tweet, or quotes. With “What our users say” section you’ll be more likely to trust. Potential customers are always checking reviews, so don’t hesitate to include it in your own landing page. They won’t have to leave the site to check it.

Keep it simple
Most of the time, less is more. And for landing pages, it surely applies. Remove the navigation menu and any other unnecessary distraction from the site. You’ll get more chances to drive conversions.

On a landing page, we should keep everything we can above the fold. If you are unfamiliar with the term, it refers to the web content we see when a site loads, if we need to scroll, that would be below the fold. For that reason, the information should be clear and direct.

A/B Testing
This is the final step for your landing page. After doing the hard work you may find your landing page not working how you expect it to. Why? Well, customers may not find it attractive or trustworthy enough to complete the journey. A/B testing allows you to compare two versions of the same landing page, change the headline or subheadline, or the color of the CTA, and get the results of which performed better.

Resources
We hope these steps works for you and your landing page,  and if you’re in the need of some beautiful assets for your landing page, here’s a bunch of them:

• Free landing pages templates for your online shopping business
• Collection of high-quality colorful illustrations for your page
• Landing pages templates with nature vibes
• Responsive landing pages templates
• Landing page ideas for any business

Victoria Martinez
Vicky is a Spanish translator and content creator for Freepik Company. Her love for languages and adventures took her to a French island in the middle of the Pacific to teach Spanish. Now back in Spain, she has dived into a new world of possibilities thanks to Graphic Design. In her free time, though, this language geek loves planning scuba diving trips that will happen eventually.

Whether it’s sharing your words and ideas or selling your products, one thing is pretty apparent. If you want to effectively reach your audience, online is where you need to be. Moreover, what better way to establish your presence online than to building an outstanding Weebly business site or Weebly online store or blog?

Now, we know what you’re thinking. You don’t have programming, coding, or any website-building knowledge. How are you going to come up with a website, let alone a brilliant one? Well, that’s where this Weebly tutorial comes in.

Find out what happened in web design in 2016.

Mobile design
2016 was a landmark, transitional year in web design. The industry standard moved to mobile, responsive, design to read well on all devices—whether you access a website on a phone, computer, or iPad, all of the design elements shrink and expand.

Stackable sections
Because we are a mobile industry it's often easier to read information on a scrolling one-page website than clicking through tabs and pages. As a result, design leans more towards stackable sections, including pictures, illustrations and small amounts of content.

Make it easy and accessible
As a whole, our lives move faster and faster—we review and receive more information than ever before, needing less with easy access. The challenges that brings to design in general is our need to compact and minimize content, while making our 'call to actions' easily accessible. Overall, our audience has less time and patience to click and search websites—'Making it easy and accessible' is the #1 directive in design.

The big questions
The primary questions that need to be easily answered in print and on the web, are:

1. Who are you? — Your logo and tagline.
2. What are you offering? — Your services and benefits.
3. What makes you unique? — What sets you apart and makes you unique.
4. What do you want me to do? — Your call to action.

Take a whirl through the websites of folks who braved the newest generation of design in 2016.

Herein lies my joy…

We’re very excited to announce that this week, we’re releasing a major new update to Weebly called Sections. Sections brings a number of your most highly-requested design features and enhancements to Weebly. Here’s what you’ll see in this release:

Brand-New Header Functionality

We’ve made headers way more powerful, and easier to work with. You will now be able to place elements in headers, and instead of the static header heights, you can now dynamically re-size them however you like!

New Sections Element

You can now add multiple body sections on a single page! By dragging the new Sections element onto a page, you can create groups of elements, which can then be easily moved around a page, or copied to other pages on the site.

Customizable Backgrounds

One of our most highly-requested features is finally here! Your headers and page sections can now have dynamic backgrounds, which you can customize with color, images, and even video. Upload your own videos, or make use of our included library for you to use freely on your site!

Brand New Sections Layouts

Header and page sections now come with more categories, and varieties of layouts. This makes it even easier to get a great-looking website online as quickly as possible!

Themes
Sections will be launching today, but it will only be available to use on themes that have been updated to take advantage of the new features. To make sure that this launch is as smooth as possible, we’ll be slowly updating all themes over the next few weeks. The first theme that will have Sections support is Birdseye. This will be shortly followed by Squared, Brisk, Dusk, Clean Lines, Impact, Journey, and Cento.

We are aiming to have all themes updated by the second week of September.

FAQ

Which Weebly Designer Platform plans will get Sections?

All Sections features will be available with both Pro and Business plans.

Will Sections support the old adaptive themes?

No. Sections will only be available in our current 24 responsive themes. The plans will be updated individually over the several weeks following launch.

How will Sections impact current Client sites?

If a Client site is using a stock Weebly theme that has Sections support, and they have permission to edit any pages, they will have access to Sections. We do not have a Client permission setting for Sections at this time.

Will I be able to opt-in to using a Sections-updated theme?

No. The themes will be updated automatically, behind-the-scenes.

Will custom themes based on stock themes be updated?

No. You will need to start over with a supported stock theme. In the near future, we will have documentation available on our Weebly Developer site to assist with converting custom themes to support Sections.

Choosing a domain name is similar to choosing a company name — it requires a lot of thought and consideration. Your domain name is your identity on the web; you want to make sure you choose a name that not only fits your business, but is also easy to find and promote.

1. Make it easy to type
Finding a domain name that’s easy to type is critical to online success. If you use slang (u instead of you) or words with multiple spellings (express vs. xpress), it might be harder for customers to find your site.

2. Keep it short
If your domain name is long and complex, you risk customers mistyping or misspelling it. Short and simple is the way to go.

3. Use keywords
Try using keywords that describe your business and the services you offer. For example, if you’re a glass replacement business, you may want to register GlassRepair.com or GlassReplacement.com.

It helps improve your rank on search engines (which increases traffic) and just makes more sense to your customers.

4. Target your area
If your business is local, consider including your city or state in your domain name to make it easy for local customers to find and remember. Example: PhoenixGlassRepair.com.

5. Avoid numbers and hyphens
Numbers and hyphens are often misunderstood — people who hear your website address don’t know if you’re using a numeral (5) or it’s spelled out (five) or they misplace or forget the dash. If you need these in your domain, register the different variations to be safe.

6. Be memorable
There are millions of registered domain names, so having a domain that’s catchy and memorable is essential. Once you’ve come up with a name, share it with close friends to make sure it sounds appealing and makes sense to others.

7. Research it
Make sure the name you’ve selected isn’t trademarked, copyrighted or being used by another company. It could result in a huge legal mess that could cost you a fortune, as well as your domain!

8. Use an appropriate domain name extension
Extensions are suffixes, such as .com or .net, at the end of web addresses. These can have specific uses, so make sure to choose one that works for your business. The .com domain extension is far and away the most popular, but it can be tough to get a short and memorable .com domain name because it’s been around for so long.

A bevy of new generic top-level domains — like .photography, .nyc and .guru — offer a great opportunity to register short and highly relevant names. And here are some other top extensions and how they’re often used:

• .co : an abbreviation for company, commerce, and community.
• .info : informational sites.
• .net : technical, Internet infrastructure sites.
• .org : non-commercial organizations and nonprofits.
• .biz : business or commercial use, like e-commerce sites.
• .me : blogs, resumes or personal sites.

Pro tip:
You don’t need to build a website for every domain. Just forward any additional domains to your primary website.

9. Protect and build your brand
To protect your brand, you should purchase various domain extensions, as well as misspelled versions of your domain name. This prevents competitors from registering other versions and ensures your customers are directed to your website, even if they mistype it.

Author
Andrea Rowland is a former small business owner and newspaper journalist, and a published nonfiction author, Andrea Rowland helps craft compelling communications for small businesses and web pros through her work as managing editor of the GoDaddy Garage. When she's not writing or editing, she likes to experiment with baking, travel, read, and dip her toes in the ocean.