There was some buzz at ICON surrounding Infusionsoft’s release of the new landing page builder. And if you haven’t heard, well, they’re rolling out a new landing page builder. You either already have access to it, or you will soon.
Here is the official release video from Infusionsoft.
I won’t beat around the bush – I am disappointed in what I’ve seen from the new Landing Page Builder. I think everyone knows the love I have for Infusionsoft, so I’m sharing that with the hopes of tempering your expectations, and giving IS some open and real feedback.
Trust me, it WILL get better, but the current reality was underwhelming for me. There’s a silver lining to balance my frustration, so stay with me for a minute.
And remember, this is just my opinion. Based on my needs, this isn’t going to cut it right now.
So I’m going to stick with my third-party builder until this is a little more full-featured (I use LeadPages). I don’t wanna discourage everyone from using it altogether, my official recommendation is to play with it for yourself. Draw your own conclusions as to whether or not it’ll do what you need it to do.
The new builder has a few things that are certainly improvements, but it also has a number of features that I see as a step backward. I’ll summarize the key changes here:
Improvements:
- I think this builder can produce landing pages that are more attractive overall.
- It has increased overall design flexibility (set images as background, etc).
- I love that we get built-in access to royalty-free stock images, and we can easily add overlays, or crop these images into circles, etc.
- I really like the idea of having templates we can start from.
- I like the concept of having pre-built blocks of content that you can add and then customize.
Drawbacks:
- The new builder doesn’t let you capture custom fields yet. You can use the new pages to collect first name, email, and a few other standard fields, but it doesn’t allow you to collect addresses, custom fields, and many other logical pieces of data you’d want.
- I couldn’t figure out how to change the alignment of text – yup, like, I couldn’t easily center align the text widgets I added to the page.
- I couldn’t figure out how to change the color of the text. It seems like some really basic fundamental formatting options didn’t make this first release.
- I was surprised that I couldn’t easily drag the content blocks around.
- I was disappointed that there doesn’t seem to be a way to add custom code of any kind. This means that you cannot currently add a Google analytics pixel, or Facebook pixel, or any other custom code you may want to use to enhance your landing page.
- The video widget only seems to support YouTube (it doesn’t support Wistia, and I didn’t test Vimeo).
These are mostly just observations I made from the limited experience I’ve had with it. I need to be abundantly clear that I’m not an expert with this tool, so it’s possible that some of these things are just user error on my part.
Now, I’m generally a pretty positive guy, and while I’m let down by the current reality of this new tool, there is a silver lining in all this. Infusionsoft is full of bright people who genuinely care about small businesses. They recognize that we, as small business owners, need a landing page tool that meets our needs, and this is the first step in that direction.
I know for a fact that they’re looking to make improvements to this builder, and quickly. They’re actively seeking feedback, prioritizing our suggestions, and concurrently working on the next wave of improvements. According to the release video they put out we can expect the following features to be added soon:
- Page Settings (Google and Facebook tracking etc)
- Site colors/theming
- Referral Partner Tracking
- Lead Source Tracking
- Reordering Content Blocks
- Pre-populate Contact Information
- Merge Fields
If you’re able to use this builder for your business then more power to ya, but if you aren’t, then take a moment to document why not, and what you’re waiting for, and convey that feedback to Infusionsoft so they can help get us what we need as quickly as possible.
Excellent post! I echo your sentiment that its kind of “half-baked chicken” at this point and you can’t ACTUALLY use it in your business. I’m using it with ONE of my clients, and only one, because none of my others can use this heavily-functionally-muted tool š
Plus, when people opt-in, they aren’t actually flagged as marketable. That’s another reason I’m only using it with one client since I have to manually confirm email permission and then manually send the campaign email that should have automatically gone out.
I was told this was fixed in a patch early last week but I’m still seeing that behavior…
Who’s doing QA over there?!
I’m with ya man. I’m hoping someone can help me see this through a different lens, because right now it looks like they rushed out a product that wasn’t ready … just so they could announce it at ICON? And, well, it just isn’t adding up to me.
Paul, thank you for the comment and feedback regarding the New Landing pages. Iām an Infusionsoft employee in the Quality department and I can confirm that the Non-marketable issue has been fixed. I think we jumped the gun a little bit on our communication, as we had a fix in proofing but it hadnāt been made live yet. You shouldnāt have this problem moving forward.
Gregg, thanks for the thoughtful review and confidence that weāll make improvements. This is actually one of the things Iām most excited about at Infusionsoft, is the way weāre shifting the way we release software. Over the years Infusionsoft has historically done some research, built a solution, shipped it, and moved on to the next big thing. Some things still make sense to build that way and Infusionsoft will, but we have come to realize that actual usage and feedback is the best way to improve the product. Thatās why, with the New Landing Pages, and other features coming in the future we will build something and get it in the hands of people that can beat it up and help us make significant improvements before we release to all of our users. The New Landing Pages have only been made available to a small portion of our applications, mostly influencers and people that asked for early access. Infusionsoft was under no illusion that New Landing Pages was ādone,ā which is why it hasnāt been released to all of our users. I know that people at Infusionsoft are learning from this experience and one area we can improve is the way we communicate with our early adopters, helping you understand where the gaps are that we already are aware of so that you can decide to use it or not, and be able to provide feedback that is meaningful so we can rapidly improve the experience once it is released to everyone.
Iām excited for the future at Infusionsoft and that weāre shifting from releasing and moving on, to one of gathering real world feedback before releasing to everyone. Thanks to everyone here for being willing to share your feedback. I promise weāll get better at this.
Thanks for the comment and the open and real communication! I think a good portion of my alarm came from an article I saw. I didn’t really get the sense that this was “beta”, in fact, the video talks about this tool as if it’s ready to be released to everyone. In the first minute of the video she says “A new landing page builder that is up to date and easier to create beautiful landing pages.”
I hear what you’re saying, and I agree with you, but I think there is an opportunity to better position this tool (or future tools like this) by acknowledging where it is in the development process, and if it’s not done, tell us it’s not done. Throw a “Beta” emblem on it (like the Email Builder had for a while), or be up front about the features that didn’t make it in yet, but are slated for future deployments.
I didn’t get any of that communication surrounding this new feature, hence the alarm. But again, I remain optimistic that this tool will continue to improve, and rapidly! Thanks again for taking the time to read and respond. Cheers.
Hi Justin, how much control does Infusionsoft have over the code regarding the landing pages? What sort of licensing agreement do you have with https://www.convrrt.com (as from what I can gather, it’s their tool, white-labelled by Infusionsoft? Correct?)
Greg, et al., I’m sorry to hear that the communication came across that way. Thanks for sharing your experience, as always it’s very valuable. We’ll learn from this and get better.
MC, I’m not able to comment on your questions. Sorry.
I agree 100%. It’s a white-labelled version of a third party landing page builder that is nowhere near as good as (the new) Lead Pages or Unbounce or a raft of others. I think Infusionsoft needs to apply a 37 Signals degree of constraint and stop adding functionality, but rather partner (and tightly integrate) with best-in-class providers. Personally, I’m not sure how this tool (Convrrt) actually passed the due diligence processs. It’s a 4 out of 10 at best, and I’m happy to bet that it won’t improve. Not being negative. Just calling it as I see it.
Thanks for reading MC, we’re basically on the same page, with one exception – I DO think it will get better. I’ve had some conversations with a handful of people at Infusionsoft who have indicated that they’re already working on the next round of improvements, and that we should see several rounds of rapid updates over the next few months. Now, that being said, I think maybe they should have just waited to release it….but that’s not up to me.
I hope they do improve it. Hope it’s not another GroSocial (died) or CustomerHub (never improved one iota after Infusionsoft acquired it). We’ll see! I sincerely hope they focus on it as it will fix a gaping hole in the offering.
I’m with ya. I do expect this tool to garner a little more focus simply because it’s in higher demand than either of the other two you mentioned; but time will tell! Thanks for reading.