If, like me you are a CLB member, one of our downline builder programs is Adkreator and this is where we are taught to create our lead capture pages. These tend to be a bit formulaic and most members seem to just copy one of the shared ones rather than coming up with their own designs. It’s a reliable and well built program with no bugs that I’ve ever found. There are plenty of templates to help you or you can design your own. So why would I want to even look at something else? Please read on.
Long before I ever joined CLB I was a member of Carl Bailey’s InstantSplash site. This went through several transitions of editor while I was in there and the final one was quite similar to his new offering SplashWizard. Carl was very good about maintaining all the old editor versions and still does AFAIK
SplashWizard creates really slick splash and capture pages. I have seen similar effects in Leads System Networks capture page editor, but Carl has worked on the SplashWizard editor so it is a lot better than the one in LSN. I joined SplashWizard to take a look within a day or two of the launch and I was very impressed. At the very beginning there were issues with my GVO autoresponder code not working properly, but these were very quickly solved which is a good indication of Carl’s commitment to good customer care. In fact he told me that he sat down and completely re-wrote the autoresponder section over the course of a weekend so that it now works seamlessly with all the major autoresponders.
Adkreator also accepts code from all the main autoresponder programs. CLB recommends GVO Host then Profit and given that I can also host up to four websites at no extra cost, it’s a great bargain at $9.95 a month. As CLB members we get a discount on Adkreator bringing the upgrade monthly price down by 50% to $9.95.
Currently you can only have a name and email on your lead capture pages, but hopefully this will expand in time to let us have perhaps an additional custom field which can be used as required for a phone number or a Skype ID. There is no validation, and any that is done optionally by your autoresponder should be omitted. I don’t think this is very important, even with validation, people can still put in rubbish names and email addresses. You can join free and make ‘practice’ pages in SplashWizard but they have only a 24 hour life and they’re gone. For any practical purpose, you need to upgrade to Pro – $9.95 a month and very worthwhile at that price.
You will find a wide selection of really beautiful photographs as backgrounds for your ads, and some more practical ones like dollar bills. Currently you can’t upload your own images but I would be surprised if you couldn’t find one that you liked enough to use. I’m sure in time, it’s a feature that will be added. I find the sequence that you put an ad together slightly odd and clunky. Background first, then box settings – location and opacity, then it wants video (optional) then branding (optional). Then, before you write your headline and body text, it wants your autoresponder code, so you really need to have this done and ready. Then you put in the destination URL when they click on the ad or complete the form.
Then it asks for the ad text in 4 chunks – headline, subtext and bullets and the call to action on the submit button. One nice thing is that unless it specifically says ‘save’ in a box, any changes you make are auto-saved as you work. I think it makes more logical sense to have the autoresponder parts right at the end. This isn’t just a comparison with Adkreator – it is as you read and use the form. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter that much and most people will have done a paper plan of their ad anyway. Also, you can use the components in any order you want once you’ve selected your background. I haven’t yet found a way in Adkreator to upload a background image, although you can change the colour behind your ad box. In some ways it is beginning to look a little dated, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the owners give it a facelift in the next 12 months to stay competitive with more up to date products like SplashWizard.
