Module 3 - The page that asks

Building the page

Open Sites, then Sales funnels.

This is the most technical part of the course. There's no way around that, and it isn't your page builder's fault - it would be true in any of them. It's also the only part like this. Take it slowly and it works.

Two ways through this. Build it yourself, which is the steps below. Or start from one of my finished pages, which is further down and skips the building. Either way you end up in the same place, so have a quick look at both before you begin.

One thing to have ready before you start: the PDF you made in Module 2, somewhere you can find it on this computer. You'll upload it near the end, and it's the one part of today you can't do without.

Here's the whole build on video - the page, the thank you page, and the test. It runs about half an hour, because I do it at the speed you'd really do it rather than skipping ahead. The written steps below are the same build, so follow either one, or watch it once and use the writing as your checklist.

1. Click Create. You'll be asked for a name, a domain and a currency. Name it after what your free thing is about - "Beginning gardeners," not "Funnel 1." That's for you, not for anybody else. Leave the domain as the systeme.io one, and ignore the currency; you aren't selling anything.

2. Choose Custom, then save. The obvious choice is Build an Audience, and I started there. It hands you templates - but they're templates for full websites, not for the one small page you need. You'd spend the next hour deleting somebody else's page. Custom gives you an empty funnel and nothing to undo.

3. Add your first step. The funnel is empty, so click Add step and give it a name - "Opt-in page" is fine. Choose the type: Opt-in page. Now you'll be offered templates again. They're the same ones you just walked past, so don't take one. Choose Start from scratch, save, then click Edit page.

4. Use blocks, not elements. Look at the left side of the editor. Elements are single pieces: a line of text, a headline, an image, a form. Blocks are several elements already arranged together - a small template, in other words, the size of one section instead of a whole page. That's the head start you want. Open Blocks, find the opt-in form group, and pick one that's roughly the shape of what you're after. Don't agonize; you're changing every part of it.

5. Cut the form down. The block you picked probably asks for a name, an email address and a phone number. Every box you ask somebody to fill in is a reason for them to close the tab. Click the phone field and delete it, and delete the little label box that goes with it. You don't need a phone number and you never will. The name field can stay if you'll genuinely use it - change it to first name if you keep it - but I take it off.

6. Write the words. Double-click any text to change it. Buttons work slightly differently - click the button, scroll down the settings, and look for Button text. The next section covers what to put in all of it.

7. Tick the double opt-in box. It's in the same button settings panel you just had open - "Do you want to enable double opt-in on this form?" It means people confirm their address before they're really on your list. Module 4 explains what that's worth and what it costs you; today it's one tick.

While you're on that screen, look at the setting just above the checkbox - "Do you want to redirect users after contact registration?" It should say To the next step. That's what sends people to your thank you page, and it's how it arrives out of the box. Nothing to change, but now you know where it is if it ever misbehaves.

That's the page. Notice what isn't in that list: there's no step where you connect it to a list, because there's nothing to connect it to yet. Addresses land in Contacts by themselves. In Module 4 you'll write the emails and join them up.

Making it look right

This is where the time goes, and where padding and margin earn their keep. Four things worth knowing before you start, because each one cost me a while to work out.

The gap you're trying to close often isn't on the thing you clicked. Elements sit inside rows, and rows sit inside sections, and any of the three can be holding the space. If you're changing a number and nothing moves, click the row instead of the element.

Padding moves the content inside its box. Margin moves the whole box. So if you're trying to push one line away from the one above it and padding does nothing useful, you want margin.

A background image will tile. It repeats itself across the page like wallpaper until you find the Repeat setting and switch it to fill instead. Free images: Pixabay and Unsplash both have plenty, or make one with ChatGPT the way I did.

Words on top of an image get hard to read. Give the box behind them a background color, then drop the opacity below 100 so the picture still shows through. Readable first, pretty second.

Then check it on a phone. There's a phone icon in the editor. Most of your visitors will be on one, and a page that looks right on a laptop can fall apart there. What you change in the phone view doesn't affect the desktop view, so fix it properly rather than compromising.

The page after the button

Build an Audience would have handed you two pages. Custom hands you one, so the second one is yours to make. It takes about ten minutes.

Go back to Sites, then Sales funnels, and open the funnel you just built. Click Add step, name it "Thank you page," and choose the type: Thank you page.

This time, take a template. It's worth seeing one now that you know your way around the editor - you'll see right away how much of somebody else's page you'd have been deleting if you'd started that way. Pick one, delete what you don't want, and keep the part that holds a headline and a line or two of text.

You don't have to connect the two pages. They're steps in the same funnel, in order, so the button already knows where to send people.

Now put your file on it. This is where they get the thing - not an email. The emails come in Module 4, and until then this page is the whole of what somebody gets for handing over their address, so it has to hand something back.

This is the moment your file leaves your computer. Module 2 finished with a PDF sitting in a folder somewhere - this is where it goes to live. Systeme.io keeps it from here on, and you won't need to think about where it is again.

Add a button to the page, then click on it. In its settings, find Action, and under that, When button is clicked. A button can do five different things there - the one you want is Download a file.

A small cloud icon appears. Click it, then either drag your PDF into the box or click to upload it from your computer, and press Insert. That's the whole job. Systeme.io keeps the file from here on, so there's nothing else to sign up for and nothing to pay - and when Module 4 sends the same file out by email, you'll pick it off a list instead of uploading it again.

Then say the two things that need saying. Here's the gardening one, so you can see the shape:

The long video was recorded before I worked out the better way to do this. Here's the part that changed - about four and a half minutes. It shows the mechanism; the words for the page are the ones just above.

The quick way: use one of my pages

Systeme.io lets one person hand a finished funnel to another. You open a link, and a copy of the whole thing lands in your account, yours to change.

I've built these for you. Pick the one closest to what you're offering, open the link while you're logged in to Systeme.io, and wait for the confirmation. Then go to Sites, then Sales funnels, and it'll be sitting there with your others.

Don't agonize over which. They do the same job and you're replacing all the words anyway - pick on looks and move on. What lands in your account is a finished funnel with both pages already in it, so there's nothing left to build. Open the opt-in page and go straight to the parts that have to be yours: the name field off if you want it off, and the headline, button and line underneath written in your own words. Then click the button, scroll its settings, and check the double opt-in box is ticked - it's the one setting you can't see by looking at the page. Then put your own file on the thank you page, and test it the same way as everybody else.

That link is also my affiliate link. Systeme.io builds it in and I can't take it out. Since you already made your account back in Module 1, nothing happens either way - but I'd rather say it than have you find out. I'm also telling you because one day you'll share a funnel of your own, and yours will work exactly the same way.