You’re closer than you think to a career in tech. Our grads have launched rewarding new careers — you can too.
View Our Jobs ReportThe following is a guest post by Adam Waxman and originally appeared on his blog. Adam is currently a student at The Flatiron School. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Over the last year I’ve been working on a mobile app called Flock. To get ready for our launch, I created a new landing page to allow people to easily download the app. On a desktop browser, it allows people to input their phone number and receive a text on their phone with a link to download the app. On a mobile device, it allows people to download the app directly.

The Ingredients
Twilio: An API to make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages. I used this service to send a text message to desktop users containing a link to download the app.
fancyBox: Tool for displaying images, html content and multi-media in a Mac-style “lightbox” that floats overtop of web page
Creative Buttons: Button inspirations from Codrops
SASS/Bourbon/Neat:
Sending a Text
My first step was to get the text message part of the landing page working. High level I wanted to be able to send users a text message with a link to download Flock on their iPhone. To do this, I created a form to collect a user’s phone number, and then utilized a Twilio gem to send a message to the collected number.
Using the ‘twilio-ruby’ gem I was able to get a text message up and running relatively quickly by creating a form and adding the Twilio logic in the route associated with that form.

Making it Look Pretty Part 1: Adding a fancyBox
I wanted to use javascript on the “SEND ME A LINK” button so that the website didn’t have to load a new page to display the number form. Not wanting to re-invent the wheel, I looked around for js plugins and ended up choosing fancyBox, a library to easily implement “lightbox” popups.
To implement this plugin, there were a couple main steps:
Create a hidden div containing the number form
Link a button to the hidden div
Add the necessary js from fancyBox

Making it Look Pretty Part 2: A Fancy Button

Once I got the fancyBox working, I wanted to customize the styling of the form. Earlier in the week I stumbled across an awesome link from Codrops that had examples of many different buttons using CSS. I chose my favorite and added the appropriate CSS.
The button I chose gives a 3D effect by creating a shadow and making the shadow smaller / shifting down the button while hovering over the button, and removing the shadow all together when clicked.

Making it Look Pretty Part 3: Responsive Design
Once I got the button looking sharp on a desktop browser, I then wanted to make the page responsive for mobile users. Not only did I want to change the styling so it looked good on a phone, but I also wanted to change the main button so that when a user opens the site on their iPhone the “SEND ME A LINK” button turns into a “DOWNLOAD THE APP” button that takes him or her directly to the App Store.
I made the button (and rest of the website) responsive using Bourbon and Neat. Bourbon is a mixin library for SASS, and Neat is a grid framework for SASS with Bourbon.

And that’s how to create a simple landing page for a mobile app!

Flatiron School
Blog Post Author
Since we opened our doors in 2012, thousands of students have joined Flatiron School to launch new careers in tech.

Find the perfect course for you across our in-person and online programs designed to power your career change.

Connect with students and staff at meetups, lectures, and demos – on campus and online.

Have a question about our programs? Our admissions team is here to help.