Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Pre Launch Landing Page

Beneath all the excitement and hype, there’s a fear of rejection and failure which keeps entrepreneurs at the edge of their seats as the product launch date draws closer.

When competing against brands with specialist PR teams, you must ensure your startup attracts sufficient traction - an audience anticipating your product launch - before its official release.

Organizing email lists, developing marketing assets, and running social media accounts, there is a lot to do during a pre-launch campaign. But to make any of the efforts count, it’s important to have a product launch landing page in place.

For most startups, it acts as a digital gateway designed to funnel in visitors as potential customers or leads, until you have a functional website. The sooner your landing page is live, the earlier your prospects will get to learn about your product and sign up for early access.

While your social media handles spark up the noise, a pre-launch page can be used to tap into those early leads and boost conversion rate. Follow this step-by-step guide to create a coming soon page that converts.

What is a Product launch Landing Page?

A dedicated company website is good, but in the months preceding your launch day, it’s often effective to set up a coming soon landing page, especially for new startups.

A pre-launch landing page is a web page designed to project information, generate interest, and collect leads for an upcoming product or service before the official launch.

The concept first came about in 2003, developed by Microsoft’s IT department in response to disappointing office sales. Unlike a typical webpage, a landing page serves a specific purpose - to draw in people and convert their interests into a sales transaction.

A landing page serves as the starting point for audience engagement well before your product or service hits the market. It's an essential element of your marketing funnel that begins the customer journey early in the process. A good landing page constitutes the following components:

• A headline or subheadline
• A description of the product’s value proposition
• Supporting imagery and short videos
• Marketing offers to capture early adopters
• Social proof via testimonials from industry experts
• A clear call to action
• Lead capture form to drive email marketing

What Makes Landing Pages Important in a Product Launch?

For potential customers, a landing page provides the first impressions of your brand and the new product. It should grab the attention of your target audience and leave them wanting to know more - what they are set to lose if they don’t engage fast.

But more than that, pre-launch landing pages drive visitors to conversion by compelling them to click through a specific action. It could be anything from signing up for the newsletter, placing a pre-order on your online store, or subscribing to your mailing list. Regardless of what the end goal is, it’s important to have a strong CTA that leads to it.

Leveraged right, a landing page can help you build excitement and curiosity, encouraging visitors to return for updates. Furthermore, there are a few more ways a landing page can benefit your product launch:

• Create Buzz and Anticipation: Effective storytelling and compelling visuals on the landing page can create an emotional connection with your audience. Set in a countdown timer to add more suspense.
• Maximize Lead Generation: Product landing pages include forms where visitors can submit their contact information, typically collecting email address. In exchange, visitors often receive exclusive updates or other incentives.
• Foster an Audience: Landing pages attract prospects who are specifically interested in your product or industry niche. Getting them to register their emails will help foster a community.
• Gather Feedback: For companies gearing up for a launch, a landing page provides a perfect platform to solicit feedback and suggestions from potential customers and early adopters.

5 Steps to Set Up a Pre-launch Landing Page?

Unlike a new website that serves as a gateway to several webpages and features, a landing page has one simple message to convey - layout product benefits of your product in a way that compels the audience to comply. With the product yet to launch, the design and layout of your landing page have a much bigger impact in influencing the visitors in your favor.

From devising the content strategy to writing a compelling copy that elaborates the value your audience is set to gain, we’ve defined five best practices to create a pre-launch landing page.

Plan Out Your Landing Page

No matter what step of the product launch you’re at, make sure you have an end goal in mind. It’s important to determine what you intend to achieve as a marketer, especially when building a landing page. Clear objectives not only support effective planning but also set a unified agenda for your development and marketing teams to work for.

Since it’s part of your pre-launch campaign, a coming soon landing page is primarily concerned with building anticipation, improving lead generation, and collecting feedback from visitors.

But to get your message through to the right audience, identify their demographics, preferences, and pain points to craft a product page design that best resonates with them. Incorporate visuals and a registration form that you think your audience will better respond to.

Once you know the focus of your landing page and the audience it’s geared towards, you can embed a suitable call-to-action that leads the way.

Select a Suitable Platform

You don’t need a dedicated team of software developers to create a landing page, not yet. A pre-launch landing is a simple webpage that requires more of a creative eye than programming expertise.

There are tons of landing page builders like WordPress, Weebly, and Elementor available that allow you to custom-build a coming soon landing page without a hitch. Be that as it may, here’s what you need to consider beforehand:

• Assess Your Needs: What features and functionality do you need for your pre-launch landing page? Make a list of must-have features.
• Evaluate your Budget: Some platforms are free, while others come with a subscription fee. Be mindful of any ongoing costs associated with the platform.
• Mobile Responsiveness: For a largely mobile-centric audience, your landing page must be responsive and look good on various devices, including smartphones and tablets.
• User-Friendly Interface: Is it intuitive and easy to use? Look for drag-and-drop page builders that simplify the page creation process.
• SEO Features: Investigate the platform's SEO capabilities. Can you optimize your landing page for search engines easily?
• Ensure Scalability: If you plan to expand your landing page efforts, choose a platform that can grow with your business.

Customize the Landing Page Design

Being the first point of contact with the customers, your pre-launch landing page should mimic your brand’s visual identity. The fonts, color palette, and imagery should align with the overall style of your brand, so prospects can recognize your brand at first sight.

Most landing page platforms offer customization tools that allow you to modify design elements without coding. With drag-and-drop builders and unimaginable design page templates, it’s not hard to make your landing page look and feel the way you want it to. For the layout structure, here’s what you need to follow:

• Readability: From the headlines to the content in between, make sure every bit of your copy is readable and impactful to the audience.
• Whitespace: A random hodgepodge of words rarely makes an impact. Make sure there are adequate whitespace and contrast to keep the page from feeling cluttered.
• Hierarchy: Arrange your content based on importance and user-oriented value of your product. The headline, USPs, and CTA should all be placed in terms of hierarchy.

Write Compelling Copy

While most entrepreneurs narrow in on the design part and emphasize the strong visuals, it's always the copy that gets through to the audience in the end. Unbounce conversion intelligence suggests that landing page copy is twice as influential to conversion rates as design.

As much as you want to project information and benefits of your product, let’s not overwhelm the visitors with extensive product descriptions. Rather focus on keeping the contents concise, clear, and compelling. Here are some must-follow tips:

Ace your Headline: Considering the limited attention spans, you have less than 8 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention before they jump off. On a landing page, your headline should steal the show. It must be clear, and memorable, and give a one-liner solution to the audience’s problem.

State Benefits Clearly: Once they are focused and driven to learn more, lay out the benefits and unique selling points of your product. Let them know what makes your product better than the rest and how it will make their lives easier.

Follow Brevity: Simplicity is key to a perfect copy. As much as you’re inclined to use fancy dictionaries, keep the vocab simple and easy for an average speaker to understand. Keep the sentences short and avoid complicated jargon.

Preview, Publish, and Optimize

Before launching a landing page, carefully preview the copy to overcome typos or grammar mistakes and verify the design elements to ensure coherence. You don’t want to receive complaints or a negative rating during the pre-launch stage, it’s all about leaving your best impression.

Check out all interactive actions including the email signup, newsletter, and CTA button to ensure things are working as expected. Make necessary adjustments if required and prepare for launch.

Decide whether your landing page will be hosted on your primary domain (e.g., yourwebsite.com/landing-page) or on a subdomain (e.g., landingpage.yourwebsite.com).

If you're using a landing page builder, you may need to follow their guidelines for publishing your page. Draft out an FAQ section or a response chatbot to assist users without dedicating a support agent. Even after the launch watch out for criticisms and suggestions regarding your performance, and keep improving.

3 Best Coming Soon Landing Page Examples

While the step-by-step guide outlines every important aspect of a landing page in theory, learning the process alone won’t get you the traction you want to achieve. To stay ahead of the curve and beat the competition you need to follow the latest design trends. Here are three coming soon page examples to inspire your pre-launch landing page.

Airbnb

Airbnb’s vivid landing page talks directly to curious visitors wanting to run a side hustle by hosting. Testimonials from existing hosts, blogposts sharing unique insights, and a calculation to estimate your probable earnings based on your locations, the landing page features everything a prospect might be looking for. As for the visuals, Airbnb poses a vibrant pink CTA in the header that makes it easy for potential clients convert on the spot.

Harry’s

The pre-launch hype peaked when Harry’s published its landing page labeling “Harry’s is Coming”. Despite the simple two-liner message, the men’s grooming brand quickly became a hit, especially when it launched the second webpage. While the landing page featured no clear instructions about the upcoming product, it introduced a referral program which propelled a mass audience onboard. Harry’s stellar pre-launch campaign gathered 100,000 signups in a week.

Lyft

The ridesharing startup, Lyft has been growing in the past years through its brilliantly designed landing page and website. The webpage features a giant bold headline that not only grabs attention at first sight but entices users to join. It sets a vivid CTA saying “apply to drive” which compels prospects to join without getting carried away by the supposed earnings.

Closing Note

While the guide lays out the process to build a landing page from start to end and examples from leading brands paint a vivid picture, there’s no such thing as an ideal landing page. It all depends on your business niche, target audience, and what suits your brand identity.

Simply hop onto a landing page builder, select a landing page template, customize it to your brand or product, and you’re good to go. But if it’s all uncharted territory for you, feel free to rely on Prefinery.com.

FAQs

How does a landing page work?

A landing page is a standalone web page designed for a specific marketing or advertising campaign. Its primary purpose is to capture visitor information, such as email addresses, and guide users toward a specific action, often a call-to-action (CTA), like signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase.

What is the difference between a website and a landing page?

A website is a comprehensive online platform with multiple pages and diverse content, serving various purposes like providing information, e-commerce, blog posts, and more. In contrast, a landing page is a single, standalone web page designed to build hype for a specific marketing campaign, with a singular, focused goal, such as lead generation or product promotion.