Are you planning to launch a new product or service soon? Creating a pre-launch landing page is crucial to start building hype, collect emails of interested customers, and validate your idea before fully developing your offering.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll explore what a pre-launch landing page is, why you need one, and give you actionable tips for creating an effective pre-launch page to set your product launch up for success.
What is a Pre-Launch Landing Page?
A pre-launch landing page, also known as a “coming soon” or “launching soon” page, allows you to tease and promote a new product before it‘s available for purchase. It‘s a simple, one-page website that explains what your upcoming product is, the problem it solves, and key features and benefits.
The main goals of a pre-launch landing page are to:
- Validate demand and interest for your product idea
- Build hype and get people excited about your upcoming launch
- Collect emails of potential customers to notify when your product launches
Pre-launch landing pages are an essential part of any new product launch strategy. They allow you to test and validate your product concept without having to fully develop your product first. You can gauge interest levels, get customer feedback, begin building an audience, and align your product with what customers actually want.
Why You Need a Pre-Launch Landing Page
Here are some of the key reasons every new product needs a pre-launch landing page:
Validate Your Idea
The most important reason to create a landing page before fully developing your product is that it allows you to validate your idea.
By sharing your product concept, features, and messaging on a beautifully designed landing page, you can understand if it truly resonates with your target customer and if enough people show interest to justify building it.
Build Excitement and Hype
A pre-launch page builds anticipation and gets people excited about your upcoming product launch. You can use scarcity and a countdown clock to create a fear of missing out. This makes potential customers more likely to provide their email address to get notified of your launch.
Grow an Audience
The earlier you start building your email subscriber list, the better chance you have of making sales at launch. Use lead gen forms and incentives on your pre-launch page to rapidly grow an audience of qualified, interested leads.
Gather Feedback
Your landing page allows interested visitors to provide feedback on your product concept, suggest additional features, and tell you what they like or dislike. This incredibly valuable insight can be used to refine your product before launch to better meet customer needs.
Align with Customer Expectations
Thanks to the validation and feedback a pre-launch page provides, you can align your product design, features, messaging, and marketing with real customer expectations instead of assumptions. This leads to much higher satisfaction and sales.
Reduce Risk
Creating a simple one-page website with a lead capture form allows you to validate demand and gain real customer commitment with minimal effort and cost vs developing a whole product no one wants. The less time and money you risk upfront, the better.
As you can see, pre-launch landing pages offer tremendous value for understanding customers, validating ideas, building an audience, gathering crucial feedback to improve your offering, and ultimately de-risking your product launch.
Tips for Creating Your Pre-Launch Landing Page
Now that you understand what a pre-launch landing page is and why your product needs one, let’s explore some proven best practices for maximizing their effectiveness:
1. Choose the Right Platform
Using a dedicated landing page builder instead of your main website CMS makes creating effective pre-launch pages much easier. Popular options like Unbounce, LeadPages, or Carrd have drag-and-drop editors, conversion-optimized templates, lead gen forms, and easy customization.
2. Create a Value Proposition
Clearly explain your upcoming product or service and communicate the primary customer problem it solves. Help visitors understand exactly who your product is for and why they would benefit from using it.
3. Demonstrate Key Benefits
Highlight the 3-5 most important features and benefits your upcoming product will provide for customers. This gives them a reason to get excited about your launch and share their email address.
4. Implement Social Proof
Increase trust and credibility through customer testimonials, expert endorsements, media publications, or brand logos of current customers. Social proof builds interest in your launch.
5. Use High-Converting Lead Capture Forms
Include multiple lead capture forms on your pre-launch page to grow your email list. Reduce friction by only asking for essential info like email, name and role. Offer an incentive for subscribing like early access, discount codes, or exclusive content.
6. Feature Engaging Visuals
Reinforce your messaging through relevant graphics, mockups, diagrams, screenshots, and videos giving viewers a peek at your upcoming product to spark their curiosity and desire.
Craft engaging customer success stories that your target audience can relate to, showing specific problems your product has solved for people just like them during beta testing and early access launches.
8. Highlight Positive Media Mentions
Build credibility by showcasing media publications, reputable websites, influencers, or industry experts that have given you pre-launch publicity, offered praise for your solution, or are looking forward to your upcoming release.
9. Promote Exclusivity
Increase signups by promoting time-limited special offers exclusive to pre-launch subscribers, like early bird pricing, first access once launched, entry into a draw for free products/services, and discounts. Limited-time scarcity tactics work extremely well to motivate signups.
10. Include Effective Calls-to-Action
Calls-to-action turn your page visitors into subscribers and customers. Test different CTA phrases, placements, sizes, colors, and designs to maximize conversions. Ensure your CTAs stand out visually on the page and clearly tell visitors your desired action.
Pre-Launch Landing Page Templates & Tools
To simplify and accelerate creating beautiful, conversion-optimized pre-launch landing pages, most leading page builders offer professionally designed templates.
We’ll cover some of the most popular landing page platforms and examples of excellent pre-product launch templates available:
LeadPages
With over 200 mobile-friendly templates for every use case, LeadPages makes light work of pre-launch landing pages. Their “Coming Soon” section has gorgeous themes like Launch, Reveal, Prepare and Release perfectly suited for new product launches.
Unbounce
Known for landing page templates focused on maximizing conversions, Unbounce features specific pre-launch designs like Infinity Coming Soon, Game Coming Soon, and App Pre-Launch catered to tech product launches.
Carrd
With a free tier and super fast, minimalistic style pages, Carrd lets anyone easily create pre-launch landing pages. Their templates like Launching Soon, Coming Soon and Maintenance Mode kickstart awesome pre-launch pages.
Instapage
Used by large brands and startups alike, Instapage offers a Coming Soon section in their template library with designs tailored for pre-launch lead generation.
Launchrock
As the name suggests, Launchrock provides stellar landing page templates optimized purely for pre-launch product launches and waiting lists, making it a top choice for startups.
This covers some recommended platforms and templates, but most landing page builders offer great pre-made themes to select from for your pre-launch product landing page and customize to your needs, allowing you to skip manually designing pages from a blank slate.
Pre-Launch Landing Page Best Practices
Beyond using pre-made templates as a starting point, let’s explore some proven pre-launch page optimization tips:
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Focus your copy on the customer’s pain points and desired outcomes. Craft your headings, subheadings, and body content around expressing understanding of who you’re speaking to and what outcomes they desire so your offering is positioned as the ideal solution.
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Speak to one specific persona. Trying to attract everyone dilutes your ability to connect with your ideal customer and properly convey value. Get very specific in your copy about the particular buyer persona that needs what you offer.
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Make vital info skimmable. Chunk text into concise paragraphs, incorporate numbered/bulleted lists for key features/benefits, highlight important details in bold, and break up sections clearly with whitespace.
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Guide visitors down the page. Use visual queues like directional icons, bold/colored CTAs and strategic element placement to direct visitors to fill out your conversion form.
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Promote social proof. Sprinkling in metrics, testimonials and reputable logos builds trust and credibility for your pre-launch claims. But ensure they authentically align with your product and business stage.
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Prioritize high contrast. Choose color palettes, images, and typography with significant contrast between foreground and background elements to increase readability and engagement.
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Eliminate distractions. keep menus, navigation links, and page furniture minimal to avoid distracting visitors from your conversion goals. Remove anything non-essential.
Pre-Launch Page Ideation Framework
If you feel stuck deciding how to lay out your pre-launch landing page or communicate your value proposition effectively, this ideation framework should help stimulate creative thinking:
First, document your customer’s pains and desired outcomes. Then map how your product will alleviate pains and achieve outcomes once launched.
This exercise grounds your messaging in genuine customer needs and makes writing persuasive copy easier. It’ll also reveal areas requiring clarity or adjustments in your solution if gaps exist between needs and planned capabilities.
Spend time completes steps 1-2 before structuring page sections and elements around communicating your ability to deliver promised value.
Pre-Launch Landing Page Checklist
To recap all best practices covered into a handy pre-launch landing page checklist:
Planning Phase
- [ ] Define goals
- [ ] Identify target customers
- [ ] Document customer pains & desires
- [ ] Map product’s value proposition
Page Design & Build Phase
- [ ] Choose conversion-focused template
- [ ] Craft a compelling headline
- [ ] Demonstrate product value
- [ ] Communicate benefits clearly
- [ ] Add social proof elements
- [ ] Include lead capture forms
- [ ] Feature visuals & graphics
- [ ] Add scarcity
- [ ] Promote exclusivity
- [ ] Direct visitors to convert
- [ ] Ensure mobile responsiveness
- [ ] Enable social sharing
Optimization Phase
- [ ] Review page copy effectiveness
- [ ] Check forms for friction
- [ ] Test CTAs
- [ ] Analyze traffic sources
- [ ] Monitor and improve metrics
Running through this checklist will help maximize your pre-launch landing page ROI by not overlooking important best practices. But don’t worry if you can’t nail everything pre-launch. The key is starting somewhere valuable and optimizing over time!
Pre-Launch Page Example
Let’s look at a real-world example of an exceptional pre-launch landing page from a successful startup’s early days.
Back in 2016 when CRM powerhouse Pipedrive was still up and coming, they leveraged a pre-launch landing page prior to releasing a new email integration feature to validate interest, promote exclusivity for their existing user base, and educate prospective customers simultaneously:
This page checked all the right boxes:
- Clear headline establishing the upcoming new capability
- Detailed feature explanation and value communicated
- Strong focuses on how it helps customers
- Lead gen incentives promoted to motivate signups
- Clean, professional design reflecting their brand
The result? Pipedrive generated significant buzz, validated high demand, prepared their audience, technical documentation, and sales teams, garnered major press coverage, and ensured a successful feature launch.
This example encapsulates the immense strategic value of pre-launch landing pages.
Go Launch that Page!
A pre-launch landing page is a must-have for any new product, allowing you to validate ideas, attract an audience, gather feedback, and de-risk failure long before you ever release your offering.
Now that you know what pre-launch pages are used for, why they’re invaluable for product launches, actionable best practices for maximizing their success, where to find tailored templates, and real examples – the only step left is getting your own live!
We highly recommend Unbounce, LeadPages, or Carrd for the most seamless, intuitive creation experience.
Build lean. Test assumptions. Make improvements. Deliver outcomes. Then get ready to wow customers at launch!
