In an ideal world we’d all like to launch a beautiful, fully complete and bug-free product or service on-time to a captive audience or prospective customers. But the truth is you’re more likely to launch a buggy product or service late to an audience that most likely consists of your family and friends.

Now addressing bugs and delays is beyond the scope of this post (sorry I couldn’t resist that scope dig!). But in terms of increasing the size of the initial audience you launch to; well you can do something about that. By taking a few simple steps to actively market your business prior to its launch.

One of the simplest and most efficient ways to do this is to develop and launch a landing page.

What is a landing page?

According to Unbounce, who should know a thing or two about them, a landing page is:

“In the purest sense, a landing page is any web page that a visitor can arrive at or “land” on. However, when discussing landing pages within the realm of marketing and advertising, it’s more common to refer to a landing page as being a standalone web page distinct from your main website that has been designed for a single focused objective.”

What type of landing page do you need?

In general, there are two types of landing page:

  1. Click through – the aim of these pages is to persuade a user to click through to another page.
  2. Lead generation – the aim of these pages is to capture customer data, normally a name and email address.

For the purpose of marketing an early-stage business we recommend the use of lead generation landing pages.

Website Landing Page

What are the benefits of a pre-launch landing page?

A well-crafted landing page will help you:

Adopt a user centred approach to develop successful landing pages

User centred design process

Before we define the elements required, let’s first identify what your landing page needs to explain to a first-time user of the website:

  1. What your product or service is?
  2. Why someone should use it (What problem does it solve? What are the benefits of using it?)
  3. Why should I sign-up for this now?

On top of this run through your target audience segments and try to identify the following factors:

Do not short cut this process, it’s a false economy. Answering these questions effectively will be key to you developing a landing page that achieves the outcomes you wish.

Elements of an effective lead generation landing page

To maximise the success of your landing page (conversion rate) you will need to develop the following elements:

In addition to this, you may wish to:

perfect landing page

Landing page tips

Content

Ensure your website’s content:

Design

Ensure your design is:

Other

Tools for building a landing page

If you have an in-house developer it would be probably quicker to knock this up. However, if you’re dependent on external design and technical development skills then you should consider one of the following options:

LaunchRock
Unbounce
LeadPages
KickoffLabs
RocketStart
Lander

Going beyond the landing page: each and every touch point matters

People’s perception of your business won’t just be influenced by your landing page. Each and every point of interaction you have with a prospective customer will affect how they perceive you and your business.

RailEurope CX map

So, don’t forget the importance of making sure each and every interaction you have with a prospective customer is a positive one. That’s why you should take the time to customise all of the automated feedback and notifications you provide customers.

For example, once someone has completed the sign-up form on your landing page you should send them an email to confirm their request and thank them for their interest. All automated emails like these should:

Show you care

Once you’ve captured an email address, we’d always recommend that you try to:

The best way to achieve this is to personally communicate (and if at all possible, talk) to each and every person who signs up. Yes, this is labour intensive. But the insights it can lead to make this well worth the effort.

Need more help with landing pages?

Just get in touch and we can help you launch your business, or product, early.

François Roshdy

François is director of user experience at Border Crossing UX. He specialises in helping clients continuously improve the experiences they deliver.