Having a pre-launch landing page to collect emails of early customers is becoming a common practice for most early stage start-ups. Not long ago, a beautifully designed holding page with a cryptic sentence about the business and a field to submit email was enough. Not anymore. To break through the noise and persuade people to leave their email address you have to be very clear what the value proposition of the business is and how your potential customers will benefit from it.
From a UX point of view here’re my 5 golden rules of successful landing pages:
1. You need ONE Call to Action
When it comes to a pre-launch landing page where your main objective is to collect this extremely valuable email address, you don’t need any distraction. Forget about Read More, More Info, Details buttons. You only need Submit or Notify Me, or however you want to call your main CTA, but it has to be only one possible action button. Make sure that your social media links are also not too distractive. There are other UX and UI tricks to visualise and link to the rest of the pages.
2. Clear Value Proposition
Have no more than 2 sentences explaining the product and make sure they communicate your brand value proposition in a simple and clear way. You need one headline and one subheading, and the CTA. If you can’t shorten it to that, try again.
3. Clean UX and UI
Even if your product is a very visual animation game, the pre-launch landing page has to be as clean and simple as possible. Remove all the distractions and clutter. If the design element doesn’t have a purpose, bin it.
4. Pick the details carefully
Be smart when choosing how much information you should reveal and how to present it. People should be able to understand how your product works, but they don’t need to know the nitty-gritty of every feature. Make sure the content and graphics are balanced and positioned below the main VP and CTA.
5. Test
Some would say it’s too early to start A/B testing with the pre-launch landing page and I agree, but only if you don’t have any resources or time. There’re a number of tools to facilitate the A/B testing, so I’d suggest run a test with a few of options and stick to the one that’s converting best.
Happy to hear your thoughts on the best UX design tricks and tips for pre-launch landing pages.