A great landing page can even make a campaign reach its goal on the first day.
One essential pre-launch step for any successful Kickstarter campaign is creating a landing page. This one-page website will be the destination for all your traffic with the purpose of converting those visitors into potential backers with a specific marketing message about your product.
This page should include the essential information about your project and a clear call to action for potential backers such as submitting an email or signing up for a launch day discount.
By building a group of interested individuals, you can start to generate buzz for your campaign before it launches so that when it comes time to promote your project, you'll have a ready-made audience to reach out to.
Here are some tips to design an effective Kickstarter landing page to guide you on your way to crowdfunding success!
A Kickstarter landing page should be one of the first tasks completed after planning your campaign and assigning staff roles. It must be in place before you launch your campaign. If you have followed along with our previous blogs, you will know how to create a plan for your campaign and understand the timing and importance of your landing page.
The landing page introduces your product to create user interest and help you create an audience for your campaign. Its role is to encourage visitors to respond positively to a call-to-action. This can include clicking through to a pre-launch campaign page or generating leads by building an email list of potential backers.
You can choose to design the landing page on your website or make it a standalone page. Although it’s a single webpage, it is potentially the most important method for gathering emails and helping you to create an interested community around your project ready to back you when your campaign begins.
Each design element of your landing page has a specific goal. Keep the page simple and concise and deliver a clear message.
Creating an attention grabbing headline puts the entire story of your product into one sentence. It should tell the visitor in a clear way what your product is and what it does at a glance.
The tagline or subtitle of the headline, is a descriptive sentence that expands on the headline. It should explain key information about your product and convey value. It should tell the visitor how your product will solve a problem for them or add value to their life.
Copywriting is the language that you use to speak to your audience. Keep it clear, simple, concise and to the point. Good copywriting build brand awareness, demonstrates value, and make a connection with visitors. Understanding your audience can help to guide your copywriting. Is your product a professional software application? You should speak in a professional tone that clearly outlines the features and value of the product. Is your product a super fun game that kids would love? Choose a casual tone that builds excitement about the product and creates a desire to play.
A simple yet powerful message in your call to action will tell users what action to take, which increases engagement. Therefore, include action language like "Be notified first when we go live," "Sign up now for a launch day deal," “sign up for a free newsletter” etc. By offering value in exchange for an email, the page is more likely to convert. Make sure users understand what they are getting in exchange for following your campaign, joining your list, or making a pre-order.
Use clear, concise copywriting to achieve your goal. In most cases, the landing page's main aim is to develop an email list. Therefore, make the page's email signup bar visible upon loading, with a clear call to action.
The landing page is the first chance that visitors get to see your product. Make a good first impression! Use high-resolution images and your best visual assets to demonstrate the quality of your product and attention to detail. GIFs can be effective to show product features but keep them simple so it doesn’t detract from the call to action.
Have you thought about the brand identity that your product will use? Brand identity is the sum of all the visible elements of your brand including logo, colors, and design that helps to identify your brand and make it stand out from others. Your landing page should reflect this and so should your campaign page. Having continuity from landing page to campaign page adds authority and trust.
Your landing page will perform better when it can create urgency. This can be achieved by emphasizing the signup or pre-order to avoid missing out on something cool. Adding a time duration to your offer or limiting the number of available discounts can build excitement and create urgency that translates into action from your visitors.
Now that you have created an effective landing page that converts visitors into potential backers for your project, you must drive traffic to the page. Using SEO best practices will ensure your page is on google and create organic traffic but it will be necessary to drive most of the traffic yourself, especially when your page is new. The landing page will be the destination for all the traffic you create through various platforms such as social media, online ads, newsletters, email marketing, contests, and promotions.
The work doesn’t end once you publish your landing page. Use analytics to track traffic and conversions. It is advisable to create more than one landing page using different copywriting, offers, and CTAs to determine what is most effective. Use A/B testing to see what elements perform best and then optimize the final version of your landing page for better conversion.
Once your Kickstarter Landing Page goes live and begins to convert visitors into emails, you can begin to build an effective email list that will be the basis for your marketing communications of your campaign. This valuable asset will be your greatest tool to build early momentum for your project and help power you to crowdfunding success.
