By now, you know that you must build an email list in order to get fully funded on crowdfunding. An effective landing page will be your main tool to get you fully funded on your crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
Yes, this one page will help you to do that.
That’s because long before your crowdfunding campaign actually goes live, you’ll be using your landing page to attract potential backers. Therefore, the one and only goal of your landing page will be to capture their contact information (email).
While it might seem like a perfunctory part of your campaign, how your crowdfunding landing page is designed can make or break the foundation of your campaign.
People who come to your crowdfunding landing page have three options:
- Opt-in to your email list.
- Hit the back button.
- Close the browser window.
The one, and only goal, for your landing page should be to get people to opt-in to your email list.
This allows you to communicate with them for your upcoming campaign and launch.
So how do you go about building this all-powerful landing page? Is it hard to do?
Thankfully, there is now software out there that makes it dead simple to set up a professional and conversion-optimized landing page.
I’m talking about ClickFunnels, the simplest way to build landing pages out there (template included). Once you sign up to use it, you’ll be able to choose from a variety of templates to set up a landing page in a matter of minutes. It’s the one tool I actually recommend to every single client of mine.
Using this platform is a heck of a lot easier than designing an entirely new webpage from scratch! To make things as easy as possible for you, I’ve even created the Crowdfunding Starter Kit, a video course to take you through everything you need to know to set up your landing page.
Above The Fold: A Hack From The Time Of Newspapers
On a newspaper, the top half of the front page is called ‘above the fold’. Even though websites do not have a physical fold, ‘above the fold’ means the part of the website you can see before you scroll.
This section is the most important part of your website as it is ensured that everyone who arrives at your page will see at least that content.
The further down the page you put information, the less likely people are to read it.
Remember, the entire goal of the landing page is to collect emails before the launch of your campaign. Since everyone who arrives at your website will see this section that is above the fold, it is critical to put your email capture box in this section of your landing page.
If a user has to hunt for a form, he or she likely will not take the time. So as you design the page, make engagement effortless. Keep the sign-up box at the top of the page and in a contrasting color.
I also like to add an additional email capture at the bottom of the page. This ensures if someone gets to the bottom of the page then they will also be able to put their email in.
The Basics: 5 Things That Must Be On Your Crowdfunding Landing Page
Good landing pages make all the difference in crowdfunding campaigns. But you don’t want your audience to simply land on your page; a great landing page effectively converts visitors into leads and potential backers. In addition to a few must-have elements, landing pages must add power to their punch in order to drive conversions and get leads for your Kickstarter or Indiegogo launch.
The key elements of a great landing page are fairly simple:
1. The Image
The fastest way to convey an idea or concept to someone else is with a compelling image. Therefore, the initial image plays a vital role on your landing page.
The main product image, also called a hero image, should both impress and convince potential backers that there is a need for the product. Do not simply use a photo or graphic because you have it. Use the picture that best represent your product or campaign.
Let’s take a look at an example here.
Immediately, you can get an idea of what the product is and how you can use it.
In fact, this image almost “paints a picture” in your mind as to how you might enjoy using it after a long day at work on a Friday.
What should the initial image be like?
- Quality. It goes without saying, but this should be a high-resolution image that makes the product look good.
- Contrast with information blocks. Otherwise, the call-to-action will remain nearly invisible.
- Corresponding to your idea. That is, the picture you have chosen should create an understanding of what exactly you are offering.
2. Your Crowdfunding Landing Page Key: The Headline
A great crowdfunding landing page must have a simple, clear headline that not only grabs viewers’ interest but tells them exactly what to expect.
For the most part, assume that visitors will just quickly scan through your website. They’ll look for big headlines to give them a snapshot of what message you’re trying to convey.
You have about 3 seconds (maybe less) to compel them to keep reading.
I’m sure that even with this blog post, your eyes will naturally gravitate towards the headlines on the page before you started reading the text. This is especially true since the font size will be larger and text quippier than having to digest a full sentence.
Clarity is critical.
Remember, the goal of the landing page is to capture a visitors’ email. Therefore, the headline must be conspicuous and memorable. It has to create enough intrigue that a person who arrives on the page gets a desire to leave you with their email or (worst case) study the page in more detail.
As another example, here’s what the guys over at ExoArmor is offering:
Another key thing to remember is that you want to make sure that the copy on the headline matches the copy of the promotion that leads to that page.
For example, imagine you are running Facebook Ads and the advertisement text says, “Never lose your keys again”. When the reader arrives on your landing page, the main headline should also be related to not losing your keys ever again.
This is important so users know they have landed on the correct page.
3. Supporting detail
It’s important to have some supporting detail below the headline, but not too much. The byline should then describe the benefits of your campaign. It should be clear enough that a visitor should be able to tell a friend what your campaign is about after just reading the headline and byline.
As to the byline, its role is to convey the main advantages of the project and, so to speak, decipher the headline idea.
If you are struggling to condense your message to two sentences (headline and supporting detail), you need to work on your value proposition.
When writing a headline make sure you convey the benefit of the campaign to the backers. Remember that people are selfish. They want to know what they are getting out of the exchange.
Don’t make it difficult for users to understand what the page is about.
4. The Promise
Visitors must see a compelling promise or a reason to sign up (now, not later). Simply asking for an email address is not going to convert visitors. People are far more likely to give you something if they get something in return. Research shows incentives boost engagement. Explain exactly what benefit the user gets by giving you their email.
On the landing page, consider providing a reward to the people who give you their email address. The main rule of an effective promise is to focus on the needs of your contributors. Don’t say what you need. Tell them what they need (and, preferably, why).
In the examples above, the promise details the exact discount the project will provide upon launch day.
Although it does work the best (getting upwards of a 50% conversion rate on the landing page), you don’t just have to stress the discount that early backers will get. You could also do a giveaway leading up to the campaign (just be sure to give away a complementary or peripheral product, not your product itself). Or you could offer access to insider content, and more.
Do not force the visitor to scroll your page to find out what you’d like to offer. The first block must include a convincing promise – the reason why the potential backer should leave his email with you right here and right now.
5. The Call-To-Action
When you’re trying to build up an email list, the call to action is going to be to subscribe to the email list.
With our goal of capturing email list, your landing page must have a singular, call to action as the primary element on the page. And yes, this should be located above the fold.
What If Visitors Aren’t Convinced?
If users have not given you their email after the above the fold section and they continue to scroll, this action means that they are not convinced. We need to continue to build the case for them.
One thing to keep in mind as you’re building out your page is that people love knowing how something will benefit them. As you think through additional benefits, remember that visitors do not have long attention spans, so get to the point quickly. Always keep your target audience in mind, and make sure to craft a relevant message that appeals to these people.
Show Visitors Benefits Of The Product
In the rest of the page, you want to provide a ton of value to the reader. Don’t tell them the features of your product, but tell them the benefits. Potential backers don’t want to know why you picked neon yellow as the main color for the bike helmet. They’d rather know that the neon yellow color will help keep them visible, and safe while riding at night.
How should you outline product benefits so that your visitors are led to the call to action?
The first rule of thumb is to split these benefits up into individual items. It’s also best practice (and easier for the visitor to understand) to add a graphic that supports your point for that section.
In these sections, be brief, but convincing. Promise something able to make the life of a backer better or solve her problem. Also include a headline for that benefit section, a one (or two) sentence blurb to explain the benefit in detail. Basically, you’re convincing the prospect that the product does what it says it’s going to do.
When listing benefits it is important to think about the users on your site. There may be different types of users that you are targeting. Make sure you craft a message that is appealing to the different groups.
If you have failed to persuade a backer to leave her email address with your first site block, you need to continue convincing her that your product deserves attention. In other words, the next landing page block should be dedicated to the benefits of your idea.
Show Visitors Some External Proof
Social proof is one of the most important parts of a landing page. People inherently like to follow the actions of others (hello FOMO). If you see a bunch of people waiting in line for one restaurant, and the other restaurant totally empty, which one do you think is better?
This is how social proof works.
We assume if one person has made a decision then they took a lot of time into making that decision and we can follow their lead.
You can use social proof in your campaign and on your landing page. If you already have hundreds of people who have signed up to be notified of your launch, let people know that. You can use copy such as “Join hundreds of other backers today”.
Social proof is also easy to show through authoritative figures.
If you have a celebrity or brand that has endorsed your campaign, put them on your page. This will help build trust in your campaign by showing them others who are reputable have supported you.
Social proof can also be shown through social media stats. If you have thousands of followers on Instagram, Pinterest, or Facebook, then leverage that audience by highlighting the stats on your page.
Another block can be devoted to reviews if you have any. Maybe, you have already tried to implement your idea and have received good feedbacks – share them!
Reintroduce The Call To Action
You don’t need to beat a dead horse, but you need to make sure people have enough opportunities to take the intended action.
We know the purpose of the landing page is to get users’ emails so we can market to them once the campaign kicks off.
Don’t be afraid to put another lead capture form at the bottom of your Kickstarter pre-launch website.
This means once the user arrives at the bottom, they’ve been absolutely convinced by what you’re offering so there is nothing left for them to do but give you their email or leave.
Ideally, you have made a persuasive pitch and at this point, they are ready to trade their email for something.
Optimizing What You’ve Built
You can’t optimize what isn’t built yet, so the first step is to build the landing page with the key components above.
It’s fine if it’s less than perfect. In fact, it should be. The sooner you can get a first version up and running, the sooner you’ll be able to collect data as to what works (and what doesn’t work).
The important part is that it’s done.
Then you can start optimizing.
The next steps to optimizing your page includes A/B testing whether a particular change on your landing page drives the conversion rate up or not.
You should look to testing all five key factors that make up the section above the fold on your landing page. ClickFunnels offers a simple feature to clone your existing page, make a change and quickly launch a second version.
The platform also automatically diverts traffic to the two pages as you would like whether it be 50/50 split testing (which I’d recommend) or some other form of testing that you’d like to understand more about.
3 Things To Keep In Mind While Building Your Landing Page For Crowdfunding
As you’re creating a landing page, it is worth nothing that there are three additional things to keep in mind as you’re building a page that converts.
Design for desktop and mobile to capture potential backers from all sources
Responsive design is incredibly important in creating an effective landing page. Yes, the site should be beautiful, have all the necessary components of a high-converting landing page, but it should also look equally on a screen of any resolution and device.
This is especially important if you’re running advertisements to bring traffic to your landing page. By nature of social media advertisements such as Facebook, the vast majority of people will be accessing your site via mobile channels. They’ll need to be able to experience the same high-converting structure and design as those coming to your website via desktop.
Sidenote: Search engines are prioritizing pages that are mobile-friendly in the indexing process. Because so many people search and interact from their phones. So don’t skip on making your crowdfunding landing page mobile friendly!
Looks matter in getting people to give you their email
Your landing page should look clean, professional, and put together. Remember, a landing page needs to convey trust. Think of your experiences in the physical world. When you go to a business, are you more likely to give your information to a well-kept person in clean, professional attire, or to a disheveled employee with dirty, ripped clothing? To gather leads from those who land on your landing page, take time to create the best presentation.
Plain, text-heavy landing pages are boring. Colors, typography and consistently branded design elements are critical. Use a contrasting background and clear fonts. Both of these factors increase readability, making it easier to study the details of your project. As a rule of thumb, make sure that no one has to even think about squinting in order to read your website (via desktop or mobile).
Great design imbues trust and quality beyond the design itself.
Make your page load fast or risk losing vital traffic
An important element of your landing page is that it loads quickly.
Amazon found that it was able to increase its revenue by 1% for every hundred milliseconds of improvement and load time. Sure, this is statistics from Amazon, but it still makes sense when you’re trying to capture someone’s attention and email.
Even if you don’t have time to edit a bunch of code to speed up your website, there is one quick trick which will take care of a good portion of loading issues. The easiest to solve and often the largest reason for slow load time is large images. If you have beautiful, high-quality images, it probably means the files are really large, and this takes some time to load. There is an easy, free way to reduce image size. Go to the website tiny PNG and upload your images.
How To Get Started Building Landing Pages
You now have the knowledge of what content goes on a high-converting landing page. But, you are probably wondering, “how the heck do I build this…?”
By using a simple tool like ClickFunnels, you’ll begin to quickly grow your email list, leading up to the launch of your Kickstarter campaign. To make things incredibly simple, I’ve created a free online video course to help you get started.
The entire purpose of building an email list before launch is so you can quickly build momentum on launch day.
For a COMPLETE guide on how to get funded in 90 days, check out the Bootcamp!
That way, when you launch, you’ll have a whole bunch of raving fans who back your project on the first day!
We’re here to help you crush your crowdfunding campaign and fund your dream. Our team has helped creators successfully launch and raise over $13 million on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. We’re so excited to help you on this journey to launch!
