How to Create a Great Product Launch Landing Page

How do you announce your new product to the world? The launch is a critical moment in any product’s life cycle, and deserves careful thought and consideration. While the details of every announcement will differ — after all, no two companies or products are quite the same — there are a few features that should always be present.

Among these: a product launch landing page. When people search for information about the new item, where will they end up? If you’ve crafted your landing page well, this will become the No. 1 destination for curious customers thanks to powerful search engine optimization (SEO).

In addition to SEO, a great product launch landing page is also a place to redirect people who click links embedded in other launch materials such as social media posts, white papers, eBooks and blog posts. This landing page is the place where you can tell the story of your new product and make a first impression, turning each and every visitor into a potential customer. As such, it’s too important to ignore.

Why Do You Need a Product Launch Landing Page?

Whether your new release is a physical item or a digital product, a wholly new concept or a fresh revision, the launch represents a critical moment. This grand introduction is your first big chance to set the perception of the new offering and define it relative to competitors’ offerings.

Ideally, the moment of a product’s launch will be the culmination of a lot of preparation and effort. Hubspot recommends a long list of activities leading up to a successful release. These include extensive market research, strategic planning and goal setting. Promotional content creation comes relatively late in the process, to make sure the resulting items are well-informed and strategically sound.

Landing pages are one of these content types around the product launch, and they play a central role. When customers look for information about products today, they tend to do it digitally. They use a variety of platforms and channels to search for the data they need when making buying decisions.

What will customers find when they look for your new product via Google search? Or on social media? If you’ve been active in creating suitable content, they’ll follow a trail of deliverables that answer their questions and present your items in the best possible light. Across multiple sites and platforms, those content pieces lead back toward central hubs — landing pages.

Landing Pages: Hubs for Conversion

A company’s landing pages are where potential customers turn their interest into action and actually commit to buying a product. Having these pages up and running from day one is an important component of a launch strategy — without them, the excitement around the new release may fail to turn into sales. Potential customers may not have anywhere to act on their interest.

Product Launch Pages vs. Product Landing Pages: What’s the Difference?

While product launch landing pages serve some of the same roles as standard landing pages — acting as SEO targets, presenting comprehensive information, giving customers chances to convert — there are differences between these pages and more standard product pages.

Landing pages are objective-based pieces of content. This means their exact form is determined by what you need them to accomplish. A product launch page is a splashy destination meant to introduce a novel new idea, while a product page is a reliable place to find an existing item.

Some features that you might find on a standard product landing page template don’t fit naturally on a product launch page, while others only make sense in a launch context. Letting the objective shape your design philosophy will make these differences emerge naturally.

A few points of contrast in landing page designs include:

• Pre-release promotion vs. customer reviews and feedback. Social proof is a vital part of a landing page, one that will convince potential customers to convert. Of course, the standard way to present this kind of proof — customer-generated review content — isn’t available on a product launch page. This is where tactics such as influencer marketing come in, with these promotional partnerships serving to spotlight items. Shopify noted that influencer partnerships play many of the same roles as user reviews, giving viewers a way to see the product in a real-life context and hear a trusted endorsement of it.

• Big impact vs. granular details: A product launch page can afford to be splashy rather than getting technical. Why? Because the standard product landing page will exist for the new product. Rather than acting as a replacement for the regular page, the release page is a supplemental piece of the launch strategy. The release page can therefore be based on images, video and other impactful media types. That leaves all the details for the regular product page, which users can click through and view — after they’ve been wowed.

While a standard product landing page is built for the long haul, your product release landing page is meant to burn brightly at a specific, critical moment in the item’s life cycle. A precise, on-brand message can help determine the perception of the new release.

Where Landing Pages Fit Into Your Larger Product Launch Strategy

Do you really need a landing page to launch a new product? Especially in today’s social-centric enterprise media climate, it’s tempting to think that a standard piece of content like a landing page may not be necessary, at least at first.

However, several of the key functions of a landing page apply, regardless of whether a product is brand new or established. The landing page’s overall role in your product launch strategy is as the central pillar around which all the other content orbits. Especially important jobs for these landing pages include:

• Broadcasting your messaging: Where do people look for official images, specifications and details about a new item? By creating a product launch landing page, you’re controlling your narrative and presenting the latest release in the best possible light. This is your first chance to show off the features and value proposition of a new addition to your line, so you shouldn’t miss the chance to make your own case.

• Boosting credibility:  When customers are verifying that a product or service is real and legitimate and can help them with whatever problems they’re facing, they look to the company’s own website. If you don’t have a live landing page touting the new offering, it may put off potential customers. A missing landing page would also be a missed chance to state the new product’s bona fides, history and pre-release hype.

• Directing search traffic: Early in a product’s life cycle, it could prove hard for customers to search for that item online — unless you’ve prepared for the event with an SEO-optimized product launch landing page. The well-designed new site can compensate for the natural lack of archival content about the new offering.

The product release landing page is a realm where you have complete control. For a high-profile product release, there will be plenty of other sources of information. Social media posts by early customers, initial media reports and other content will tell some of the story about the item. The release landing page gives you a chance to shape and influence the discussion that will take place in those third-party channels.

Key Components of an Engaging Product Launch Page

Putting together a product launch page that will turn visitors into new customers is a matter of embracing standard landing page design best practices while never forgetting the reason why the page exists — to sell the new offering as effectively as possible.

To that end, your page should include:

• Beautiful imagery, and lots of it: Take a look at any gallery of product launch page examples, such as the one on Pinterest, and what do you see? Product images. Since these landing pages represent the introduction of a new item, it’s important for them to show off the offering through stylish, high-quality product photos. Even if you’re selling a service rather than physical goods, your page should come with solid graphic design.

• A clear call-to-action: Conversion isn’t automatic. Even the most beautiful landing page is incomplete unless it includes a clear and convincing way for viewers to convert into customers. Launch Notes pointed out a few kinds of CTAs that can draw customers deeper into a new product — for a complex service, the button could invite someone to “learn more,” while other items will be best served by a simple “buy now.”

• Frequently asked questions: FAQ sections on new product launch pages may stretch the definition of “frequently asked.” After all, these are new items, so people probably haven’t asked about them before. Rather, you should put together a list of questions you anticipate new customers will ask about the product, overcoming possible objections preemptively. Hubspot points out that many good corporate pages, such as Canva’s, conclude with FAQs.

• SEO-optimized content: Though effective landing pages tend to be lighter on written content than other kinds of deliverables — blog posts and white papers, to name a few — the landing page copy that’s there should be optimized to perform well on search engine results pages. This focus on SEO will help the new product page cut through the noise at the time of release and quickly become the No. 1 destination when users search for your brand or the product.

A well-crafted product release landing page is a simple and elegant place for customers to find out all about the latest offering from your brand. It will give them all the information they need and nothing they don’t, to make sure they come away engaged, interested and ready to buy.

Improving the SEO Value of Your Launch Page

What does it take to craft an SEO-friendly landing page? This question takes on special importance when the page in question is a product launch landing page. You’re not just creating a page for one of your products, you’re building the page that will introduce that item or service to the world at large.

A few important tactics will keep the search value of your landing pages strong as you roll out your latest product to the masses.

• Careful keyword targeting: What’s the primary keyword you want to associate with the new product? You can use your search engine optimization tool of choice — such as MarketMuse or Semrush — to ensure you’ve included a selection of secondary keywords to help you rank well for that term. This careful and strategic choice of keywords is the bedrock of SEO. Expertly written content that integrates these terms naturally rather than simply stuffing them in is essential in today’s age of more sophisticated search algorithms.

• Related promotional efforts: The landing page itself isn’t the only piece of content that can help a potential customer find your new product. Related SEO-optimized pages on your website, relevant social media posts and digital marketing content — including video and paid ads — can all help turn your product launch landing page into the No. 1 destination for people interested in your product.

• Performance optimization: When you’re considering SEO optimization factors, there’s more to think about than including useful keywords. Popular search engines, Google among them, also prioritize pages based on factors such as their load speed and mobile accessibility. LinkedIn’s Product Launch community recommends monitoring site performance and tuning it up if factors such as website speed or bounce rate indicate problems. Programs such as Google Analytics can provide useful insights.

• Intelligent updates: While a product launch page is most important during a very specific time — namely, during the release of the product, that doesn’t mean you should post it and then ignore it. The LinkedIn community added that while monitoring the technical performance of landing pages, it’s also worth checking up on how they’re ranking from week to week, and acting on useful feedback or common questions from your users.

Your product launch is a well-oiled machine, ready to sweep up potential customers with and turn them into loyal, long-term buyers. SEO efforts are all designed to get eyes onto the rest of the roll-out, to make sure all your carefully designed elements live up to their potential.

Examples of Great Product Launch Pages to Emulate (and What They Get Right)

By looking at a few product launch pages that present new items or features in the best possible light, you can start to imagine how to apply the same techniques to your own upcoming release. The following are three that really hit the mark.

• Whereby Hybrid Meetings: Launch Notes named this elegant landing page among its 10 go-to examples of launch pages. One visit and it’s clear why. The page starts with review scores to establish provenance, then scrolls down through photo-rich descriptions of key features, followed by a clear FAQ. A clear CTA button sits at both the top and another at the bottom, ready for clicks.
• Madewell Summerweight Denim: This introductory page succeeds by not doing too much, which is why Email Design & More named it 1 of the 5 best new launch landing pages. An elegant graphic describes the features of the new jeans, then shoppers can immediately scroll down to the related ecommerce landing page and start buying.
• Comedy Bang! Bang! World: When comedian Scott Aukerman launched his own podcast subscription network, he had to thread a needle — the resulting site would have to have the light tone of the shows it contained, but also guide subscribers through the hows and whys of signing up for a new service. It does so with a genial intro followed by a totally serious FAQ.

Of course, an inspiring landing page example can only take you so far. As with all content creation efforts, the key element that will make your product launch landing page truly yours is your unique brand voice and identity. That distinctive style, combined with a dose of best practices, will set you and your product up for success.