When you’ve got a product launch rapidly approaching, the last thing you want to deal with is the hassle (and expense) of hiring a designer to create pages for your product from scratch. Finding people who are qualified and affordable is hard enough, not to mention trying to get them on the same creative wavelength as you!
If your pages need extra functionality, such as processing credit card transactions or a detailed and customized form, a regular graphic designer won’t cut it – you’ll need a web developer! Even if you find someone you can afford, you can’t wait for weeks for him or her to get it done – you need that page, yesterday.
When the countdown timer of your launch is ticking, sometimes you’ve just got to take matters into your own hands. Luckily, there are plenty of do-it-yourself Landing Page tools available for entrepreneurs who know where to look. Believe it or not, you don’t have to be a graphic designer or a coder to get a decent web presence up in time to nail your launch.
Here are four steps you can take to survive your online product launch as a lone wolf:
#1. Use a Landing Page Builder to Easily Customize Your Pre-Sales Page
For most entrepreneurs, the biggest hurdle to quickly getting a Landing Page up and running is not knowing how to code. You can overcome this by using an intuitive, point-and-click Landing Page for easy building — just make sure it has the flexibility you need to lay out your page the way you want it. Try ONTRApages, Wix, Leadpages, ClickFunnels, Instapage, or Lander. Many of these sites offer a free version so you don’t need to pull out your wallet to get a page up today.
Here are a few things to think about when you’re choosing from these Landing Page builders:
- How do I need my leads delivered?
- Although some of these services will simply deliver each lead to your email inbox for you to manually deal with, many of them can integrate with your existing CRM or email autoresponder. Look at your follow-up process and make sure that the way your Landing Page builder collects leads will feed seamlessly into your process.
- How much flexibility do I need?
- Maybe you’re happy to follow a basic Landing Page layout and only swap out your logo and copy. Maybe you have a more elaborate, lengthy Landing Page in mind with specific chunks of content arranged in a very deliberate order.
- Services such as LeadPages are incredibly easy to use, but not always the most flexible. In contrast, flexible builders like ClickFunnels and Instapage allow you to customize everything, which can sometimes lead to messy pages. If you know you need lots of flexibility but you still need your pages to be responsive and well-laid out, try a web page editor like ONTRApages that uses pre-built content “blocks” you can arrange any way you need.
#2. Take Advantage of Pre-Built Templates
Maybe you’ve got an artist’s eye, which makes starting from scratch in your Landing Page builder easy. But for the rest of us, who might not know where to start or what looks good, there are Landing Page templates available that make the design process so simple anyone can build a page in one sitting.
Of the Landing Page builders mentioned above, most have a library of free or premium templates you can choose from so you don’t have to build from scratch. For example, LeadPages has a marketplace where you can buy templates created by their partners. ONTRApages also has a marketplace of free and paid templates created by other users, including some gorgeous ones created by expert designers.
If you’re feeling a bit pickier (and ready to get more technical) you can also find HTML Landing Page templates around the web. For example, Themeforest is one trusted provider of Landing Page templates (and site themes). If you buy a template from a third party provider, don’t forget to make sure that it’s compatible with the platform on which you’re building your page!
#3. Accept Payments on Your Page
If you want to sell products on your page, a custom payment integration often calls for the expertise of a developer. This can be quite pricey. A really smart way to get around this expense is to use a product that already has these integrations built in. Create an account with a Payment Gateway provider such as Stripe, Authorize.net, Payjunction or WorldPay. (PayPal is an easy, affordable option; however, they require customers to leave your page in order to complete their transaction.)
You can easily process payments on your page (without the aid of a developer) by adding an order form on the page that securely sends your customers’ payment info to the gateway for processing and completes the transaction. Who says you need to know code to sell products online?
#4. Set Up Autoresponder Follow-Up
When you sell a product online, you’ve got an opportunity to follow up with your new customers immediately to thank them for their purchase or send an upsell or cross-sell offer. This can be one of the most effective ways to encourage repeat business and significantly increase your revenue following a product launch, but following up with each customer manually will likely be impossible…..especially if you have a successful launch.
What’s an entrepreneur to do? Use an autoresponder! You can create messages and set them to send automatically whenever a customer buys your product. You can even personalize these messages with data you collect during the payment process, such as their name, the product type or quantity they ordered or a specific date. This is one of the best ways to immediately make customers feel good about buying from you, which in turn will make them more likely to recommend your product to friends!
Getting through a product launch without paying someone to design your Landing Pages and sales process doesn’t have to be a frustrating ordeal. With the right online tools and the strategies outlined, any entrepreneur can launch his or her own product — no matter how tight the deadline!
Images: “Businessman presses button landing page on virtual screens. Business, technology, internet and networking concept. / Shutterstock.com“
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