A launch page for a product nobody has held yet
Before launch, a physical product is a set of CAD files, a prototype and a date. The page has to make people understand something they can’t hold yet, and then get them to do one thing: pre-order, sign up, or follow the campaign.
This page is built for that. The product is a 3D model made from its own design files, the pitch sits beside it in your words, one chapter looks closely at the detail that makes it different, and a single button leads to the next step.
That button opens any link you give it: a Stripe payment link for pre-orders or deposits, your Kickstarter pre-launch page, a waiting-list form. On launch day you change the link, download the site again and publish it over the old one.
What your site shows
What it is, and what to do
The first screen answers the two questions a launch page has to: what the product is, and what to do now. Your headline, a line under it, the product’s name and type, a price or a “from” price, and the button.
The problem it solves
Then the pitch, in two short lines and a paragraph: what was wrong before, what you built, who it’s for — told once, in your words.
The detail that sets it apart
Chapter one looks closely at the part of the design that matters most — the hinge, the grip, the port, the texture of a surface — as your model carries it, with a title and a paragraph that explain it.
Colourways
Chapter three lists up to five versions, every one with its colour chip, its name and a sentence: the colours or editions of the first production run.
What the buyer gets
The order card holds your lines on what arrives and when — the shipping month, what’s in the box, the warranty, the refund terms for pre-orders — then the price and the button.
Have this ready
- The product’s name, what it is in 32 characters, and its price or starting price.
- The model: your CAD exported as .glb, outer surfaces only, with its materials and under 25 MB.
- Up to five colourways or editions, each with a colour and a line.
- Two short lines, a paragraph on the problem it solves, and a text on its key detail.
- The launch link: Stripe pre-orders, a Kickstarter pre-launch page or a sign-up form.
- What the order card should promise: shipping month, box contents, warranty, refunds.
- For the legal page: the company’s registered name, its tax number and its address.
Worth knowing
Put a date on pre-orders
Unless another date is agreed, EU law gives a seller 30 days from the sale to deliver (Directive 2011/83/EU, article 18). A pre-order is exactly the case where another date has to be agreed, so the shipping month belongs on the order card, before anyone pays.
Export the shell, not the assembly
A CAD assembly carries every screw, board and cable. None of it shows, all of it adds weight, and anything published on a website can be downloaded — the 3D file included. Export the outer surfaces only, lightened until the file sits well under 25 MB.
Point to the campaign before it opens
A Kickstarter project can have a pre-launch page with a “Notify me on launch” button, and Kickstarter emails everyone who pressed it once the campaign goes live. Send your button there until launch day, then to the live campaign.
Questions
- Can people leave their email on the page?
- Not on it: this kit has no sign-up form of its own. Its button can open one elsewhere — your mailing list’s sign-up page, a form service, or Kickstarter’s pre-launch page, which keeps its own list of followers.
- We only have a prototype. Is that enough?
- For the page, yes: the model comes from the design files rather than from photographs, so the page can go up before the first unit is made. Say plainly on the order card what exists and what is still to come.
- Will our product come apart like the demo’s flask?
- No. The stand-in flask opens into labelled parts in chapter two; a model of your own stays whole there, under that chapter’s title. The wizard doesn’t take a model of your own apart.
- What changes on launch day?
- The link, mostly. Open the wizard again on the same computer and in the same browser, paste the campaign’s or the shop’s address, download the site and upload it to Cloudflare as a new deployment. The button’s words can change in the same pass: “Pre-order” becomes “Buy”.