A startup website that shows the product, even before launch
A startup’s first website has many readers and little time: the people on the waitlist, the first users of the beta, an investor opening it after a meeting, a journalist checking what the company does. All of them want to see the product, and a slogan over an illustration doesn’t show it.
This kit builds the site from your own screens: the main one on a phone, the desktop view on a laptop if you have one, and four sections that explain what goes into the product, what comes out and what it does best. Screens from the beta work, and so do screens exported from your prototype, as long as you say which is which.
The product will change every few weeks, and the site can keep up: change the words or the screenshots in the wizard, download it again and upload the folder, with no developer and nothing more to pay. It’s a website, not the product: every button links out — to your waitlist, your sign-up page or the store.
What your site shows
What it is, and the next step
The opening puts your main screen on a phone — and your desktop view on a laptop, if you add one — with your headline, the line that explains it and one button: the waitlist, the beta or the store. A second link takes people down to how it works.
The product at a glance
Four of your screens side by side, under a heading and a short text you write: the whole product in one view, before anyone reads a feature list.
What goes in
Your list screen starts empty, and the items you write — up to ten, a few words each — arrive in it one by one until it’s full. This is where you show what your product takes in: tickets, receipts, leads, tasks.
What comes out
Your overview screen, with your words: what a user gets once the product has done its work — the plan, the report, the week in order.
What it does best
One detail screen on its own, with your title and text. Keep it for the feature you want remembered after the tab is closed.
Plans, or early access
Up to four plans, each with its price, what it’s per, what’s included and its own button. Before launch it can be a single one — “Early access, free” — with its button going to the waitlist.
Have this ready
- Five screenshots at phone size (390 × 844, or whatever size your iPhone takes): the main screen, a list full and the same list empty, an overview and a detail — from the beta or your prototype
- A 1440 × 900 screenshot if your product runs on a desktop or in the browser; without it, the site goes without the laptop
- Up to ten short items your product takes in, two or three words each
- The name, a slogan, and two sentences on the problem it solves and for whom
- The link for the main button: your waitlist, the beta sign-up or the store
- Your plans, or a single early-access plan with its button
- A few lines on the founding team for the footer, and your profiles (LinkedIn, X, GitHub)
- For the legal notice, the company’s name and tax number — or yours, if it isn’t incorporated yet
Worth knowing
Prototype screens, labelled as such
If the product isn’t finished, screens exported from your design tool at 390 × 844 will do — but say in the words that they’re a preview, and which parts aren’t built yet. The first people to sign up will check.
The waitlist lives elsewhere
The kit has no form of its own, so the main button goes to a waitlist you already have: a form on Tally, Typeform or Google Forms, or the sign-up page of your email tool. The addresses then land where you’ll write to them from.
Build it where you’ll keep working
Your answers and screenshots are kept in the browser where you make the site, and that’s where you’ll change them each time the product moves. Use the computer and browser you work on every day, not a colleague’s laptop.
Questions
- We don’t have a finished product yet. Is it worth it?
- If you have screens, yes: from the beta or from your prototype. The kit needs pictures of the product to show it; with none, the phones show blank screens. One good screenshot is enough to start, since phones without a screen of their own repeat one you’ve added.
- Can people join the waitlist on the site itself?
- Not on the page: the App kit has no form. The main button takes them to the form where you collect sign-ups, and a link in the footer can point to the same place.
- We’re going to pivot. What happens to the site?
- You change it. The screenshots, words and plans all wait in the wizard, on the computer you built the site with: change what’s changed, download again and publish the new folder. It’s the same business, so there’s nothing more to pay.
- Do we need our own domain from day one?
- No. The publishing guide puts the site online at a free your-name.pages.dev address on Cloudflare in a few minutes; the domain guide connects yourstartup.com whenever you buy it.
- English or Spanish?
- One of the two per site, chosen at the start of the wizard. If your investors and your users are in different places, write it in the language of the people you most need to convince right now.