Website – Part A (Theory & Structure)
1. Explain the difference between a brand website and a landing page in a pre-retail tech launch. (8 marks)
A brand website and a landing page are two different tools that serve two different strategic purposes when it comes down to certain objectives. Understanding the specific role each one plays, and why those roles do not interlink with one another is important in creating an effective campaign that aligns with the brands objectives.
A brand website is a permanent, multi-page tool that communicates your company’s brand identity to multiple different users that belong in different audience groups at the same time. A brand website is not built for a single campaign. It is built to exist as a long-term online home for your brand on the internet for users to access at any time on the web. For example, when Apple’s Vision Pro shipped to retail, Apple’s website was dedicated to pages that went over the product’s design, technical specifications, the company’s history, and detailed press resources. None of that content was designed to force a single action. It was designed to serve all the different audiences who clicked on these pages with different questions and different levels of knowledge about the Apple Vision Pros. Every brand website has an open navigation that lets these audiences choose their own path through their content based on what each of their needs are. A journalist clicks toward the press page. An investor reads your about section. A consumer watches a product video. A retailer looks at your distribution and contact information. Every one of these actions matters for a pre-launch campaign because each page is providing information for all these different audiences that creates awareness about the Vision Pros before a single unit reaches a shelf and is released to the public. A brand website also establishes to the user it’s legitimacy and authority within Googles search engines based on where they appear in the rankings. If the brands website is one of first results that appears than most users will gravitate towards clicking that website because it signals trust based on how the design/layout of their website, the helpful/relevant content on the page, and many on/off page factors that Google takes into account for a brand to be visible to the user. If Google trusts the website then the user can too which is why they have them ranked high in the search inquiry since their website aligns with the users needs in what they are searching. This is why having a website established in the pre- launch campaign phase is important because since the product does not yet exist in stores and consumers cannot physically evaluate it, which is why your brand website is one of the only trust indicators to the users that you can completely control.
A landing page is made for one single purpose that is meant to convert one specific type of user into one specific action and nothing else. In the pre-launch phase, that action is targeting toward capturing an email address through a waitlist signup, a pre-order tactic, or an early access registration form. All the contents on the landing page only exists to fulfil that conversion goal of getting the user to perform the desired action. The most important element of a landing page is how it has no navigation that can bring you anywhere else. There is no menu or links to other pages. The whole purpose is for the user to land on this page and be faced with one choice, signing up or leaving. This is a strategic decision that is made to convert the user into the desired action without clicking away from the initial conversion path because they were given somewhere else to go based on links that take them off that landing page that is only created to keep them there. The strategic function that landing pages are made for in pre-launch phases is demand. For example, when you approach a retailer like Best Buy with a request for your product to be placed on their shelves, you are asking them to make a financial commitment to a product that has no sales history. They have no data to assess whether your product will move off their shelves or stay there. Most retailers in this case will be skeptical in your offer because the cost of giving up shelf space to a product that fails is not just about the lost revenue but also the missed out opportunity cost of the shelf space that could have been given to a product that would generate real results. A waitlist of 25,000 email addresses from people who actively and consensually signed up before your product shipped and released changes that conversation. You are no longer asking a retailer to take a risk on a unproven product because you have data that shows it is in demand before it is even put on shelves. The evidence is the 25,000 people that have already confirmed that they want this product. All 25,000 people have already made a small investment into the business by signing up for news about the business that they can stay up to date with and make the full commitment into buying something which is why they received the landing page in the first place because they were specifically targeted to do that action by getting an exclusive offer that only is achieved by being on the email list as no one else can access the landing page since something brought them to the page as opposed to finding it somewhere on the website that is accessible to everyone that defeats the purpose of what a landing page is. This is why advertisements are made to get the audience to click on the link and buy what the ad is selling. It directly sends them to a dedicated landing page with a single conversion goal and no navigation options that has provided a conversion percentage that can be assessed because there is only one action that the user can do as opposed to a the brands website as a whole where they can click on different navigation tabs that shows them different things that doesn’t provide any data on whether or not they actually want to buy the product.
Both websites and landing pages work together to solve problems that compliment each other based on the solution that each can provide. Running only a landing page without a brand website results in loss of credibility. A user can land on your landing page that is well put together to get them to convert but before they subscribe to the email list, they want to verify that you are a real company. They search your brand name in Google and don’t see any website that corresponds to the brand’s existence. Most users will click off and not return because there is no proof that the landing page is related to a business that is selling that product to begin with. Running a website without a landing page is creating awareness without actually capturing the user. You have no way of capturing their contact information, no way to follow up with them on launch day, no waitlist data to show retailers, and no evidence that this is in demand. The website served as the credibility but generated no list or conversions because there is no exclusivity or urgency dedicated to getting the user to move further in the commitment process since they are presented with content that doesn’t resonate with them.
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