StartupCafe

Over at my day job, we’ve been gearing up towards an internal product launch. We’re at the stage where we’ve put together our marketing plan and the next action is to get a launch page to sign alpha testers up.

I’ve been asking around for the best ways to do this, and here’s what I’ve found.

WordPress themes

Throw up your own wordpress installation and then install one of these themes:

http://wordpress.themeshaper.com/
http://spyrestudios.com/demos/coming-soon-demo/
http://www.ourtuts.com/free-site-under-construction-template/
http://www.cssjockey.com/freebies/custom-coming-soon-pages-wordpress-plugin

What’s the benefit?
Free (ish). Great if you just want somewhere to collect email addresses.

And the downsides?
You have to install a wordpress installation (if you don’t have one already). And you won’t have very sophisticated metrics attached to them. You’ll have to manage the users yourself (see prefinery) and its not easy to optimise your page.

Prefinery

A simple beta invitation management system. Manages the whole process and lets you analysis your metrics from all stages, as well as generate beta codes. Works for both websites and installable desktop based software.

Also Bronze plan allows for viral invites (see below).

What’s the benefit?
One stop shop for beta signup management. Allows you to quickly put together a page.

And the downsides?
Cost money. $49/month for the Bronze (most cost-effective plan) which allows for 500 invitations and unlimited signups.

Unbounce 

Create and publish landing pages – do A/B testing on the most effective landing pages to get users to sign up. Drive traffic to the site – all without doing any programming.

What’s the benefit?
If you want to focus on optimising your landing page to maximise the way that you get your message across, then unbounce is the system to choose.

And the downsides?
Costs money. $50/month for Standard plan (that’s 2.5k unique visitors) – probably best not to get TechCrunched …And you have to do your own beta tester management.

LaunchRock

Launchrock is a viral “launching soon” page. The basic premise of a viral launching page is:

• you sign up
• you get a personalised code so that your friends can sign up
• the number of friends you sign up increases the likelihood of you and your friends to move up the invite list

[read the fork.ly blogpost that kicked it off]

What’s the benefit?
Easiest way to create viral invites.

And the downsides?
It’s still in beta, so you have to try and get an invite.