This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled What’s the best way to gauge interest in new potential physical product?.

Collecting emails? Getting potentials buyers to click through with a “buy now” button?

Hi Ryan - I’ve merged your two threads together, since they’re pretty closely related.

If your product is still in the development phase, I’d suggest gathering emails right now–and then you’ll be able to market to those people directly when you have pricing, release dates, and other details more fleshed out.

There isn’t really a single theme that’s best for any one marketing activity or type of product though, since there are a lot of different variables in play.

If it’s a physical product and you have a photo of a prototype (or of the finished product), I’d recommend choosing a template that lets you showcase that as a hero image. And if you’re going with collecting leads, you’ll, of course, need a form and you’ll want that to be prominent. From there, the colours/fonts/etc are a matter of design preference. More important than that is the content and even though this blog post is way back from 2009, it still rings true. Since it’s a brand new product, you might not have the social proof yet, but the other elements should guide your content.

Thanks Quinn!