How To Make Your ICO Website Attractive For Investors

ICOs are born global by nature: they are built on top of a global blockchain platform, they solve a global problem or provide a global service. Such nature of ICOs makes digital marketing the fundamental solution for ICO founders to reach the international community. The very first step for any ICO marketing is to maintain a professionally created website, which is the official face of the project. But it’s not that simple and obvious as it may seem. The ICO website must be constructed in a specific way and should follow a certain template where the information is streamed to the investors smoothly as they scroll down the landing page. The following article presents you with more details how should an ICO website look like and what it should and shouldn’t include, in order to reach the highest possible conversion rate.  

First steps

An ICO website (or at least a landing page) represents the official corporate identity. The website should better have neutral colors, which are not too shining or too bright. Avoid using hidden menu items, better stick to a standard visible text-based menu items at the top of the landing page, this will make it much easier for readers to navigate from one section to another without having to open the menu every time before moving to other sections.

Once the fonts and menu have been strategically chosen and placed, its time to present the most valuable information about the ICO at the very top of the homepage. The best option is to start with an explanatory video:

1. The video should ideally be around two minutes. Long videos will distract the audience from the core message, while too short videos will be perceived as unprofessional.

2. The CEO and founders should appear in the video. This provides a higher level of credibility when the potential investors see an actual person talking through the video instead of cartoons.

3. The majority of the investors decide whether your project passes the first level of filtering or not based on their first impression from this video, so make sure that you don’t save the budget, sacrificing the quality.

4. You must tell a personal story related to the project; you should show your passion and strong belief in the idea or product in case you already have one. Only then, describe what is the issue you are trying to solve, how you are going to solve it, and how the market demand will drive the success of your project forwards.

Right after the video, you should have the second most important elements laid in a single row, one next to the other:

1. Whitepaper: Please refer to the following two links where we have covered this topic in details. Part1 & Part2

2. OnePager: This is quite different from the executive summary. In these one or two pages (in rare situations it contains 3 pages), you should be able to explain in simple and clear way, what is your project all about, the problem you are trying to solve, the best solution, the market research to prove that there is enough demand, and the tokenomics. Use high quality graphs in order to simplify complex explanations and boost clarification. Don’t underestimate this document, most investors will check this document right after the video. If it is poorly written, you could potentially lose many investors who would skip the project and avoid reading the WP.

3. Investor Deck: The investor deck is usually present during the private sale phase, where high net worth investors are attracted to invest a minimum amount of $50K+ for a high discount rate. This deck is very similar to what a traditional Investor Deck for a startup should look like, because it is tailored towards VCs, Investment Funds, Angel Investors, etc.

4. Business Model: The business model is usually available both for private and public sale. In this document, you need to describe how this project creates value. Provide few use cases, address the tokenomics, functionality and why and how people will be able to use your solution.

Engage them in the details

After having the potential investors watched the explanatory video and gone through part of the documents, they might have already decided to purchase some tokens. Therefore, you must provide them with a link or an option to purchase tokens; here you should present how much has been raised so far, what is the soft cap and what is the hard cap.

Investors may need to get more information before making an investment, so they will keep scrolling down. Impress them with the website, both the visuals and the content, as this will highly reflect on the image of the overall project. Note that a poor website with a great product may attract fewer investors than a high quality website with not such an amazing product. Even the most sophisticated analytical people get influenced on the subconscious level by high quality work.

Once investors have got a general idea of what all this project about, they would like to see more details, so there you need to present the following:

1. WHAT is the problem you are going to solve: don’t copy-paste from the WP in this section. Rely more on infographics and explain the problem in details. Be clear and use simple language to address retail investors. However, give enough details so that sophisticated investors understand that you know what you are talking about.

2. HOW you are going to solve the problem: don't be afraid to use technical terms or a bit more sophisticated language in case there is no better way to explain how you are going to deal with the problem. Compensate the sophisticated language with infographics to help retail investors understand your solution. It will be great if you can present a high-level solution architecture of your project.

3. WHY we need this problem to get solved at all: the best way to answer this question is by running comprehensive market research, which proves that there is a huge need for this problem to get sorted. You need to explain why people will be willing to pay money to use this solution. Provide the top three use-cases to help retail investors grasping the daily use of your solution.

Right after the problem, solution and market research, you should address the last few sections:

1. Tokenomics: Here you should mention the economic details of the token, the distribution of the tokens across different areas like Development, Marketing, Legal Operations, etc. Lastly, you should mention how the raised funds will be used.

2. The Team: It is very important for all team members to have up-to-date LinkedIn profiles, as well as to have all team members mention that they work for the ICO project. There is nothing more discouraging for investors to open a member’s profile and see few lines, no picture and not having the project name mentioned: this is a deal breaker for most of the investors for sure. The team must be split into three parts: The founders & TOP managers, The Advisors and The Development Team. Any of the three groups missing is a loss of credibility to the project.

3. Roadmap: Be realistic here, avoid over-promising to deliver within a very short period and avoid stretching the project way too much. Get help from the development team in order to assist you in creating a reasonable and reliable roadmap which will deliver according to the promise.

4. Media Coverage: Here you should list all press releases and marketing materials about your project.

5. Footer: The last section can look different from one project to another. Some projects have all social media channels attached, while others do it in a limited way. Both ways have its own reasoning behind. What you must include is the “contact us” block and the official registration address of the firm behind the running ICO.

Summary

Let’s summarise: it’s better to welcome investors with an introductory video. One picture is worth a thousand words, and one video is worth a thousand pictures. Most investors make their first impression from the video, while others will search for the one-pager if the video was not too convincing. If you manage to get the attention of investors, they will either start reading the whitepaper or keep scrolling down to get more information. Use infographics to simplify complex explanations and technical terms. Keep them engaged. Eventually, make sure that all your social media channels are listed, well maintained and constantly updated. Serious investors will check the number of followers and comments on the ICO social media channels and study the community behind the project. You need to be quite careful with Bounty programs not to turn off potential investors. Poor comments and obviously paid interactions will send away many people. Focus on high-quality social media content to generate organic growth and genuine interaction — but this is a topic for a separate list of advices.