Turn your waitlist into a launch page with a real price and a buy button
On launch day the page stops asking people to wait and starts asking them to act. That means three changes: a real price, a button that takes money or creates an account, and pictures of the product that now exists. The rest of the page should shrink to support those.
What changes from the waitlist
| Element | Waitlist page | Launch page |
|---|---|---|
| Headline | The promise | The promise, now with the product's name in it |
| Main button | Join the waitlist | Buy, start free, or download |
| Price | Absent or "pricing at launch" | The actual price, with what it includes |
| Visuals | A sketch or nothing | Real screenshots, with a link to a short video |
| Proof | Who's building it | Early users who agreed to be quoted, by name |
| FAQ | When will it launch? | Refunds, platforms, what happens after I pay |
The waitlist's best sentence usually survives. What goes is everything that only made sense before the product existed, such as "be the first to know" and the launch estimate.
The parts of a launch page
- Opening section. Product name, the outcome in one line, the price or "from" price, one button.
- Show it working. Two to four screenshots with a caption each saying what the reader is looking at. Captions do more than any feature list.
- Who it's for and who it isn't. One line each. It reduces refunds.
- What you get. Exactly what the price includes: licence, updates, support, file formats.
- Proof. Quotes from beta users with permission, or a link to the launch post where people are discussing it.
- FAQ. Refund policy, system requirements, how delivery works.
- The button again. Same label, same destination.
Taking money on launch day
Anticode sites take payment through a payment link from your own provider. Create the product in Stripe Payment Links, PayPal, Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Shopify or Whop, copy its checkout link, and point the page's buy button at it. The provider handles the card form, receipts, refunds and, depending on which you choose, tax and file delivery. Anticode doesn't run a checkout or store card details. If the product is a file, Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy both handle delivery; with Stripe you'd need to send the file yourself or redirect buyers after payment to a page that has it.
If you have several tiers, a separate Pricing page keeps the launch page focused. There's one payment link per account, so every buy button opens the same checkout; offer the tiers as options there. See the pricing page guide.
Rebuilding the waitlist in Anticode
Used as a product launch page builder, Anticode works on the project you already have. Ask for the change in a sentence: "turn this into a launch page for Tallyroll at a monthly price, with three screenshots, an FAQ about refunds and a Buy button linking to our Stripe payment link". The page is rebuilt within the same design system, so the launch looks like the same company that collected the sign-ups.
- Screenshots
- Upload them to the build; the model sees each image and can place it next to the right caption. Video doesn't play on design-engine pages, so link to a demo video hosted elsewhere.
- Fixes on the day
- Typo in the price line? Edit it in place in the visual editor. Recent saves are kept in version history, so you can preview and restore an earlier version if a late change goes wrong.
- Checks
- The release checklist runs every publish check without publishing, so you can confirm the page is ready the night before.
- The sign-ups
- Your waitlist stays in the dashboard and in whichever email tool you connected; write to them from there when the page goes live.
Launch day checklist
- Buy the product yourself through the live link, then refund it.
- Open the page from a phone on mobile data.
- Confirm the price on the page matches the price at checkout, including currency and tax.
- Check every screenshot is current; old interfaces generate support email.
- Make sure the refund policy on the page matches the one in your provider's settings.
What Anticode doesn't do for a launch
- No built-in checkout or cart. Payment happens on your provider's page.
- No launch emails. Anticode doesn't write to your list; use your email tool.
- No licence keys or downloads. Use a provider that handles them; Lemon Squeezy, for example, hosts files and can issue licence keys after each sale.
- No traffic spike plan to manage. Pages are plain HTML with no scripts, which keeps them light, but promotion is up to you.
Questions people ask
Can I keep the waitlist page and add a separate launch page?
Yes. You can keep both in the project as separate pages, or replace the waitlist outright. Version history keeps recent saves either way, so the old version can come back for a while.
Which payment provider should I use?
It depends on what you sell. Files suit Gumroad or Lemon Squeezy, which deliver them after purchase; services and simple products suit Stripe Payment Links or PayPal; a store with stock suits Shopify. Anticode works with each through its checkout link.
Can I schedule the switch for a set time?
No. Publishing is manual: you publish when you're ready. Run the release checklist first so the publish itself is quick.
Sources
- Stripe Docs: After a payment link payment, checked
- Gumroad: Features, checked
- Lemon Squeezy: Sell digital products, checked