People in the NFT community often ask if they even need a website if they are on a marketplace Opensea, the largest marketplace in the world. Isn’t it a bit like Amazon?
Yes and no.
OpenSea does have world-class SEO, but it has limited space to describe your project, so much noise, and half-thought-through ideas, that most buyers want to see the website. Potential collaborators will want to the website as well. And finally, a website is the only place to host white list, brand story and dox the team. While people still research companies after finding them on Amazon, they do much more research after identifying a project on OpenSea.
So what goes on the website? There are the basics you’ll need:
* Team
* Roadmap
* Waitlist
* Marketplace links
Here is a quick definition of each of these components:
Team
The about page that tells the story and who the team is, charities and partners, so buyers, influencers, and media can evaluate the authenticity and whether the organization looks professional and/or ready to keep agreements. Doxxing the team is the best way to reassure investors this will not be a rug-pull. Most experienced investors insist on this. For larger projects, you can separate out the information about the creator from the information about the project.
Roadmap
A white paper that gives all the technical details such as how many NFTs will be issued, more about the concept, problem solved and platforms and exchanges used.
A roadmap with the airdrop dates, white lists, launch parties, and incentives helps people mark their calendars for your significant events.
Note: you can separate these if need be, but both should be on the site.
Waitlist
Prior to and between releases, a waitlist, often called a whitelist, let’s people sign up for more information on releases at the moment when they are most interested, often having clicked over from a social post or media link. If a project does not have this waitlist, the marketing effort is wasted. Best practices is to collect some way to communicate, typically an email link, along with other optional features, ie an address for future airdrops, full name, or physical address if the NFT includes a physical item.
Gallery with a Click to buy button that links to Opensea
This button should be accessible on the home page and all key pages after launch.
Optional elements:
Charity
If a portion of the proceeds goes to charity or other types of funding it may be helpful to have its own page to show how the specific organization is chosen, and what kind of transparency your organization will offer around distribution.
Link to join Discord and Twitter groups
Countdown clock
To build excitement for the release, a countdown clock is a great tool
News
If your project has attracted press coverage its great to have a place to link to news coverage and to provide press contacts. If not, include the press contact on the About Us Page
But keep the navigation as simple as possible and limit your navigation to 5 buttons with drop-downs if you can.
Example:
Gallery Charity Roadmap Media Team
Next up: Incentives and collaborations
Summarized in part from Lewna Tsuki’s presentation on promotional strategies, with use cases from Web3Collab.org members.