Okay, so you’re thinking of doing a pre-order campaign, or perhaps you’re going to launch a new SKU soon as part of your top product line, and you need to get some inspiration on how to set up a product page that provides a good experience for visitors.
In this guide, I’ve curated some of the top reference examples I could find when I was researching across the net.
There are three key benefits of pre-order campaigns:
To help you understand the benefits and the funnel journey of what a pre-order campaign or experience can work, I highly recommend checking out this awesome guide on Pre-orders for Shopify I came across recently. Nails the type of content that I would be recommending, plus love the layout and depth of detail (worth the bookmark).
As you’d see with some of the other inspiration guides I’ve created, having a small checklist of key items and elements you should look for when going through references helps with identifying what you can pick up and consider for your store.
And that’s what I’ve done just below here for you to use as a baseline when going through this guide.
You may have some other particular checklist items you’re considering, but I hope this helps when going through the below examples.
Now in terms of creating these experiences, if you happen to be on Shopify, I recommend checking out an app I used recently with a client called Preproduct.io - it was actually picked as a top app by the Shopify staff themselves in 2020/21. Really good features overall, and the UI is clean when you embed it into your store experience.
Anyway, guys, and hope you enjoy this guide and you get some inspiration for your brand. Happy growth!
Accurascale, which is based in the EU, is a brand that sells model trains, locomotives and other accessories. Really love the UX and layout of their site.
I came across this pre-order page for one of their new trains, “BR Class 50”. Here’s why I like it:
Preppy is a clothing store for men and women, and they’ve recently released a good product range for kids.
They’re utilising a pre-order strategy here with their “Jessie Cricket Cardigan”.
My two main suggestions for improvement to help increase conversions for getting visitors to make a reserve order would be:
eCoy is a bedding and sheets company based in my country of Australia. I’m personally a massive fan of the user experience and overall CRO layout of their whole store.
eCoy recently had a pre-order page campaign for their Bamboo Quilt, and they’ve incorporated the strategies I would be doing when setting up a campaign like this for conversion.
Of course, really good layout of what a top-performing product page looks like.
Oh, by the way, make sure to check out the best eCommerce product page examples to get more inspiration on what some of the top brands are doing to maximise conversions (and maintain good conversion rates.
Mibodia is a wearable sports towel brand with the goal of providing towels so you can “sweat in comfort”. I love it (and being a fitness guy myself, I should look into buying these towels, haha).
I really like the UX and workflow of what they’ve done with their flow.
In fact, as you will see in the image below, they actually make the option to explore “pre-orders” obvious within their nav.
Within the product page above, big fan of what they’ve done here.
What I also like is the modal pop-up when you want to make an order. Good disclosure of information again in case visitors don’t properly read the FAQs/product description - i.e. “Ship in 49 days” (in this particular screenshot I took).
FogstarDrift is one of the leaders in the UK market for selling batteries.
With some of the examples we’ve shown off already, they typically have the pre-order CTA towards the middle of the page. Whereas, Fogstar has placed the CTA further up.
Gibus Cycles sells…. Have a guess!? Yep, it sells bicycles!
Again, this is another amazing store example that not only has a beautiful UI alongside other social proof elements for conversion, but they’re the gold standard when it comes to creating pre-order product pages.
Glazer’s is one of the top-leading camera online stores in the world. They adopt pre-order campaigns like this, particularly with new camera releases.
In this case, we can see they’ve incorporated good practices, such as:
The only suggestion here that would help with potential conversions is some sort of offer, whether it be a discount or a free gift.
A really cool company I came across recently that was pushing a pre-order campaign was Long Table, which sells pancake mix.
As we can see here, they were pushing for orders upfront for their organic maple syrup (which is probably the best-looking maple syrup bottle I’ve ever seen).
Milosport is a snowboard and snow gear brand based in one of the best winter/snow cities in the world (and most picturesque), Utah.
They recently had an option for customers to reserve an order for their ‘2024 Vans Infused Birch Snowboard Boot’. Here’s what I like about it:
Nico Blu is a fashion brand that sells many SKUs, including the likes of dresses, blouses, skirts, and jewellery.
They recently were taking upfront orders for their ‘Noor Long Black Tunic Dress’. They’ve included some good practices, including:
Play Better is an online store that sells items focused mainly on sports and those who are active, including products across watches, specific sports such as Golf, running and cycling, and other accessories.
Here’s a pre-order page example of the recent caddie they were pushing on their site. We can see:
Another eCommerce store I really like the UI and overall UX of is Olive + Crate, which sells eucalyptus bedding and other bedroom-related items.
In the above screenshot, we can easily view:
Tefal is a larger global retailer with online stores across the world. They primarily sell SKUs around small appliances for the home/office, as well as cooking/kitchen-related products.
In this example, they’ve kept their flow pretty simple.
You have to love certain niches, right? And this one is awesome - Steinbach sells exclusive nutcrackers from Germany.
In this example, they’re Steinbach is pushing for upfront orders for their “Shelf Sitter Bundle”.
I’m a big fan of their page layout:
Ready-Rig is a specialised camera and video equipment store made for professional videographers and film crew sets.
In this case, with the “Ready-Rig” Vega V2 Upgrade”, they actually ran out of stock.
Twillory is a store tailored to providing men’s clothing with a large range of SKUs, including shirts, t-shirts, pants, socks, and underwear.
They had a pre-order offer recently for their “Performance Long Sleeve Polo”, and really liked how they did their layout.
Really love this - they give the choice of doing a product bundle of multiple shirts through the “Buy More & Save More” offer.
When going through these examples, I actually collected quite a few more, but I really liked the ones that I’ve included in this guide. Some are better than others based on factors such as UX/UI, copy, and incorporating CRO practices. If I had to pick my fav three, they would have to be Gibus Cycles, eCoy, and Mibodia.
First and foremost, if you want to make a campaign successful and get lots of committed upfront orders, I strongly recommend having an offer to incentivise visitors to order. If you decide you want to do an offer, then some of my favourites that have proved to work time and time again would be discount offers, bundles, BOGO offers (Buy One, Get One Free), and free shipping. To really make an offer enticing, consider combining one of the above with free shipping (or incorporating a free shipping threshold).
In my personal opinion, social proof is absolutely critical for any eCommerce store, including these types of campaigns, to truly be successful. In the end, social proof does the talking (as it’s reviews and testimonials of those who love your brand and advocate your products). However, there are naturally a few factors involved of what makes a pre-order campaign successful other than just social proof alone, such as size of the brand, the budget you put behind the campaign, where you place it on the website to direct traffic, and a lot more. However, having elements of proof, whether it be star ratings, reviews, or video UGC, will go a long way to maximising your chances of decent conversion rates.
There are quite a few Shopify apps out there that can help with pre-order setups and stock alerts, but for me personally, I’ve had great experiences with preproduct.io, Amai and Vertex. All of them are reasonably priced, have good features, and are worth testing (each of them) to see which suits your needs best.
The list is endless when it comes to tactics you can try for distribution, but I think some of the key things you need to do if you’re looking to get optimal results for pre-orders include; First, show some love from the homepage, whether it be a slide carousel above the fold or a link in the nav bar (as it’s most likely the most visited page on your store). Second, promote via your email campaigns, whether through your newsletter or welcome onboarding series. Third, share on social media via Instagram (feed/stories), and other channels like TikTok. The fourth and final quick tactic I suggest is emphasise the offer within collection and popular product pages. Plenty of others I haven’t mentioned here, but these some certainly some of the core I would be focusing on, which is applicable to all growth levels of stores.
