Take a look at the current ICOs steamrolling their way through the investment stage, then take a look at their websites. Almost every single time you will find something shiny, sleek, and hard-targeted toward the audience the ICO is looking to impress and serve. The images reach out and grab you, the data is carefully arranged to be easy to identify and understand. Why do all ICOs have a website and why are they designed for maximum data accessibility? If you know what investors are like, then it becomes immediately clear that an ICO's website is the first and most important gateway to converting investors.

Websites Speak to Investors

Sure, there is a lot of marketing work involved in finding the investors, getting their attention, and convincing them to click on your website link. But once there, this is where investors start making their decision to buy into your project or not. It's not the whitepaper, that's for their due diligence team. It's not even necessarily what your new blockchain currency is supposed to do. Investors, more often than not, decide what to invest in based on gut-decisions and your website is the way to speak to this more simplistic decision-making process. If the design is clean and bold, if the purpose of your project is easy to understand, and if you've clearly got all your ducks in a row, investors are much more likely to trust your team and consider your project a solid investment.

The First Stage of Information Gathering

But why is the website itself so important? While you could just make a slide-show of your website content, the reason your website is so overwhelmingly important is because this is where people go to get information about your project. An investor who has noticed your new ICO on a listing site may read the blurb and be intrigued, but that's not enough information. What comes between curiosity and actually taking the time to read the whitepaper? Checking out your website. And, interestingly enough, the same rule applies to casual etherium holders and miners who always have a few spare coins to invest.

Your website is where people will go to start their information gathering after encountering your ICO concept and getting curious. This is your chance to sell hard without the hassle of a hard sell. You want your website to leave visitors with the feeling like they understand your project and the surety that your project is the hottest thing on the market with a rock-solid plan fill a proven niche.

Crafting a Visual Whitepaper

Of course, the website isn't just a marketing asset, it's a real source of information that some investors may come back to time and time again both to check on your progress and reference the information there. For many ICOs, the website is used to convey much of the information in your whitepaper without going into all the nitty-gritty details or highly technical information about how you're going to do what you do. Remember that most investors are neither programmers nor financial specialists, they are successful business people who have come up from many different career paths and not all of them are enthusiastic readers.

Your whitepaper could be tens to hundreds of page long and reading it all the way through requires more time and effort than they care to spend on any one investigation. Skimming a well-designed website and gleaning the most important details, on the other hand, is fast, enjoyable, and easy to share with others. Use your website to convey the key elements of your whitepaper to make this important information more accessible.

Answering the Question: "But What Does It Do?"

Finally, when it comes to blockchain projects, the one resounding response to investigating an ICO is "That's all great, but what does it actually do?" Many people have a hard time completely grasping how the blockchain method is being applied to a real-world situation. This is the final great contribution your website can make to your entire ICO marketing campaign. Clearly and unmistakably answering this question. When someone thinks your project sounds cool but wants to know more, make sure one of their key takeaways is how your project transforms blockchain currency into real world value. When they can explain this to friends and family in their own words, you have marketed successfully.

When building your ICO website, you want the cutting-edge of web design technology to show off your tech skills, an attention-grabbing style to direct visitors to the most important information, and a complete conveyance of your project goals. This means you'll need a marketing team that understands ICO capable of delivering.

Ravneet Ghuman