Investor Website Checklist: What Your Raise Page Needs Before Launch

An investor website is the page you control and send traffic to before and during a Reg CF or Reg A+ raise: it explains the thesis, shows traction, team and use of funds, captures leads, and sends every serious visitor to the official offering page. Before launch it needs a clear story, honest risks, an FAQ, links to the Form C or offering circular, the legends your counsel requires, working lead capture, consent-aware analytics, and a fast, trustworthy build. What you may say on it depends on your exemption and on the stage of the raise.

Your marketing site vs. the official offering page

A common mistake we see is treating the investor website as a copy of the portal listing. They do different jobs. The offering page on the funding portal or broker-dealer platform (Wefunder, StartEngine, Republic, a DealMaker-powered checkout and similar) is where the regulated part happens: disclosure documents, investor limits, subscription, payment, the discussion channel. Your own site is the top of the funnel: it explains why the company exists, builds trust over several visits and collects the people who are not ready to invest today.

• The portal page holds the legal offer. Under Reg CF, transactions must take place online through an SEC-registered intermediary, and the full offering conversation belongs there.
• Your site is a marketing and education layer. What it is allowed to contain changes with the exemption and the phase: testing the waters, live offering, post-close.
• The handoff between them, the "Invest now" button, is the most important element on your site. It should go to one official URL, tracked, with no detours.

If you raise under Reg A+ with your own investment flow (for example, a hosted checkout from a transfer agent or a platform like DealMaker), the line blurs: the checkout lives on your domain, and the whole site has to be reviewed with that in mind. On our investor websites we plan these two layers together from day one.

The must-have sections before launch

Investors skim, return later, and compare you with five other raises in the same week. The page should answer their questions in roughly the order they ask them.

• Clear thesis. One sentence on what you do, for whom, and why now. If a visitor cannot repeat it after ten seconds, nothing below will save the page.
• Traction. Revenue, customers, retention, partnerships, product milestones. Use numbers that appear in your filings in the same form, with dates. Avoid charts without axes or "up to" claims.
• Team. Real photos, roles, relevant track record, links to LinkedIn. Advisors only if they are actually involved.
• Use of funds. A simple breakdown that matches the offering document. Mismatches between the site and the Form C or offering circular are an easy thing for investors and reviewers to spot.
• Risks. A short, honest section plus a link to the full risk factors. Hiding risks makes the rest of the page less credible, not more.
• FAQ. Minimum investment, type of security, how to invest, when the raise closes, what happens if the target is not reached, resale restrictions.
• Official links. The portal offering page, the Form C or the offering circular on SEC EDGAR, and any amendments. Keep them in the header, near every call to action and in the footer.
• Required legends. The exact wording comes from your securities counsel and platform. Put it where it is visible, not in a 9px footer that nobody can read.

The table below sums up the checklist: what each section does and the compliance note to keep in mind.

What you may and may not say, by exemption

This is where most redesigns get sent back. The rules below are a summary at the time of writing, based on SEC.gov guidance; verify the current text on SEC.gov and with counsel before publishing anything.

• Reg CF before filing Form C (Rule 206). You may gauge interest from the public, orally or in writing. Materials must state that no money is being solicited and none will be accepted, that no offer can be accepted until the exemption requirements are met, and that an indication of interest creates no obligation. These materials are filed with the Form C.
• Reg CF after filing. Advertising outside the intermediary's platform is limited to a notice that directs investors to the platform. Under Rule 204 it may include the statement that the offering is made under Section 4(a)(6), the intermediary's name and link, the terms of the offering (amount, type and price of securities, closing date, use of proceeds, progress toward the target) and basic company facts. Broader discussion of the offering belongs in the platform's communication channels.
• Rule 241. A generic test-the-waters rule for an issuer that has not yet chosen its exemption. No money or commitments may be accepted, the communications count as offers for antifraud purposes, and the legend and follow-up requirements depend on which exemption you later use.
• Reg A+ (Rule 255). Testing the waters is allowed before or after the Form 1-A is filed, with legends; after filing, materials should point to the preliminary offering circular, and solicitation materials are filed with the SEC as an exhibit. Tier 1 allows up to $20 million and Tier 2 up to $75 million in a 12-month period.
• Reg D 506(c). General solicitation is allowed, but every purchaser must be an accredited investor and you must take reasonable steps to verify that status. The site can be public, but the investment flow has to include verification.

Practical consequence for the website: build it so the copy for each phase can be swapped without a redesign. In practice that means a content model with "pre-filing", "live" and "closed" states, and a legal review step before any state change goes live.

Lead capture, reservations and email nurture

Most visitors will not invest on their first visit. The site should turn interest into a list you can work with.

• Interest form or reservation. During testing the waters, a non-binding "indicate interest" form with the required legend. Collect name, email, an approximate amount range and consent to receive updates. No payment fields, no "reserve your shares" language that implies a commitment unless counsel signs off.
• CRM, not a spreadsheet. Send every form to a CRM with source, campaign and indicated amount, so you can segment hot leads from casual subscribers. We usually set this up in GoHighLevel or the client's existing CRM.
• Nurture sequence. Several emails between sign-up and launch: the problem, the product, the team, traction, how the offering works, then the launch notice. After launch, emails are offering communications too, so they follow the same exemption rules as the site.
• Launch day plan. The reservation list is often where the first days of a raise come from. Make sure the email that goes out on launch day links to the live official offering page and has been approved.

For Reg A+ campaigns the reservation flow and the investment checkout are usually designed together; see our Reg A+ campaign services for how we approach that.

Analytics, pixels, speed and trust

Paid traffic is a large part of many raises, which makes measurement important and also risky.

• Measure the handoff. Track clicks on "Invest" and the portal's completion events where the platform allows it, with UTM parameters preserved across the redirect.
• Consent first. Advertising pixels and session recorders collect personal data. Use a consent banner that actually blocks tags until consent where required, and a privacy policy that lists what you collect. Do not record form fields that contain financial information.
• Ad copy is offering material. Every ad, landing page variant and retargeting creative must match the phase rules above. Keep an archive of what ran and when.
• Speed. Investors arrive from mobile ads on slow connections. Compress the hero video, lazy-load galleries, keep third-party scripts to the essentials and check Core Web Vitals before launch.
• Trust signals. Real company address, a working contact email, an SSL certificate, press only from real outlets, and no countdown timers or fake scarcity.

Updates during the raise and investor relations after it

A raise that runs for weeks or months needs a reason for people to come back. Plan an updates block on the site from the start: product milestones, new partnerships, funding progress. Anything material should also be reflected on the official offering page and, where required, in an amendment to the filing; the site should never be the only place investors learn about a change.

After the close, the investor website does not go away, it turns into an investor relations section. Under Reg CF, an issuer that has sold securities must file Form C-AR and post it on its website no later than 120 days after the end of its fiscal year, until one of the conditions for ending reporting applies. Reg A+ Tier 2 issuers have their own ongoing reports. A simple IR hub with reports, shareholder updates, a contact for the transfer agent and a subscription for news keeps that obligation easy to meet. Our investor relations work covers this stage.

What we recommend

The decision rule is simple: if a sentence on your site would make sense on the portal's offering page, it should be checked against the exemption rules, and if a button leads to money changing hands, it should lead to the official offering page and nowhere else. Build the site around three states (testing the waters, live, closed), connect every form to a CRM, put consent before pixels, and get counsel's sign-off on each state before it goes live. Start four to six weeks before you plan to file, so the site, the nurture sequence and the legal review are ready together instead of one blocking the other.

This article is general information, not legal or investment advice. Offering compliance stays with your securities counsel and funding portal.