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How to run a pre-order test for a product you haven't built

Run a pre-order test by taking real money for a clearly labelled future product with a stated ship date and an unconditional refund. Money is the only validation signal that cannot be faked by politeness, and a cold pre-order conversion above 1–2% usually indicates genuine demand. The rules that keep it honest are simple: say plainly that it does not exist yet, hold the funds rather than spending them, refund without argument when the date slips, and cancel publicly if you decide not to build.

14 days $30 to run6 stepsUpdated 2026

The workflow

0/6 done

  1. One deliverable, one date, one price. Vagueness is what turns pre-orders into disputes: "early access sometime next year" cannot be judged, refunded or delivered. Write the promise as something a stranger could hold you to, and pick a date you would still hit if the project took twice as long as you expect.

  2. Not in the footer, not in the terms — above the button. This costs some conversion and buys you the only version of this test worth running. Buyers who commit knowing it is unbuilt are the signal; buyers who thought they were getting something today are a refund queue and a reputation problem.

  3. A deposit or the full price, through a normal payment processor, with "full refund any time before it ships, no questions" next to the button. Do not spend the money — hold it. Beyond the ethics, a founder who has spent the pre-orders cannot cancel gracefully, and cancelling gracefully is one of the two possible outcomes here.

    Pricing GraderFull tool
    Input
    $79 full pre-order price, ships in 10 weeks, refundable any time, hardware notebook accessory
    What comes back
    Full price up front on a 10-week wait maximises signal but suppresses volume. A $20 deposit against a $79 price usually produces 2–3× the commitments with nearly the same intent quality — and the deposit-to-completion rate becomes a second useful number.

    Run it yourself — free, no signup:

    0
    / 100 — Broken

    This page is costing you money from people who already decided to buy. Rebuild it around the unchecked rows before you spend another dollar on traffic.

    Fix in this order
    1. 1.A real price is on the page
    2. 2.Three or fewer plans
    3. 3.The price scales on a value metric

    Weighted by what each one costs you. Do the top item, ship, then measure — fixing all three at once tells you nothing about which worked.

  4. Your network will buy to be supportive and teach you nothing. Send 500–1,000 strangers from communities, a small ad budget or relevant forums. Cold conversion above 1–2% is a real signal in most categories; friends-and-family conversion of 40% is a measure of how nice your friends are.

  5. Track how many reached checkout versus how many completed. A high checkout-abandon rate points at price or trust, not desire, and each has a different fix — trust problems are solved by a clearer refund promise and a visible identity, price problems by a deposit. This distinction is the main reason to run a pre-order rather than a survey.

    Idea ValidatorFull tool
    Input
    Notebook accessory, $79 pre-order. 940 cold visitors, 46 reached checkout, 14 completed (1.5%), $1,106 held.
    What comes back
    GO on a minimum batch. 1.5% cold-to-paid on an unbuilt physical product is above the workable line, and 32 abandoned checkouts is the more useful number — that is a trust or price objection, not indifference. Add a founder identity and a refund line at checkout and rerun before committing to volume.

    Run it yourself — free, no signup:

    Who it's for, what it does, what they pay. The more specific the sentence, the sharper the read.

  6. If the numbers say no, refund everyone with a short honest explanation. This costs you the processing fees and buys you a list of people who now trust you — several of whom will buy the next thing. Founders who quietly sit on failed pre-orders convert a clean experiment into the one story about them that persists.

Questions founders ask about this

Is it legal to pre-sell a product that doesn't exist?
In most places yes, provided you are explicit that it is a pre-order, give a ship date, and refund promptly when things change. Consumer protection rules vary by country, so check your market — the problems arise from misleading availability claims, not from pre-selling itself.
What pre-order conversion rate means an idea is validated?
On cold traffic, roughly 1–2% or better is a genuine signal for most categories. Conversion from your own network is not comparable, since much of it is social support rather than demand.
Should I charge full price or take a deposit?
A deposit usually produces two to three times the commitments with similar intent quality, and gives you a second number to watch. Full price gives the strongest possible signal from fewer people — pick based on how much traffic you can afford.
What do I do with pre-order money before shipping?
Hold it. Spending it removes your ability to cancel cleanly, and cancelling cleanly is one of the two normal outcomes of a test like this.
How many pre-orders do I need before building?
Enough to cover the minimum production or development cost, which is a per-project number rather than a universal one. For software, ten to twenty committed buyers is usually enough to justify the first version.

Next, founders usually do this

The tools used above have their own pages — Pricing Page Grader and Idea Validator — and the SOP SOP: Research and set your first price runs the same ground in more depth. Also worth reading: the Nine Lives Doctrine, and real verdicts from ideas kitty has run this workflow on.

kitty.build runs this entire workflow for you

Every step above — the research, the competitor read, the numbers, the honest verdict — is what nine specialist AI boards do automatically when you feed her an idea. She will tell you to kill it if it deserves killing. First idea is free.

Feed her an idea — free

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