Now that you have purchased a domain name, it’s time to launch your site! But what if building your site – and getting it right – is going to take a while? That’s when you come up with a temporary Coming Soon page that allows you to focus on building the website you want.
Leaving your domain registrar or Web host’s generic page up in a vague manner can be considered unprofessional. Take advantage of this interim time and put a well-planned placeholder page in place. A Coming Soon page can be many things, from an innovative way to promote the brand to a creative way to grow a loyal subscriber base. It can even be an opportunity to show off your web designing skills. But that doesn’t mean you should come up with any random looking page for your domain. There a few things which your placeholder page should never incorporate such as:
- A page that tries to collect too much information from visitors, i.e. phone number, home address, gender, etc.
- A page that doesn’t provide valuable information
- A page that excludes content such as a Contact Us section if a visitor wants to know more about the website.
- A page which is not optimized for search
Now there was a time when web pages were stuck in the early 90s. Believe it or not, many simply resembled a Word document with hyperlinks, no graphics, no images, and no animation. In a word: boring! The tables have turned in recent years. People are done with stiff and insincere approaches whether it’s for a website, landing page, placeholder page or even a 404 error page. They crave something that pleases the eye!
So what needs to be done is:
- Create a buzz right before a full-fledged website is being launched like come up with nice and catchy copy featuring your products that are supposed to launch anytime soon with the competitive price because coming soon page is like a teaser of things to be live. Take a look at the image below how SkillsUp has shared there coming soon page by adding the most prominent factor that they will give.
- Start establishing a stronghold on keywords and search related to your product or brand by targeting your most prominent keywords using Search Engine Optimization methods like link building for targeted keywords.
- Keep generating different leads and collect information such as emails to build a mailing list like SkillsUp does in the above image or add a sign-up section if visitors want to get newsletters about your products, a launch timeline and more.
- Don’t forget to lead people to a pre-launch campaign, such as Kickstarter, before you start selling a product on your website. Perhaps, you can also think of incorporating a short but exciting viral video of the product – the best example of free advertising.
- And lastly, do not forget to promote other linked websites or networks such as social media.
How Long Should a Coming Soon Page Be Live?
Well, there is no magic timeline stating that this is the perfect time period to launch a website. It mainly depends on what needs to be live on the site. However, coming soon page is not a permanent landing page – it acts as a basic preview of things to come soon! Most of the sites across the globe have the range of 30 to 60 days while big brands do tend to get away with having a coming soon page for somewhat longer as they require launching unknown products.
Of course, being a user you will never have a solid reason to interact with such temporary pages numerous times. Which means by the time they visit your site for the second time make sure it goes live. Otherwise, you risk frustrating a user that doesn’t want to wait any longer and might look for a similar product or service from a competitor.
5 Fantastic Coming Soon Pages
Bezar
It aims to empower creative entrepreneurs, showcase their products, and give them a voice. The company chose to offer an incentive in exchange of referrals on its coming soon page. They basically offered to give $10 to both the referrer and his or her friend. Quite interesting, isn’t it! In addition to this, the page also featured a call to action for sellers and brands.
Google Calendar
Imagine even Google calendar needs a Coming Soon page! Designed to come up with an intuitive mobile app that offered an entirely new set of features. Rather than collecting unnecessary emails, the company decided to ask visitors to watch a video as their primary call to action. Take a look at the preview video! Amazing, isn’t it! I guess this was the best way to make end users stay tuned to your launch.
Blogin
As the name implies, Blogin was meant to create a blogging platform for the corporate world. The coming soon page mainly incorporated a manager’s most pressing concerns such as create a company blog, share the news with the team, boost company culture, among others. Instead of focusing on the product’s actual features, Blogin resonated well with its target audience.
Parting Thoughts
Your “Coming Soon” page is not merely a placeholder! Make the most out of it to make serious progress in building your audience base and gaining traction on search engines, setting you up for a highly successful launch.
