Setting up a coming soon page on your website is always a great idea. It can help you generate hype around what is to come and give you quality leads. However, just like with anything else, there are things you need to be mindful of if you want to get the best possible results.
Some elements of a coming soon page have been proven to be much more efficient and beneficial to websites than others, so you need to make sure your page has them, too. Therefore, here are the top 7 must-have things on your coming soon page you need for exceptional results.
Subscription form
Apart from notifying visitors that the page they’re visiting will soon be operational, your coming soon page can (and should) also do some serious work for you.
One of the most elementary things it should have is a subscription form – implement this and you will start acquiring contacts and finding your way to potential customers even before the page is launched.
An incredibly important thing, especially if you’ve decided to open an online shop. By implementing this, you will be able to contact those who have expressed interest in you and your website directly, and you will be growing your email list like a pro!
Images
It’s much easier to make the visitor want to stay on your page and explore it further if it looks good. Uploading a beautiful image can make a whole lot of difference when it comes to the impression it leaves on anyone who sees it.
Just think about it, it’s a completely different thing if you yourself come to a page that just says “COMING SOON” or if that page has an image and a bunch of other interesting features.
Maybe you put an image that says something about the content your page will soon have.
That can jump-start the visitors’ imagination, especially if you put up an image of, for example, a part of your upcoming product. Think it through and find the right image – it will make people interested and improve the rate at which they subscribe.
Video background
To further entice your visitors to subscribe to you, you can put an attractive video to play on your coming soon page. It’s always a good idea that this is a video of something related to your product (if that’s what you’re preparing, of course), but you can easily put just about any video there.
The important thing is to keep the visitor occupied and interested so that they will remember you even when they leave the page.
Countdown and progress bars
Just saying that something is “coming soon” doesn’t provide your visitors with a lot of information, does it? That’s why setting up countdown timers and/or progress bars can be of great help – they will tell the people who see them much more precisely when they can expect the page to launch.
Therefore, they will know exactly when they should come back to your website to find that new page operational.
If you don’t give them a time frame, they can simply forget about your page because they won’t have a sense of urgency that they need to come back and check everything out.
Both countdown timers and progress bars serve this purpose well, although you may prefer to set the timer if you know the exact time of the launch.
Allow “secret” access
But coming soon pages can be used in a much narrower scope. This can be useful if you need to show somebody what you’ve been working on, if you’re a developer, for example, and want to show just your client how far you’ve come.
Plugins like Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode allow you to send out unique links that will allow people who click on them to circumvent the coming soon page and head straight to the website under construction.
There are actually several ways to do this, as you can also make a list of IP addresses to which you give permission to see the work in progress, or you can let the people who log in do the same.
In any case, coming soon pages are not rigid, and with the right tool/plugin, you can modify them easily to show exactly what you want to show.
Keep the messages clear
When you’re setting up a coming soon page, remember that this page is not meant to contain a whole lot of text. Yes, you can relay some info through the images and the videos you include in it, but the text should be kept to a minimum.
That being said, you can write a sentence or two to better explain what’s going on or to give context to the image and/or the video. Again, don’t overdo it.
A good call to action is also advisable, especially if you’re really eager for the visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. Cleverly written and engaging CTAs to work very well on pages like these.
Use social media
If you’ve created a good coming soon page, people will want to tell other people about it.
That’s especially the case if your page looks good. So, do your best to incorporate buttons that allow your visitors to easily start sharing your page via their social network accounts.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… if you can add buttons to that type of network, you will potentially have access to thousands upon thousands of new visitors/customers.
Not to mention that all of them could maybe even become your subscribers.
Conclusion
As you can see, a coming soon page doesn’t have to be some boring, unimaginative thing with just those two words slapped on it. You can add so much to it to attract your visitors’ attention and start generating leads even before the page you’re working on goes live.
A good coming soon page can create an audience for you from day one and help you achieve steady growth, which will certainly be appreciated by the search engines.
So don’t take the task of creating this too lightly – if you do, you could be missing out on a fantastic opportunity that may not present itself again for a long time.
