Are you about to launch a new WordPress website, product, or service? If so, you need a coming soon page to let customers know what’s coming down the pike.
Coming soon pages aren’t just placeholders for your WordPress website. They’re tools you can use to foster customer excitement and get them more interested in your brand, telling customers about what you will launch.
The Anatomy Of A Coming Soon Page
Coming soon pages should be informative, but they should also create a buzz. As a marketing device, they are something that you can use to get people interested in what you’re doing.
Some ecommerce companies can “soft launch” and begin taking orders immediately, figuring out their processes and WordPress websites along the way. However, these are very much the exception to the rule. Mostly, companies need sites that are ready to go immediately.
What Coming Soon Pages Should Achieve
It may be several months before you launch your store. Why not begin marketing now and then reap the rewards once the store finally opens? That's what a coming soon page helps you do.
Here’s what a coming soon page should achieve:
- Announce the arrival of a new product, service, promotion, or WordPress website. You can only get a sense of how interested people are in your products if you measure how your clientele respond to them before you launch. Usually, you can get a pretty good sense from the community about how things are likely to turn out in advance. Once you collect feedback, you can then update your offering, improve your service, and build something.
- Collect user IDs, such as their names, email addresses, and (in some cases), phone numbers. Coming soon pages are very similar to landing pages in the sense that you’re trying to capture the information for remarketing purposes. Remember, you can't direct customers towards a purchase before you launch. Instead, your only option is to grab their details and then use these to sell to them in the future. Adding incentives (which we discuss below) increases the chance that somebody will sign up.
- Create a buzz about what’s coming down the pike, reminding them why they should be getting excited. Most standard landing pages include options that allow people to share the page with their friends on social media. Brands include social media tags to amplify their landing pages' reach so that they reach more people. It would be best if you did the same for coming soon pages. Add social media sharing buttons that allow people to easily link with friends on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook (depending on the type of products you sell).
- Provide further information regarding when customers and users can expect to benefit. Your customers need to know how they’re going to benefit from your products and services when you finally launch. Thus, you should use your landing page to discuss any unique selling points that you might have. Perhaps you’ve found a way to make certain products cheaper, or maybe you’re the only seller in the country currently stocking certain products. Make this immediately clear.
How To Create A WordPress Coming Soon Page That Converts
If you’re reading this article, then there is a good chance that you’re planning on launching an WordPress ecommerce page shortly. In the meantime, you need a placeholder page to get people pumped and encourage them to return to you once you finally go ahead and lunch.
Here’s a rundown of how to create a compelling coming soon page that converts:
- Think of it as a landing page: In principle, there is no difference between a coming soon page and a landing page - the goal of both is to convert. Thus, you should always view a coming soon page as a time-deferred conversion funnel - a vehicle that will deliver clients in the future.
- Add name and email capture forms: How will you remind people to come back to your page when you launch? Simple: send them an email reminder. However, you can only do this if you provide somewhere for them to enter their name and address.
- Collect feedback: Often, you can get a sense of what customers do and don’t like about your idea by including feedback options on your coming soon page. Something as simple as a star-rating for various ideas can get people engaged in what you’re doing and provide you with useful information to improve your offering.
- Offer incentives: Occasionally, people will hand over their name and email without you having to offer them anything in return, but that’s rare. Mostly, ecommerce retailers will want to provide some reward when customers hand over personal information. Here are some ideas:
- Provide an early-bird discount of 10 percent for everyone who shops with you in the first 48 hours of launch, with even more money off for those who spend more than $200 with you.
- Offer free-shipping on purchases made in the first week, regardless of order size. Be clear how much money you’re taking off the final bill.
- Send free resources to customers’ email addresses on topics that interest them.
- Enter customers who send you their email addresses into a prize draw.
Tools For Building Coming Soon Pages
Several types of tools lend themselves nicely to the building coming soon pages.
Email Marketing Software
Email marketing software often comes with landing page builders that integrate with the core mail service.
Here are some of the benefits:
- The software automatically populates your leads list.
- You don’t have to perform complex integrations - all the services are already included in a single tool.
- Comes with pre-fabbed templates for speedier email and page construction.
https://mailchimp.com/
Landing Page Tools
As we discussed above, landing pages and coming soon pages are very similar. For that reason, you can often repurpose landing page builders to create compelling coming soon pages that tell users what’s coming down the pike.
The advantages of these tools include:
- Plenty of templates ready for you to use immediately.
- Quickly create coming soon pages.
- Get messaging and social sharing options out-of-the-box.
https://elementor.com/
Examples Of Coming Soon Pages
Backpacker Travel
Backpacker Travel’s coming soon page adheres to virtually all of the criteria we listed above. It features a box for growing their email list, social media buttons, and an exciting blurb telling visitors why they should sign up.
Bezar
Bezar wanted to get people interested in its art network before launch to encourage signups to get its network going. It wound up offering monetary credit to users and friends when they referred somebody else to the network. Its coming soon page offered multiple signup options, including Facebook.
Jevelin
Jevelin did what many companies like to do and included a real-time countdown timer on its coming soon page. It also included social sharing icons for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Summary
Coming soon pages are important because they let you market during “dead time” before your official product launch. The ideal page is one that captures names and email addresses, allowing you to remarket your store and remind users when it finally opens.
