Soft-Launch Your Website: Coming Soon Page Inspiration

Picture the scene, you’ve been building your website for weeks and it’s just how you want it. You’re ready to release it to the world and start taking business, aaaaand…

Now you have to start marketing it.

It’s hugely exciting to finally launch your website, but it can be a little deflating if no one shows up to your opening party. 

The good news is, this doesn’t have to be you! There is a better way to launch than to build your website and then promote your website in sequence; and that is by creating a Coming Soon page. 

A Coming Soon Page firstly acts as a placeholder for your website while it’s under construction. Beyond that, it can be a useful tool to pique your audience’s interest, build some helpful marketing resources and make sure your opening day is a day to remember.

We’ll go through some ideas and inspiration in this article to help you get started:

 

Coming Soon Page Tips

There are some core components your coming soon page will need to do its best work for you:

 

Clear Messaging

Make sure it’s clear who you are and what your website is about. People need to know why they should invest their attention to your launch. Make sure it’s clear the value you intend to offer.

 

Exciting Visuals

Your Coming Soon page gets one shot to make a good first impression. Make sure you add engaging imagery and features to excite. 

 

Include an Action

What we don’t want is to visit your Coming Soon page and just hit “Back” on their browser. Give them something to do; whether that’s to engage on social media, join the mailing list or something else.

 

Keep it on Brand

Your coming soon page will already be using your website colours and fonts, however, if you also have a logo, it’s good to include it on your page to help with audience recognition.

 

Promote Your Page

Once you have an action you want people to take, you need to do all you can to get people to your Coming Soon page. Everyone who arrives there could potentially be a visitor on launch day! Shout about it on social media, invite your friends, print it on business cards and contact your email list if you’re building one. 

 

Coming Soon Page Inspiration

 

Bloom

Bloom is a Garden Design company. When the website goes live, it will act as a gateway for new, prospective clients to get in touch. They will also feature a blog full of gardening tips, ideas and inspiration. 

Even though the site isn’t yet live, Bloom’s coming soon page encourages the visitor to start getting valuable content sent to their inbox immediately. This enables Bloom to start building their email list to announce the launch. 

Therefore, the page focuses almost entirely on encouraging you to enter your email and subscribe, in exchange for gardening tips and advice. They also provide the option to follow them on social media. 

By keeping the objective of this page clear and concise, Bloom can hope to build a strong audience for their initial launch and give their potential clients some ideas for garden projects they would pay for along the way. 

 

Woollen

Woollen takes a different approach to Bloom. If you’re unsure about building an email list at this moment in time, but you feel more confident with communicating on social media, this could be the approach for you. 

Firstly, Woollen is different as they do have products to sell. They are a crafting / knitting supply shop and they are able to offer introductory discounts to their audience on the day of their launch. 

With this in mind, Woollen tries to make their launch as engaging as possible by running a competition. By using the hashtag #WoollenCrafters on Instagram, Woollen’s audience can share the projects they’re proud of while being in with a chance of winning 50% off their first purchase. 

Woollen realises their audience are not likely to be new to crafting, but rather people who have been active with the hobby for a while and already have a supplier. To encourage them to try a new supplier, they lead with a large potential discount to a select number of people. 

When competitions are run right, they can bring in huge numbers of entrants who are willing to engage with your brand. It can be a powerful key to building your initial audience that will be keenly listening out for your launch and the results of the competition. 

 

Harmony & Home

Harmony & Home supplies Scandi Decor & Accessories for your home. Their Coming Soon page keeps things dialled down and simple. 

The primary action is to encourage you to sign up to their mailing list, and in exchange, they’ll offer you 25% off your first purchase and access to their home styling ideas and inspiration. 

Another addition to this page that you may not have spotted at first glance is the image carousel. The three images actually scroll to show more glimpses of the products that Harmony & Home has to offer. 

 

 

Harmony & Home’s main objective is to try to create desire through beautiful images of their products. They’re designed to help you imagine how the items would fit in your home. 

When someone signs up to the mailing list, this is a win beyond just the opening day launch. Each subscriber is invested in Harmony & Home’s inspiration and styling tips. Every newsletter that goes out will feature new items and beautiful images that inspire subscribers to buy. 

Each mailing list is an asset, but for Harmony & Home, they’re getting a head start at building what will likely be their most profitable marketing channel with their Coming Soon page.

 

Jewle

Jewle is an online bridal jewellery boutique. They have both an online shop and the ability to cater to bespoke orders. 

Jewle focuses on trying to build a connection with their audience. They have both an email signup and social media links. They also offer exclusive access to “Day 1 Offers & Exclusives'' to those who sign up to receive emails.

This coming soon page is a bit bigger than the other examples in this article, and includes some interesting and engaging functionality. 

For a start, you’ll see Jewle has a countdown timer showing exactly when they plan for their site to go live. Not only does this encourage people to note when the date and time is of your launch, it also helps to keep you on schedule and prepared for the launch!

This is a simple HTML Fragment you can easily add to your page. Find out how to create your custom countdown timer >>

Additionally, visitors to Jewle’s Coming Soon page can scroll down to view a timeline of behind the scenes progress towards the launch. This is a unique way that you can use to connect with your audience more personally. At the same time, it gives a fantastic overview of all that they can get involved with for your launch. 

For example, the Tuesday entry informs page viewers that there’s a competition they can get involved with on Instagram, with a link going directly to it. On Wednesday, the owner of Jewle shares their first newsletter and explains all the value it has to offer the people who have subscribed. 

This landing page is a brilliant way to give your audience an overview of everything that’s going on with your launch. It’s an opportunity to connect with you on social media and an amazing place to get into the details of all the value you have to offer even before your site goes live. 

 

Bonus Tip

Another interesting feature of this page is that when you scroll, the background image stays in position so it looks like the text floats up the page. You can enable this by switching the background image of each Block to the same image and by putting the Parallax setting on (Bloom also uses this feature).

Wrapping Up

As you can see from the examples above, building a Coming Soon page doesn’t need to be complicated. 

One of the most helpful points to take away is thinking about the long-term goal and what your website objective will be.

Determining this will help you to identify what methods of marketing will be most helpful to you. Your Coming Soon page will then help you get the head start you need. 

Want more tips and ideas on how to start and grow your website? You can make sure you never miss a trick by getting our email updates. We share the latest news from our blog along with tips and ideas you can utilise to grow your business online. 

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