6 tips for creating an effective coming soon landing page

Are you ready to launch a new product and want to start building hype and securing pre-orders? If so, I want to talk to you about creating a coming soon page.

Simply put, a coming soon landing page is a single page used to introduce visitors to your product or service, give updates, and convince prospects that your brand is worth their time.

If used correctly, this tool can help you grow your audience and start your business on the right foot.

In my experience, simple is always better. Not only is it easier to make a simple landing page, but it's also advantageous to your audience because they don't have to navigate through a half-finished website to find answers to basic questions.

Today, I'm going to share 6 tips I learned about building a simple yet effective coming soon page. I believe leaders and marketers across all industries can use these strategies to grow their new businesses.

Let's begin!

Let Visitors Know What's Coming Soon

The first and most important detail of your coming soon page is, well, what's coming soon! If visitors don't know who you are, why would they bother taking additional steps like signing up for your email list?

Use the top of your coming soon page to introduce yourself, the name of your brand, and what you do. You don't need a ton of space to get your message across. I usually write 2-3 sentences along with our brand logo.

If you can capture people's attention at this moment, there's a much better chance that they will stick around to learn more about your product or service.

Put Customer-Centric Benefits on Display

Now that you've properly introduced yourself, it's time to focus on the needs of your audience. Specifically, you'll want to summarize how future customers will benefit from your new product.

I like to use this time to set expectations and let users know what they stand to gain by joining us on our journey. How you get this information across will vary greatly depending on what you're offering and how far along you are in the development process.

For example, if your coming soon page is for a SaaS and it's basically done, you can include a video demonstration directly on the page so visitors can see your product in action.

I also suggest including a short bullet list of benefits. Keep in mind that there's a difference between a benefit and a feature. You don't want to only talk about the technical aspects of your product; instead, you should clearly explain how these features will help your customers reach their goals and overcome pain points.

Give Users an Option to Subscribe to Your Email List

Right now is the perfect time to start growing your email list. You don't want to spend the first few months after launch sending emails to one or two people. It makes much more sense to build your subscriber count early.

I suggest including a simple signup form on your coming soon landing page so users can join your list in just a few clicks. I prefer limiting our forms to 3 fields during this phase to reduce the possibility of abandonment. Here are the 3 fields we use:

Email address
First name
Specific interests/feedback (optional)

This structure sets us up for success because it allows us to grow our list and fine-tune our product before it goes live. For example, if most users ask about one specific feature, we know it's essential to include it in our software on day one.

Once people join your list, you can send a monthly newsletter with important updates and behind-the-scenes information. Believe it or not, 61% of people prefer to engage with brands through email over other marketing platforms, so this strategy makes sense.

When you also consider that 83% of marketers say they successfully use newsletters to engage with your audience, the benefits of growing your lead list early become crystal clear.

Make it Easy to Connect on Social Media

Another essential feature to add to your coming soon landing page is the ability to connect with your business on social media. Many first-time visitors may want to follow you on a site like Facebook or Twitter before they commit to your email list or pre-ordering your product.

Globally, around 58% of people use social media sites every month, so there's an excellent chance the people visiting your sites will have at least one account they can use to follow you.

There are a few ways you can promote your social sites from your coming soon page. First, you can include simple social share buttons. You're likely familiar with these little icons that let you share a page in seconds.

Alternatively, you can use a social wall plugin to show a snippet of your social feed. This option is great if you're active on social media and want to keep on-site visitors in the loop.

Leverage Social Proof

If you hope to win over your audience, social proof can help. Simply put, social proof is evidence that your product, service, or brand is reputable and trusted by others in the community.

Since you're currently working on the project, you won't have much in the way of full reviews. However, if you run a beta test, you can include positive user feedback on the page.

Alternatively, you can include endorsements from other experts who worked with your brand. Research shows that a whopping 97% of online shoppers want to see testimonials from real people before investing their time or energy into a product.

Not only will this strategy help you build trust, but it can also inspire fear of missing out (FOMO). You may be surprised to learn that almost 70% of online shoppers experience FOMO. When people are afraid of missing out on a discounted price, a limited-stock item, or an experience their peers are having, they are more likely to take immediate action. In this instance, that could translate to a pre-order or subscription.

Ask for Feedback

Finally, I want to stress the importance of asking people who make it to your page for feedback. At this point, you probably have your audience research and generally know what customers expect from your brand.

But gathering additional data via feedback forms can help you develop your product and find gaps you may otherwise miss until long after launch day.

Here's an example so you can see what we mean:

One year, we decided to update our software. We decided to ask all of our beta testers to share their thoughts with us so we could make last-minute adjustments.

A vast majority of testers said they liked the features we added, but they weren't sure how to make full use of them. This sentiment got us thinking about tutorials and how we could make our product easier to use for first-time customers.

In response, we decided to create an in-app tutorial leading up to launch day and saw far fewer comments about accessibility and tutorials once our software was made available to a broader audience.

Back to You

There you have it! The only thing left to do is build your coming soon page. Use the tips I presented today to bring traffic and leads in from multiple sources. If you're persistent, you can drastically improve your odds of a booming launch day.