Coming soon page, holding page, temporary page. What ever you call it, there’s some debate within the web design community on whether or not brands should have a coming soon page while their website is being built/redesigned. Here at Sixth Story, we firmly believe that having a ‘coming soon page’ will hugely benefit your business and lead to a quicker post-launch return on investment.
How a ‘coming soon page’ can benefit you
The best ‘coming soon’ pages go beyond merely telling a user that a new site is on it’s way; they can entice them into regularly returning and handing over their valuable data. Here’s why we know coming soon holding pages are worth it:
Create the hype
If this is your first website, and not a redesign, you are invisible to the world wide web! A ‘coming soon’ page gives you the opportunity to create online hype prior to your launch. You can get creative with the pages and this is the perfect time and place to start your social media marketing. Create profiles on all the major social media platforms relevant to your audience and get posting about relevant/current events in your industry, and remember to always include a link to your ‘coming soon’ page.
If you’re using a new domain name then having a ‘coming soon’ page will get you indexed by Google quicker! When a new domain name gets a site uploaded to it, it can take Google days, and sometimes weeks to index the site. This means that you won’t appear on Google searches … at all. Assigning a ‘coming soon’ page to your new domain as a part of your pre go live strategy can build up some momentum before we turn your main site live.
If the page is good, it’ll have people regularly coming back to see if it’s live yet; or, it’ll make them regularly check your social media pages … which is exactly what you want! Make it memorable and give people a taste of what’s to come.
Being secretive is a risky strategy, this works if you’re already a globally dominating brand. Unless you’re Apple, people are not going to buy your product or sign up to your service without prior knowledge of what it is, and how it can benefit them. The same goes for your new website. If you’re ‘coming soon’ page doesn’t tell me what the full site will offer/give me a taster of what’s to come, why would I go back?
Data collection:
‘Sign up to our mailing list to be the first to know when our new website launches ‘
Data collection and creating a strong client base is key to your future online success and why wait until after you’ve launched? If you don’t create the hype before the launch, who will visit your sparkly new website when it goes live? Collecting email addresses from this early stage puts you ahead of the game for when you need to launch a new product, offer a new service or send out your weekly newsletter in the future, as well as creating that initial client pool/user database for your initial launch.
Refine your marketing
Test the waters with your SEO strategy. Run some initial Google pay-per-click campaigns to gauge the response you get in your sector, doing this at this stage allows you to create a better focused marketing strategy for when your website launches; which will lead to a greater quantity of traffic, but more importantly, greater quality traffic.
Sixth story can create you a sleek, bespoke ‘coming soon’ page to attract users while we develop your main site. Start a project with us today to uncover your brand’s potential. Here’s one of our favourite ‘coming soon’ page designs…
Coming Soon Page Design for Snouts & Pouts
