How to Turn your Boring “Coming Soon” Page into an Irresistible Sales Tool

Your "coming soon" page may be the most important landing page you launch. Strong statement, I know.But hear me out.

Every single successful product launch, from the Apple iPad to Google's Gmail, was launched after an extensive pre-selling campaign. And the key to a pre-selling campaign is your "coming soon" page. A coming soon page allows you to collect those valuable email addresses so you can send those email updates that make your prospects' mouths drip with anticipation.

Your goal is to drive anticipation so high that when you finally launch your product you've sold out before the day is over. But to do that you need a "coming soon" page. So why leave your "coming soon" page to chance? Why wait until you have a product to launch before selling your product? So how do you build an outrageously successful coming soon page? How do you build one that drives famous viral campaigns?

Don't worry it's not that hard as it's seems so sit up straight and learn the key elements of a successful Coming Soon Page.

1. It must be attractive, very attractive!

Coming soon pages today compete with millions (or is it billions?) of pages on the internet. You need to attract the attention of a visitor who stumbles upon your coming soon page, whether they came in out of the cold from Google, or were driven to your page because of your successful email marketing campaign.

Your coming soon page has got to be attractive, with beautiful live shots of your product, nice styling, typography and simplicity. Check this example of beautiful Coming Soon page from Skillsup here.

2. Keep it simple

Your coming soon page is a landing page. It should be designed with one purpose and one purpose only: to sell your future service. In most cases, this means collecting as many email addresses as possible. Your coming soon page should be minimalist: drive email sign-ups to your "notify me when the product is available" list.

Lead your visitors to sign up using an attractive call-to-action button, or a simple form where all you're asking for is a first name and email address – or maybe just an email address. Why scare off potential customers by asking them for a name?

Watch this really simply but effective Coming Soon page from Web.me here.

3. Don't be mysterious – talk about what you're offering

Those of you who are creative may be enthralled with the idea of being very creative and presenting an artful and mysterious "coming soon" page. This may win you an award if you're submitting it for an artistic competition, but it won't sell your product. You should be very clear about what you're offering. Present a tasteful product "hero pic." Describe your product or service with a simple value proposition. Have images of people enjoying or otherwise benefiting from your soon-to-be released product.

4. Use Video

Videos are becoming incredibly popular, for good reason: they work. A preview video at the top of your landing page may be the only element you need to convince visitors to leave their email address. Jonathan Fields used video with astounding success for the launch of his book "Uncertainty."

Watch his moving video here, and read the case study about how he built up an incredible waiting list for his book. Check how the guys at Charlie HQ included in it's Coming Soon page a video that explains in less than 2 minutes how their product works, getting that way the email of the visitor.

5. Offer something of value before your product is launched

How do you make sure people leave their email address other than just the value and excitement of your world-changing product? Offer them something they can download or read right now.

Many marketers use free eBooks, MP3s, or access to an email series that promises to educate them over time in anticipation of the release of your new product. By the way, this also serves as a great way to pre-sell your product. As you can see in this Coming Soon Page from Fontastic, they offer something for free to get the Email of the visitor.

6. Have your customers follow you on social media

An alternative to driving potential customers to an email sign-up form is to have them follow you on Twitter or to your Facebook page. You can do this instead of having them enter their email address, but this isn't optimal. You should still get their email address.

It's best to provide your social media properties in addition to asking for their email address, so they can follow you when they're interested to see your latest tweet. But you need to have access to them via email when it's finally time to send them to a sales page.

7. Ok, if you want to be mysterious go ahead

I know I said not to be mysterious – but there are some circumstances when this is ok. Smashing magazine refers to a successfully mysterious campaign launched by stealthy startup Hipster. The "something cool is coming to San Francisco" campaign generated lots of buzz and press mentions.

The landing page was beautifully designed, and was minimalist in its approach, driving users to enter their email address so they could be informed about the coming coolness.

8. Build a really cool, innovative "coming soon" page

Not to toot our own horn, but Lander launched a pretty successful "coming soon" page that collected thousands of email addresses. How did we do it? We built a really cool landing page with animation, a rocketship, planets and space travel.

By navigating the rocket down to its landing destination on a mysterious planet, you would stop at various value propositions and benefit statements along the way. Finally, you would "land" the rocket on a rocky planet that looked like Mars.

This did a beautiful job of building anticipation into something cool, innovative and exciting. What's more exciting than traveling through space? Check out our Coming Soon Page and get a travel into the space!

9. Educate your visitors

If you're launching a complex concept, service or campaign, you can use your "coming soon" page to share your deep subject matter expertise. Provide educational bullet points, videos that teach, and article-length copy that explains a new concept. If you want to educate your visitors over time, refer to the point above about "offering something of value."

10. Explain your upcoming site

Many times a coming soon page exists not because you haven't launched your product yet, but because you haven't launched your full website yet. This Hongkiat article describes the elements of a "coming soon" page that explains your upcoming website.

Don't use mystery or intrigue as in the "Hipster" example above.This is a situation where you want to be as clear as possible what you'll be offering when your full website is available. For example this Coming Soon Page from Tabthatout explain the functionality of the product, they make it easy and simply.

11. Provide contact information

If you're a service provider, or have a retail outlet, you can use a landing page to let your customers know how to contact you while you're working on your website. Provide your phone number, email address and your physical address if you have a retail outlet.

12. Driving your Lean Startup Process

Many startups today are following the Lean Startup plan. In Lean Startup, entrepreneurs are encouraged to sell a minimum viable product as quickly as possible, or to pre-sell their product by testing the messaging in the marketplace.

Lean entrepreneurs use landing pages as a type of "market research" coming soon page. They'll provide a simple value proposition, an email sign-up form, and a nice image. One of our own employees used Lander as a coming soon market research page for a potential new product, and drove dozens of sign-ups in just one weekend. For more on how to use landing pages to test your startup idea, read this article.

Get the top-rated 'coming soon' landing pages here

How to build the best "coming soon" page

If you're convinced about how critical your coming soon page is to your upcoming product launch, then you need a tool that helps you build a beautiful, functional one. The tool should have an easy-to-use HTML editor, customizable templates, and the ability to test which ones perform better in the marketplace.

For more information on how Lander can help you with that, click here to learn more. And also check out all about us all over our social media, Like us on Facebook, Follow Us in Twitter, Add Lander in Google +, Connect us in LinkedIn and checked our board in Pinterest. There're no excuses whatever you need with your Landing Pages you know where to find us.

Did we miss your super cool coming soon page? or your favorite one?  Please tell us in the comment box below!