Whilst you are developing your new website you should seriously consider creating a temporary coming soon page to display on your URL. There are several benefits to doing this and the best part is that it is incredibly easy to do. If you are building on WordPress you can create a coming soon page with a simple plugin and Shopify has these features automatically built in. Hence, with very little effort you can have a live website on your domain rather than a blank page.

Despite how easy it is to create one of these pages, is it really worth it? If you are unsure whether or not to create one of these pages read on.

Let Your Customers Know Your Coming

What is the difference between a business that is booming and a business that is closed? The closed business no longer has a website displayed on its URL. So what's the difference between a business that has just been born and one that is closed? One has a coming soon page whilst the other has nothing. Hence, if you are trying to gain attention leading up to your launch it is essential to have a website your users can go to so that they can find out more. On our coming soon page we love to put a countdown on to the launch date so that our users know exactly when they can come back and learn even more.

Raise Brand Awareness

Showing a coming soon page on your website prior to its launch can also help you raise brand awareness and allow you to start building your mailing list. You can display your logo, write a little about your mission, build your style through images and start to target your clients. This ensures you don't miss out on a single customer when they go to your website and see nothing, they were interested and now they are not... Hence, giving the option to be notified when you launch can be incredibly powerful and help make your launch an even bigger success.

Hence, allow people to get excited about your launch! Include them in your journey from the onset and you will inevitably grow a loyal following.

Get a Head-Start on Google

When you launch your website you want to ensure that anyone who is searching for your business name can find you. The best way to do this of course is to ensure you are building a presence on Google and other search engines. In our experience, a coming soon page can actually help jump-start your ranking on search engines. You can add all the information the search engines need to begin indexing your website. In fact, the head of Google's webmaster team has even acknowledged the benefit of having a coming soon page for SEO.

Maintenance Mode is Not a Coming Soon Page

Unfortunately, maintenance mode cannot be used in place of a coming soon page. This is becoming the maintenance mode is designed to allow you to make your website inaccessible whilst you make small updates and is not designed to be used for more than a day. Part of the issue with using maintenance mode instead of a coming soon page as maintenance mode is designed to prevent Google from indexing it for obvious reasons. Hence, you will miss out on any SEO benefits associated with a traditional coming soon mode.

Display Your Launch Date

Another small yet valuable perk of having a coming soon page is the ability to display your launch date. This allows you to share your progress with users, and also promotes excitement.

What to Avoid

Don't Be Overly Vague

Whilst of course your coming soon page is not your entire website, it should give a little bit about your brand. Your coming soon page should give a little insight into your brand. The ultimate goal is to encourage users to follow along and keep engaged with your brand leading up to your launch.

Don't Delay The Launch

Make sure you are cautious with the launch date you display, the last thing you want is to advertise one launch date only to have users return to see the same page and no website. It shouldn't come as a surprise that those users are less likely to return to your website a third time, despite the famous saying "third time lucky".

Not Leveraging Social Media

You should start building your social media presence as soon as possible. This allows you to reach all your customers on their preferred platforms. It also enables you to display content that speaks to people in that demographic. This can hence really help you to grow your following in a meaningful way.

Our Favourite Coming Soon Designs

Prince Neptune The Label

Conclusion

A coming soon page is a very simple way you can leverage your domain even before your launch and help you make your launch a complete success. This is a simple first step you can take to jump-start your SEO and most web developers will offer to create you one for no extra charge if you commit to developing your website with them.