Promote Your Business Prior to Launching Your Website

Competition is so tough these days that marketers are not even waiting for the website to go live before starting their marketing push.

We simply can’t blame the marketers given the fact that it takes a really long time to design and develop a viable website. Most important is to have a good plan, and then do some wire framing, making changes to the template, editing the code files and so on. It is a time consuming process.

So, what are you going to do? Nobody likes the idea of paying online marketers for doing nothing till the website goes live. Believe us, you don’t have to. There is something you can do to promote your business online even if the website is not ready. Just design and develop a Coming Soon page for your website.

Coming Soon page is far better than featuring a blank page or a generic template developed by your web hosting company. The good thing about this Coming Soon Page is that it does not take long time to design or develop. The idea behind this is very simple – creating a buzz for the brand. The purpose of a Coming Soon Page is to give the users a good idea as to what to expect when the final version of the website goes live. It encourages the audience to interact with your brand and to become a subscriber just to get to know what the website has in store for them.

Some websites use Coming Soon Page to encourage people to be a part of its beta program but in majority of cases, companies add a ‘Subscribe’ form so that people can be notified when the final version of the website gets launched.

Now, there are few factors that you need to take into consideration before you start designing a Coming Soon Page for your website. Allow us to explain them to you:

Focus On Brand

Since your website is in development stage, we can assume that you have some elements of the design ready or at least have already agreed upon. For example, if the logo is ready or if the designer has selected a color scheme for the final design, you can start building something around it. Use the color scheme, logo or the font type while creating the Coming Soon Page. This will help you make people familiar with the brand. When the final version will go live, this familiarity will help people relate the new design with the design of the Coming Soon Page. This will give your marketing campaign a great start.

Curiosity

You want people to talk about your brand right? Of course but getting people to talk about your brand can be a difficult thing to achieve. However, this is not an impossible feat by any means. You just need to add some elements of curiosity in the design of the Coming Soon Page that will make people think about it or at least talk about it. For example, if you are trying to sell a new washing machine via your website, a call-to-action like this – ‘Tired of washing clothes? We have Something Revolutionary for You. Sign up to get notified.’ A simple and intriguing message like this is enough to make people feel curious about your brand. Be sure its big and bold with an obvious button to click on.

Give Them Some Hints

When people land on the Coming Soon Page, you need to give them some sort of hints about the upcoming product or the project. Just using a gorgeous background image with some random texts like – ‘This is a Coming Soon Page’ is not going to help the people understand what the page is all about. Why should they care about a page that does not give any information about the upcoming website? They will simply ignore it. You should not let this happen. However, we are not asking you to spill the beans but you need to give them some sort of information otherwise they might not feel interested about the Coming Soon Page. Like for example, if you are launching a new book, you might consider adding some paras of it to generate interest of the people. Its all about first impressions and perception. Give them something to think about like a thoughtful tag-line.

Keep Them Updated

People will not be visiting the Coming Soon Page every day and that means, you need to add a Subscribe call-to-action that will allow people to get updates about the product or the website. However, there is no fixed rule as to how many times you need to send emails to keep them updated. Maybe sending one or two emails before the final version of the website gets live is a good idea. Don’t push it too hard. Just keep it simple.

Don’t Forget the SEO

It is a fact that Coming Soon Pages are not likely to rank high as they don’t contain much information. But that should not stop you from making the it a bit search engine friendly. Make sure that you have included Meta data and the also make sure that you have not blocked anything via the robots.txt file. Don’t stuff too many keywords in the page because search engines would consider that an attempt to inflate the ranking of the website artificially and therefore, it can get penalized.

Plan your Plan and remember these aspects of a Coming Soon Page design. Good-luck with your new website.