We’re often asked by clients to create a Coming Soon page to handle website visitors while a website is either under construction or under maintenance.
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Why do you need a Coming Soon page?
A Coming Soon page keeps trust high with any visitors who land on your website while it’s unavailable. It helps to service pre-existing links, reassuring people – and search engines – that yes, they’re in the right place, but no, the website isn’t available right now.
Coming soon pages are a powerful way to build hype before a site or project launch, and also conveniently hide work in progress until you’re ready to go live.
Here’s an example of how a coming soon page can communicate brand values, build hype and generate an engaged community before the website is even live:
While your website is under construction, you’ll probably want to develop your off-site promotion through offline activity such as signage, printed material and off-site promotion – like giving interviews to industry blogs or news outlets about your launch.
So while you’re out doing these things, start pointing people to your new domain, so potential visitors know exactly where to find your website once it’s live.
What to include in your Coming Soon page
There are some pretty standard things you should look to display on a Coming Soon page. In general, include as many of the following things as you can:
- Your logo
- Some brief introductory text
- A newsletter signup link
- Social media links
- Logo
Overall, let your visitors know what to expect from your store when it goes live.
Introductory text
Visitors might be surprised to find a holding page when they were expecting a live site. Give a brief who, what, when, where, and why – as well as any USP’s or special brand messages. Giving a specific live date for your new site will also help to win trust and pique interest.
Newsletter signup
Building a community of fans and followers is important for any business. People looking at your Coming Soon page are showing interest in your organization or project. Get their email addresses now, and you can tell them when you launch and maintain a community for the future.
We generally work with Active Campaign and MailChimp for newsletters, advising clients to include an enticement, such as a special offer, for visitors who:
- get the Coming Soon page; or,
- who get the “Fail Whale” page when a website is experiencing unusually high load (we have ways to make sure this doesn’t happen); or,
- when a maintenance window is in operation.
Social media links
Don’t delay, start today! Get started on your promotion, community creation and even sales, by cranking up your social media profiles straight away. Most profiles will ask for a website address and having a good Coming Soon page means you’ll be able to start sharing with confidence before the site is finished.
How to set up a Coming Soon page for WordPress
Some notable Coming Soon page plugins for WordPress are listed below:
- Coming Soon Page and Maintenance Mode by SeedProd
- Coming Soon by Dazzlersoft
- Coming Soon and Maintenance Mode by wpdevart
Our favourite is Coming Soon Page and Maintenance Mode by SeedProd. Instructions for setup are below:
1. Install and Activate
- Log in to your WordPress site
- Click “Plugins > Add New”
- Search for “SeedProd Coming Soon”
- Click “Install Now” next to the relevant plugin
- Click “Activate”
- Click ‘Install Now’ next to the relevant plugin
This will install and activate the plugin.
2. Enable Coming Soon Mode
Once you have installed and activated the plugin, visit Settings > Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode
Check the box to Enable Coming Soon Mode – complete the details you’d like to display.
3. Customize your page
In Settings > Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode > Page Settings you’ll see tabs for your logo, headline, additional text, background image as well as text and link colours.
MailChimp signup forms can be included by pasting the html into the “Text” tab or by using the Mailchimp Block in the Block Editor view.
4. Review
To check your progress, click the “Live Preview” to view an example of how it will look on your website once live.
Once you are happy, make sure you have Coming Soon mode enabled, then hit “Save all Changes.”
5. Accessing the main site
For admins, clients and colleagues wishing to view the main site behind the Coming Soon page, these visitors will need to login. So make sure you setup VIP visitors with a User Account and be sure to give them the login page address.
Upgrade to Pro for more options
For more advanced settings, you can upgrade to SeedProd’s Pro version. This might be appropriate if you have a lot of experience with the visual editor and HTML or have a lot of pre-launch promotion in the pipline.
Additionally, the Pro version offers a maintenance mode for updates. If you think you’ll use maintenance windows in the future, the Pro version is a worthwhile investment.
There are some additional options you might want to consider for WooCommerce stores such as promotional discount codes for visitors who hit the Coming Soon page – read more in this article by our very own Robin Scott over on the WooCommerce website here.
Update your Coming Soon page – then go live!
While you are building your new website, it’s a good idea to keep your Coming Soon page up to date for both fans and search engines.
Once you are ready to launch your website , follow these steps to remove the Coming Soon page:
- Visit Settings > Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode
- Check the box to take your website out of Coming Soon mode (“Disabled”).
- Promote!
Now that your website is live, you can leverage those new subscribers in your newsletter list, fans on social media, and circle back to those leads you got through direct contacts.
Want us to do it for you?
Book Silicon Dales to help setup an engaging Coming Soon page for your WordPress website.