Including a Coming Soon page on your website is a necessary step in any pre-launch marketing strategy. It’s a savvy way for online stores to generate buzz and build anticipation before a launch. Whether you’re teasing a new product line, gearing up for a grand opening, or even rebranding, these pages can capture attention and gather valuable leads.
Ready to make a lasting impression with your next product launch? Get inspired by real-life examples and learn how to build your own Coming Soon page with Shopify.
What is a Coming Soon page?
A Coming Soon page, also known as a pre-launch page, is a landing page where you can direct people to learn more about your new website, business, or product.
The primary purpose of a professional Coming Soon page is to capture visitors’ interest in an upcoming launch—even while your product, business, or the rest of your website is still in development. By publishing a Coming Soon page, you’re creating a touchpoint that can drum up interest and amplify news about your upcoming launch. You can even use the page to collect visitors’ contact information, adding leads to your mailing list subscribers. That makes it easier to directly reach prospective customers once you launch.
Unlike FAQ, Contact, or About Us pages—which are standard for many online businesses—a Coming Soon page is a temporary landing page that you’ll take down once you kick off your launch.
Do you need a Coming Soon page?
A Coming Soon page isn’t necessary for every business. For example, certain ecommerce businesses, such as t-shirt stores or dropshipping businesses, may not need to set up a Coming Soon page for every launch. Instead, you can “soft launch” in a relatively short time and make improvements as you go.
However, other types of businesses may anticipate delays that lead to postponing a launch date. For example, the complex processes of product development, fundraising, and building your brand can all impact your target launch date. Instead of delaying marketing until you can officially open your digital doors, a Coming Soon landing page gives you the chance to develop and promote in parallel—which helps ensure you’ll have an engaged audience once you’re ready to launch.
Benefits of a Coming Soon page
Publishing a Coming Soon page offers you the flexibility to:
- Get a head start on marketing. Since it’s a single page and not a full website, a Coming Soon landing page can be brought “to market” with just a few clicks. If you use the right keywords, a Coming Soon page can even jump-start your website’s SEO, positioning you for more searchability and visibility at launch.
- Build an email list to launch. Even without a product ready to sell, an attention-grabbing Coming Soon page can create a buzz that convinces people to follow you on social media or join a waitlist. That helps you grow your social following and an email list of prospective customers before launch.
- Get early feedback. A Coming Soon page puts your concept in front of would-be customers, allowing you to gauge their interest and use their feedback to create a more successful launch.
How to use your Coming Soon page for marketing
You can determine the length and depth of your Coming Soon page based on your business’s specific needs. If you’re planning to have a brief pre-launch period, you may want to create a succinct Coming Soon page that acts as a short-term placeholder. Otherwise, if you need a strategic destination for a longer-term pre-launch marketing campaign, it can serve as a more detailed sales page.
While there are many ways to go about it, the most effective Coming Soon pages incorporate the following objectives.
Explain what is “coming soon” and when
A Coming Soon page generates hype around your new site or product and helps you gauge demand. By tracking how people react to your Coming Soon page, you’ll get invaluable feedback to inform how you develop your ideas, determine your positioning, and design your website.
If your product development is taking longer than anticipated, it may be tempting to set up a Coming Soon page as a way to delay your launch date indefinitely—but it’s best to resist that urge. Instead, focus on creating a Coming Soon landing page design that gives your audience a concrete timeline. You can do that by simply displaying your launch date, or you can set up a countdown timer (like Countdown Timer Bar) in the page header to show that your launch date is drawing closer every second.
Advertising a “coming soon” launch date like this not only sets expectations for prospective customers, it taps into a psychological tactic common to many marketing tactics: the fear of missing out. When your audience knows when to expect your launch—and any limited-time-only deals associated with it—they’ll be more likely to return to your site at launch.
Build your pre-launch email list
If you’re driving people to a page without anything available to purchase, you need to make sure you have a plan to keep them coming back.
There’s an opportunity to generate leads through your Coming Soon page by building an email list. You may also try building a retargeting audience or setting up your shop functionality to accept preorders.
To build excitement and improve your chances of attracting email subscribers, consider offering incentives to new email subscribers.
Popular email sign-up incentives include:
- Early bird pricing
- Exclusive discounts or freebies for early adopters
- Valuable content
- Entry into a contest
- Behind-the-scenes access (or even a say in what you build next!)
To capture email addresses, you can set up an opt-in form directly on your Coming Soon page. Alternatively, you may consider using an exit-intent pop-up like Privy, which offers visitors a reason to opt in as they’re about to leave the page.
Once you’ve built a mailing list, you can communicate with this audience leading up to your launch to solicit feedback and ensure they remember you when launch day rolls around.
Give prospective customers a way to get in touch
To allow site visitors to reach you, it’s useful to add an ecommerce plug-in, like Shopify Inbox Chat, to your Coming Soon page. Opening a line of communication through email or social media—or better yet, live chat—improves customer satisfaction, which can positively impact your sales.
Giving your audience contact options makes it easier for you to:
- Field customer questions before your launch
- Convince prospects to join your pre-launch audience through one-on-one, meaningful conversations
- Receive honest feedback you can use to strengthen your business
Encourage visitors to spread the word
Make it easy for people to share your upcoming launch by adding an incentive, like a discount code or giveaway entry. You can use a contest app like Gleam to offer an additional entry for every social action a visitor takes.
Some of the best Coming Soon pages create a “viral loop.” That means every shopper is given an incentive not just for joining your email list, but for sharing your page with others.
An effective pre-launch loop will give each new visitor a reason to both opt into your audience and share your page with their own networks.
One popular way to create a viral loop is by adding a referral marketing widget, such as Viral Loops, to your page. That lets you offer different tiers of rewards depending on how many referrals a person generates for you.
7 Coming Soon page examples
Ready to create a Coming Soon page for your upcoming launch? Get inspired by these examples from real-life brands that do it well.
Depology: Collect email addresses
Skin care brand Depology creates a buzz around the launch of its new skin care products with a large countdown timer and urgency-driven language like “Be the first to try them.”
Even though its product line hasn’t launched yet, the brand can get a feel for customer interest through this Coming Soon page. Plus, if shoppers are keen to try the new product, they can enter their email address to receive a notification when it’s available. Not only will this lead to early sales for Depology, but it will also help the brand grow an email list of loyal fans.
Steal this strategy: Add a countdown timer to your Coming Soon page and a form to collect shopper email addresses.
Fashion Nova: Offer a product preview
Clothing brand Fashion Nova goes all out with its Coming Soon page. Shoppers can explore the upcoming collection through pictures, pricing, and product details, so they can decide ahead of time if they’ll want to purchase.
As well as building excitement around the upcoming collection, this pre-launch technique keeps shoppers on the site. The brand could maximize the impact of this page by linking to similar, available products and collecting email addresses from shoppers who are interested in the collection. That strategy could impact sales for both available and “coming soon” products.
Steal this strategy: Create a dedicated product page to showcase upcoming product details and pricing.
Purelei: Encourage pre-orders with benefits
Jewelry brand Purelei is well ahead of the game in advertising its 2024 advent calendar. Although it launched this pre-order several months before Christmas, fans can lock in an early bird price if they pre-order now. The brand uses this page to collect pre-orders, incentivizing shoppers by offering exclusive benefits in exchange for an email address the brand can use to keep customers coming back.
Steal this strategy: Offer incentives to shoppers who pre-order products or sign up for launch notifications.
Faculty: Share what’s coming soon with loyal customers
Streetwear brand Faculty uses a two-pronged approach by sending a Coming Soon email to its most loyal customers. The mysterious email promises exclusive access to upcoming products and hints at a juicy discount for customers who stick around. The call-to-action (“text me”) is casual and creates a human-to-human connection between the brand and its audience.
Steal this strategy: Announce your upcoming launch to your most loyal customers via email.
Jimmy Fairly: Showcase the collection
Eyewear brand Jimmy Fairly psyches up shoppers for its upcoming collection with a bold, minimalist Coming Soon header. The stand-out section of the website introduces the latest collection with an image of each new product. This gives customers the chance to decide if they’re interested and get excited about the upcoming launch.
This is a particularly powerful technique for brands that sell seasonal products, like sunglasses or swimwear. You can prime shoppers early in the year with teasers about the summer collection to create excitement and intrigue in time for the official launch.
Steal this strategy: Give shoppers previews that show them what to expect from your upcoming collection or launch.
Hexclad: Offer big discounts in advance
Most shoppers can expect hefty discounts from their favorite brands during key shopping holidays, including Black Friday and Memorial weekend. For example, cookware brand Hexclad promotes its upcoming holiday sale and highlights the discount shoppers can expect. If they sign up early, they can enjoy an even bigger discount.
Steal this strategy: Prime shoppers for an upcoming sale by rewarding them with a big discount.
Can-Tini: Build a pre-order list
Pre-mixed cocktail brand Can-Tini regularly launches new product flavors that are eagerly anticipated by its audience. This example of one of its Coming Soon pages uses very few words to promote its latest offering—an espresso martini in a can—but it does the job. Shoppers can get notified when the product is available, or they can learn more about the price and ingredients through a product information card.
Steal this strategy: Use a simple call to action (CTA) followed by more information about your upcoming launch.
How to create a Coming Soon page on Shopify
Many website platforms offer tools to help site owners build Coming Soon pages. If you have a WordPress website, for instance, you’ll have access to a range of landing page templates, as well as WordPress plug-in options to expand your Coming Soon page functionality.
As a platform specifically designed for ecommerce, Shopify offers distinct advantages for ecommerce businesses looking to give people early access ahead of a product or website launch.
There are two common ways you can go about building a Coming Soon page with Shopify:
- Launch a password-protected Coming Soon page.
- Publish a “coming soon” version of your website theme.
Both of these methods let you DIY design your store at your own pace and go live in a couple of clicks when you’re ready.
1. Launch a password-protected Coming Soon page
The fastest way to launch your Coming Soon page on Shopify is to use your built-in password-protected page. By default, most password pages have the basic necessities of a Coming Soon page: an email signup form, social sharing buttons, etc. This option is recommended if you want a simple placeholder page to explain your business and build your email list as you build a website.
Since your page is password protected, you can also allow select visitors to view your work in progress simply by giving them the password while you’re in “coming-soon mode.”
As a Shopify user, you can activate password protection by going to your preferences and choosing “Enable password.” While you’re there, you can also customize your main message to visitors and explain what you plan to launch. This route is much easier than building a maintenance mode page using WordPress or HTML.
To finish setting up your password page as a Coming Soon landing page, head over to your theme editor and customize it directly using Shopify’s drag-and-drop website builder. You can then enable the newsletter sign-up field and add additional copy to customize your form.
This method is most effective for new store owners or those with a brief window leading up to their launch.
2. Publish a “coming soon” version of your website theme
Another way to build your Coming Soon page on Shopify is to create two different versions of your store:
- A “coming soon” version that you publish temporarily as the center of your pre-launch marketing efforts.
- A “working” version that you’ll continue to develop until you officially launch it.
Either version can be a single page where you add elements such as:
- Product photos
- A background image (refer to image sizing best practices)
- An explainer video
- CTA buttons
- Social proof and testimonials
- Email sign-up form
- Social media profile icons
You can make use of the additional page space and features available in your theme to further persuade visitors and incorporate other pre-launch goals you might have. For example, you may want to drive visitors to follow your brand on social media or support your Kickstarter campaign.
There are also Shopify apps that offer a range of tools for creating a stunning Coming Soon page design. For instance, many landing page builder apps include Coming Soon page template options that are easily customizable via Shopify’s drag-and-drop interface.
Shopify also offers apps to add useful Coming Soon page functionality, including a countdown clock, reminders for interested visitors, a sign-up form, or a custom logo.
How to remove a Coming Soon page
You’ll want to delete your Coming Soon page once you launch your product.
To remove your Coming Soon page in Shopify:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Pages.
- Find the box of the Coming Soon page that you want to delete.
- Select the “More actions” tab.
- Choose to “Delete pages.”
Coming Soon pages: The centerpiece of pre-launch marketing
Coming Soon pages are entirely optional, and not every business owner will create one.
But for those who want to run a pre-launch campaign while their product or business is under construction, a Coming Soon page allows you the flexibility to start marketing and creating urgency during your downtime. With a high-quality Coming Soon page, you can fill more seats in your target audience so you can launch to a full house.
Coming Soon Page FAQ
Why do you need a Coming Soon page?
A Coming Soon page can help you get a head start on marketing by building an email list or pre-orders list before launch. You can encourage people to share your brand and get early feedback on your ideas. If you’re brand new, a Coming Soon landing page also gives you time to finish building a store.
How long should a Coming Soon page be?
Like most landing pages, a Coming Soon page should be relatively short compared to a full website. This type of web page should offer visitors only the most relevant and compelling information.
What do you write on a Coming Soon page?
- Explain what’s coming soon.
- Include a CTA for your email marketing list opt-in.
- Give people a way to get in touch with your brand.
- Encourage people to share on social media.
- Offer a pre-order option for upcoming products.
