We know the enthusiasm of new beginnings, but we also see how overwhelmed owners can get as they prepare to launch their Shopify store or new products.
It takes some time to build an eCommerce store from zero and generate sales for your new product line. But that doesn't mean you should put your marketing plans on hold until the official launch day when you can get a head start with a coming soon page.
Thanks to coming soon pages, entrepreneurs can maximize the results of the pre-launch marketing campaigns and use the momentum to generate better conversions.
In this article, we cover what a coming soon page is and how it benefits your store, what elements your page must include, how to create a coming soon page on Shopify, and examples of how eCommerce brands successfully implemented this pre-launch marketing tactic.
What is the Coming Soon Page?
A coming soon page on Shopify is a pre-launch page where you can direct your target audience to learn more about your new store or products, increase their interest in your business or pre-order items, and motivate people to amplify your message before the official launch day.
Building a website for a new online store takes time, especially for traditional eCommerce fulfillment stores. So, a coming soon page is a temporary page that allows you to promote your business and create hype while your website is still under construction.
In comparison, launching a dropshipping store is easier, and building a website takes less time. Therefore owners might not find a pre-launch page as necessary as it is for an eCommerce fulfillment business.
But now, let's think about the coming soon product page. Knowing that the rate of failure for any new product launch in the market is as high as 70-80%, we can say that any type of eCommerce business can benefit from using a Shopify coming soon product page.
A pre-launch page is more than a placeholder. It's a great tactic for your marketing campaign that contributes to the success of your brand's or product's launch.
What Are the Benefits of Having a Coming Soon Page?
Creating a coming soon page on Shopify is a great tactic that supports your pre-launch efforts
and gives your eCommerce store a head start.
The short-time placeholder helps you get the target audience excited about what you're preparing, capture their genuine curiosity and feedback, and use all those insights to improve your marketing campaigns.
Creating Hype Before Launch
A pre-launch landing page helps you raise brand awareness and familiarize people with your new brand or products.
Even though you can't share too much information, the pre-launch campaign helps you generate hype. You could share the launch date or time with your prospective customers and benefit from their excitement to create a buzz among your target audience on social media.
Promoting your brand and products in advance helps you get a better conversion rate before and after the official launch. A coming soon landing page is also beneficial for your SEO efforts, and you can start ranking and working on your referral link strategy from the pre-launch phase.
Building an Email List
Add a web form on your Shopify coming soon page to start building an email list before you officially launch your store or a new product range. People willingly giving their emails are more likely to become your next customers.
The pre-launch period is excellent for nurturing prospective customers and using email marketing to educate and increase brand trust. A subscribe button helps capture their curiosity and grow your email list for future marketing efforts, including news and announcements about the store's launch.
On the Shopify coming soon product, you could include a web form that allows potential customers to pre-order or access exclusive discounts available only to subscribers or those who fill out a form. Generating leads helps you build hype via email and get a better conversion rate for your newly launched products.
Getting Early Feedback
The pre-launch period is great for observing customer behavior and gathering feedback about your website and newly announced products. You can use this time to test various messages, designs, or channels, looking for the mix that generates the highest conversion rate.
It's always a good idea to monitor the web analytics, analyze session recordings of your coming soon page on Shopify, and learn more about your audience's behavior before your official launch. Use the insights to fine-tune your launch campaign and other post-launch marketing initiatives.
If you need feedback about your new products, you could collaborate with influencers or select a group of people in our target audience to send them samples, like a pre-launch giveaway, and collect their feedback.
You could also add a live chat widget to your pre-launch landing page, allowing people to ask questions or give honest feedback about your online store or new products.
The live chat widget is just one of the must-have elements of a coming soon page, so let’s look at the whole list.
Must-have Elements of a Coming Soon Page
A coming soon page is a key element of your pre-launch marketing strategy that generates interest and excitement, things you couldn't achieve by displaying an under construction homepage or product page.
While the information included on the page depends on the goals you want to achieve (launching a new store versus a new product range), there are several must-have elements you can mix to generate the best Shopify coming soon landing page.
Product Information and Value Proposition
While the information you can share on your coming soon page is limited, you still need a clear value proposition that builds hype and important product details to set the expectations of your potential customers. Share brand and product information that demonstrates how you help them reach their goals and solve their problems through what your Shopify stores offer.
The headline captures their attention, while the copy and visuals you add to your coming soon landing page help you build excitement and create a sense of urgency that convinces people to pre-order or hit the subscription button.
Launch Date or a Countdown Timer
Besides a well-written copy and eye-catching visuals on the pre-launch landing page, your potential customers and visitors also want to know the official launch date. A ticking timer added next to your subscription form can improve the conversion rate.
Letting your target audience know the exact time until you launch your store or new product can help you create urgency. Adding a countdown timer shows how much time they have to pre-order and encourages them to act and be among the first to get your products.
Email Signup Form
Drag your target audience's attention toward the email signup form to generate more conversions. The signup forms allow you to collect user information, such as name and email address, and help you build a relationship as part of the pre-launch marketing strategy. You can use the form to allow people to subscribe to your newsletter or pre-order products.
Most email signup forms builders are easy to use, with drag-and-drop options that imply zero coding skills. When you create your form, add a compelling call-to-action, keep it short, and use a color that stands out for the CTA button.
Social Sharing Buttons
Adding social sharing buttons on your Shopify coming soon page helps you get more brand exposure and more people excited about your online store or new product launch. Creating social media content as part of the pre-launch marketing strategy helps you raise brand awareness, increase the website traffic and get more people to fill in your email signup forms.
A person spends, on average, 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media, so being present on the social networks that are popular among your target audience is an important part of the pre-launch campaign. You can display social proof on the Shopify coming soon product page to demonstrate the love your brand is already receiving by adding testimonials from your existing customers.
Call to Action Button
Your value proposition and a great copy will excite people, and make them want to hit the call to action button so they can get early access and limited-time discount offers. You need to use strong action words that resonate with the messaging on your coming soon page on Shopify and generate the action you want from your target audience.
Make your call to action visible on desktop and mobile devices and capture people's attention with contrasting colors. You could try A/B testing to optimize your page by identifying the strongest call-to-action copy or the CTA button color that converts more.
Live Chat Widget
Instead of having a contact form hidden in a drop-down menu, a live chat helps remove friction and makes it easier to interact with your company during the pre-launch phase. The live chat widget enables a user-friendly way to answer any questions people might have about the upcoming store or products.
You could use the live chat to display messages based on their actions on the coming soon landing page. The live chat widget is a great way to show you care about your target audience's pains and needs, let them get a taste of your new brand or products, and build excitement for the official launch day.
In the next section, we analyze some of the best Shopify coming soon page examples and see how all these must-have elements work together.
Examples of Creative Shopify Coming Soon Pages
Coming soon pages are highly versatile and can easily mix with other marketing tactics that help Shopify stores optimize their new brand and products pre-launch campaigns.
The coming soon page examples below showcase how new and established brands successfully integrated this tactic into their pre-launch marketing efforts.
Harry's - the power of mixing a coming soon page with referral marketing
Harry's is one of the most popular examples of what a powerful coming soon page can do for a new online store pre-launch campaign and how it can give eCommerce brands a head start.
Razor brand Harry's used a clean design, a simple template, and modern fonts. The header and description captured their clear value proposition, underlining that the new brand can offer what people want in a razor, "Respecting the face and wallet since like... right now." The call to action sparks curiosity and determines people to sign in and get inside information about the new brand. The company kept the subscription form simple, only requesting the email address.
Once the people got in, they discovered that the brand rewarded referrers and referees. The visitors received a unique referral code they could share with friends, and the more subscribers they referred, the better rewards they could get.
The pre-launch campaign helped the company generate 100,000 leads through referrals. Harry's is a perfect example of how a coming soon page and a well-designed referral program, with exciting rewards, contribute to a successful brand launch, with a considerable pool of potential customers.
Popov Leather - a Shopify coming soon product page powered by crowdfunding
Handcrafted leather wallets brand Popov Leather created a dedicated coming soon product page and used crowdfunding to generate more pre-orders for their Trifold wallet.
The brand offered customers a detailed preview of the product they could get if enough people participated in the crowdfunding. Potential customers could browse through quality product images, pick from various colors, and personalize their products through the free engraving option.
The community gathered around the brand and joined forces, and the brand exceeded the funding goal, meaning they were more than ready to start shipping. Popov Leather decided to keep crowdfunding results visible on the product page as proof of how popular the product was.
Popov Leather’s coming soon page showcases how brands can use crowdfunding to boost pre-orders for a new product, create a sense of urgency among existing and potential customers, and prove the quality of their products through the high demand.
We hope these page examples will inspire how to build your pre-launch strategy. In the next section, we’ll show you how to create a coming soon page on Shopify.
How to Build a Coming Soon Page on Shopify
Entrepreneurs wondering how to create a coming soon page on Shopify should know that they have two alternatives:
- Modify Shopify's password-protected page;
- Use a temporary Theme created with the help of a Shopify app.
Are you looking for the simplest and quickest method to set your page live, or do you need customization options to fine-tune it and maximize your pre-launch campaign results?
Let's see what each alternative has to offer.
Shopify Password Page
The simplest way to create a coming soon page is to modify the Shopify Password Page from your Shopify admin. Changing the Shopify Password Page is easier than using a page builder. It can be a good option for entrepreneurs who are just starting to build their online store, and still looking for developers with web design and coding skills.
When you want to create your page, go to your Shopify dashboard, click on Sales Channels > Online Store > Preferences > Scroll down to Password Protection > Click Enable password.
Here, you can set the password people must use to view your page.
In the “Message for your visitors” section, you can add a copy of up to 5000 characters to explain what you're about to launch.
The email signup form, one of the must-have elements of a coming soon page, is automatically added and allows you to build an email list while building your Shopify store.
But, as you can see, the features and customization options you have are basic, and many elements would be missing from your page, like a countdown timer and social sharing buttons. For customization options, you would have to edit the template, so you or someone in your team should be familiar with Liquid or CSS.
Temporary Theme
Another way to create a coming soon page on Shopify is to publish a temporary theme. This way, you will have two versions of your online store: a "coming soon" landing page that goes live so you can start your pre-launch campaign and the "under construction" version that you will publish on the official launch day.
You can pick a Shopify coming soon app that enables all the customization options you need:
- Brand elements
- Product photos
- A background image
- A presentation video
- Social media buttons
- Social proof elements
You can find a page builder with drag-and-drop options that allow you to set your pre-launch landing page live without needing coding skills.
A Shopify app dedicated to coming soon pages is a great alternative to Shopify's theme editor. Look for the app that suits your needs and budget. You might only use it when launching your new Shopify store and disable the app right after the big day, or keep it if you plan to launch new products frequently.
No matter how you create a coming soon page on Shopify, make sure it works for your business and can help you make the most of your pre-launch efforts.
Make Your Online Store Better With Conversion Bear
Preparing your website for launch might take longer than planned, so a coming soon page on Shopify can help you bring your pre-launch campaigns to life.
Now that you understand the role of a coming soon page, its benefits, the must-have elements, and how to build it, you know that it's more than a placeholder. A coming soon landing page helps you generate hype around your store and get more sales once your website is live or you're ready to start shipping your new products.
We've seen how easily coming soon pages mix with other marketing tactics, like crowdfunding or referrals. Coming soon pages are versatile, so don't be afraid to get creative. For example, you can boost the performance of your coming soon page by using upselling tactics when you're planning to launch an improved version of an older product or a new product range that you could easily sell in bundles.
Fortunately, you have many Shopify apps to help you implement your marketing strategies, like ConversionBear, a powerful upsell tool for your Shopify store.