What to do With Your Website Before it’s Ready to Launch
If you want to build excitement, traffic and an audience around your new website or online product launch then your marketing efforts should start from the moment you register the domain name, if not before. In many cases, parked domains are simply a waste of internet real estate and do nothing to help you build your brand or start building a customer base.
There are other more worthwhile but low-effort methods that can be utilised while you work on your site or product behind the scenes and will help you hit the ground running when you are ready for the launch. Don’t leave your domain name doing nothing, or sending traffic to your web host or domain registrar, set it up so that it can at least bring you some benefit before you are ready to unleash the real thing. A simple, well designed temporary page informing visitors briefly what you will be offering them is a vital tool to help to build the buzz.
Get social
Social media is an essential tool for attracting new visitors, engaging with customers and spreading the word about what is happening at your site to help drive traffic. Even if your main site isn’t ready, you can still start building your social media audience in advance, ready to share your work with them when you launch. Embed the social links on your temporary home page and you can use these channels to upload teasers such as screen shots, quotations from your work, images, testimonials – or simply share anything with people from around the web that you think they will find engaging. You can gradually build up followers and fans who will be an important source of traffic when you announce your launch.
Capture those emails
Most successful internet marketers still swear by the value of emails and it is vital that you start building your email list from the earliest point possible. Your temporary ‘under construction’ or ‘coming soon’ page should contain not only some blurb on your forthcoming site or product to spark visitors’ interest, but it is essential to include a form for capturing emails. You can alert anyone who signs up as soon as the full site is ready, bringing you an engaged audience from day one. You can also offer them incentives such as discount coupons, bonus content or advanced access. People who actively enter their email address are actively interested in what you have to offer, so they will be prime targets for you.
Make it look nice
Just because your temporary page might be thin on content, that’s no reason to not put any effort in at all. You want to give people the right impression from the start and that includes making it look clean, sleek and well designed, even down to the details such as a holding page. Make sure you use a properly designed logo and keep the layout as simple as you can. There are some effective plugins if you are using WordPress that will set up an effective temporary page while you work on the site from the backend, or you can ask your web designer to design a simple single page to be used in the meantime.
If your unsure what to do with your domain before launch, then get in touch with iDream Design. Specialists in Web Design Cambridge, they have a great team of web experts with proven experience in generating leads through squeeze pages.