What is your "coming soon" page for?

http://joel.is/post/6452586162/coming-soon

by joelg87 • 15 years ago

34 12 15 years ago

asanwal• 15 years ago

The Hipster-type examples of the world which gets all sorts of coverage on TC are the occasional winners and make everyone feel it's easy (success bias). You don't hear about the hundreds of other folks who put up a coming soon page and got no love.

And so if you assume that you're site will not get tens of thousands of visitors like Hipster, Joel's suggestions for a landing page that yields conversations and validated learning is smart and pragmatic. If you're site gets the more likely 10 or 100 visitors and you present what your product does, you'll be getting real "leads" and not just be attracting "promiscuous" folks who will give their email but who will ultimately never be customers/users.

Great post Joel.

joelg873• 15 years ago

Thanks!

I absolutely agree. I answered a question on Quora (http://www.quora.com/When-is-the-best-time-to-actively-publi...) along the same lines, this is the key part of my answer:

Start with 5 or 10 people and get conversations going and you can gain a massive amount of extremely useful information. Much more than if you gained thousands of emails but never spoke to any of them.

karterk• 15 years ago

Coming soon page could be valuable if they contain enough information on what the product is about so that interested people could join. This will be a much more valuable list than when people blindly join in due to hype.

gaius• 15 years ago

The same could be said for Flash intro movies.

mparr4• 15 years ago

It seems to me that coming soon pages can really only be pulled off by people who already hold some weight in the community. If startup "X" with founder John Doe throws up a coming soon page and tries to push it in various media outlets, it's likely to go nowhere.

Targeting "coming soon" pages to the eventual audience of your product (and including at least a relevant description) not only provides the opportunity for valuable feedback, but if you aren't a recognizable name it also gives people a reason to sign up for your product.

rzazueta• 15 years ago

Not sure how much I agree with this. IT's less about making a name and more about finding out where your target audience is hanging out and communicating the value of your product in a way that gets them interested.

If you're creating an app for a specific audience, you should be active in forums, blogs, etc. where your audience hangs out, if for no other reason than to gather customer validation for your idea, etc. You can gauge interest in your idea early on by sharing it in these forums. If you get folks invested early like this, they'll not only want to join, they'll be more likely to spread the word.

Passively posting a "Coming Soon" page is more or less the second step - the first is getting in front of your potential audience and engaging with them in a meaningful way. I don;t think you need to necessarily build a name for yourself, you just need to put yourself out there.

ams6110• 15 years ago

Instead of a “coming soon” page, put up a landing page for your product. Make it look like the product exists, and then when people try and sign up, show them a page letting them know that you’re not quite ready for them yet ... By skipping the “coming soon” page, you gain validated learning about the emails you collect: they are people who thought your product existed and showed a real interest by trying to sign up.

On the other hand I'm going to be somewhat annoyed if you lead me on about your product to the point of my giving you email address, and only then find out it's vapor.

joelg873• 15 years ago

I can completely empathise with you on that point, but I am not sure it should stop you going ahead.

I think the important thing is the use of copy and the general feel and style of the communication you have with users.

If you make it clear that your ability to create a useful product depends very much on them, I have found it can have quite the opposite effect: they can really become very loyal fans and encourage you along the way, even before you have a product. People love to feel like they are part of shaping something, and when you make it the case that it is genuinely what they are doing, it works amazingly.

Hisoka• 15 years ago

Great advice. The problem with just blindly collecting emails is that you may be able to accumulate a bunch of emails passively. But by the time you release the product and email all those folks, the conversion rate of people reading your email, and caring will be dreadfully low.

On the other hand, if you have a conversation with them, and get their feedback, and make them feel like their ideas will help make the product better, more people will be interested in trying out your product. Sure, it's not as scalable, but you're gonna attract more quality users, and those users will be the same people who will go out and tell others about your product.

You get more validation, more feedback, and more ideas on what critical features to implement. Just getting email addresses is not as effective.

blumentopf• 15 years ago

Suggestion: As long as you're not putting anything useful on your landing page, why not join the This Page Intentionally Left Blank Project?

http://www.this-page-intentionally-left-blank.org/

rmason• 15 years ago

He should have referenced this article which explains how he came to think this way. http://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-week...

One of the most useful articles that I've read in the past thirty days. Those collect email pages have got it all wrong. Channeling PG if they don't want what you're building, then build something else.

Done correctly like Buffer shows you can not only get emails but validated emails more likely to result in first customers.

joelg873• 15 years ago

Thanks Rick. I linked to it at the end but admittedly not in a very obvious way. Thanks for pointing this out.

Yes, I used this technique to launch Buffer and had my first paying customer 4 days after launch.

I think the key thing is to focus on conversations in order to validate what you're building is something people want.

What is your "coming soon" page for?

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