So you figured out who your ideal customers are, you started talking with them, and you started to validate your assumptions. What can we do next? It’s time to let the world start knowing that you are out there. It’s time to start launching your website and try convincing people about what you are building is worth their time and money. The easiest way is to use a coming soon WordPress theme.
Having a coming soon page is really beneficial, you can easily collect email addresses and start building your online presence even before launching your entire site. These email addresses can be used to get even more validation for the problem you are trying to solve (more on how we use that process later on in a different post). Next to that these email addresses can be used to keep your visitors informed about the big moment you are ready to launch.
On our landing page, we use this same strategy to attract email subscribers. We have a landing page up and running and off course by now we have a blog attached to it, which helps us with generating traffic and more email subscribers. Some would say to get a bigger email list you should even offer some kind of freebie, but we are not really there yet since we are just starting out remember? Off course if you have the possibility you could always offer a freebie, or work with referrals to have those early subscribers get early access to the product you are building.
In today’s post, we will share 9 of the best WordPress Themes out there, for creating a coming soon page. We will present them in a random order so it all depends a bit on your own preference which one you should give a try.
Best Coming Soon WordPress Themes and Plugins
#1 Launch Effect App
Launch Effect App is “free” responsive one-page WordPress theme, that lets you create viral campaign pages in minutes. It is designed for startups and small businesses and allows the user to customise a landing page that helps you introduce your business, product or event. It prompts visitors to sign up with their email address. After signing up, it generates a special URL for them to share with their friends or on social networks. This unique referral link will be tracked so you can see your top referrers.
Their free version got these basics covered, but if you pay a one off fee of 35$ you can have more advanced features customizable pages and blog posts, PayPal integration, a countdown clock with progress bar etc.
#2 Anticipate
Anticipate is not really a WordPress Theme, but it is a plugin designed and developed by ElegantThemes. Anticipate allows you to serve your visitors an alternate “coming soon” page while you can continue your work on building your website in the background. Once activated, all of your visitors will be sent to the Anticipate landing page. When logged in as a WordPress Admin, however, your normal theme appears, allowing you to build your website seamlessly in the background.
The plugin comes with all the useful options that you will need to create an effective landing page and some of the key features include a custom subscription form, social media buttons, a progress bar and others. To be able to use the plugin you will have to get a subscription at ElegantThemes for $69 per year, however, this gives you straight away access to all of their other 87 premium themes and plugins.
#3 WP-ParkIt
WP-ParkIt is a “coming soon” page WordPress theme from Solostream designed to create an attractive landing page you can display before launching your website. The theme includes countdown timer, email capture, social networking integration and a theme options panel to easily customise the theme text and other elements.
Their theme is priced at $39, but for this price you can use it on as many coming soon pages as you want.
#4 SeedProd
Just like Anticipate, SeedProd is a WordPress plugin which works on any existing theme and will be displayed only to non-logged in visitors. It is totally customizable, has the ability for a “client view” (Give your client access through a secret URL, you can also use IP access only) and other great features. It even connects to most well-known mail companies like Aweber, constant contact, campaign monitor and MailChimp
For one website, this plugin is priced at $29.
#5 Themefuse Maintenance Mode
Although not really updated for the last two years, Themefuse Maintenance Mode is still relevant. This plugin lets you upload a logo and background image. It comes with a countdown clock and a progress bar that lets you show how close you are to being ready – 30% complete, 50% complete, etc.
While there is a visual editor that lets you enter whatever you like, the space that content goes into is somewhat restricted, and so you’ll need to watch for that. This plugin is completely free to use.
#6 Felice Theme
The Felice theme has an attractive, light feel to it. It allows you to show images and text, along with a progress bar (which you can switch to any color), an email sign up form, and social media buttons.
It offers a visual editor (as you get with regular posts). In addition, it has areas for header scripts, footer scripts, and custom CSS. It can downloaded for free with a tweet or a like.
#7 YITH
YITH Maintenance Mode gives you the ability to have a simple Maintenance Mode page while your website is under construction or closed for maintenance.
It’s a free plugin created by the people behind yithemes, definitely worth checking out especially since it offers great documentation about customization for your own needs too.
#8 Launcher
Off course we love themes with Rockets on them! Launcher by MyThemeShop is completely free, responsive, has a subscription box, Twitter stream and other social media integration and can easily be configured from the back-end via an options panel.
#9 Glance
Glance is a fully responsive theme with a sticky menu and awesome color scheme. It uses widgets for the main sections, so that means all you have to do is drag the widget you want into place and edit the text.
Off course it includes a countdown timer, a subscribe form and links to your social media channels. You can grab this one for $16 from MojoThemes
So that concludes our list. Off course, a list like this is never complete and it might be that we missed your favourite theme or plugin. Did you miss one that you think should definitely be added to the list? Why not leave a comment with a link and share it with our readers!
