I love each step in the process of creating a new website: Planning, Building and Promoting. But why wait until your website has launched to start attracting an audience? Here are some tips to grow your email list before your site has launched: Quizzes, Polls & Giveaways are great for creating Pre-Launch Buzz and generating opt-in leads so that you will already have an audience eager to check out your new website before it launches. Interact Quiz Builder can help you do that.
For this Pre-Launch Poll, we will ask our audience to “Choose our New Logo Design & Enter to Win a Free T-shirt!” 🙂
It’s fun to come up with a catchy web domain name. (And thrilling when you can actually find the domain name available that you want.) I like the process of designing new logos, planning and building new websites. I love working with WordPress to customize a theme so that it really stands out. But these things take time and usually happen before your new website launches. In the meantime, while the site is still in production, it is important to be building an audience who is eager to become your first, loyal customers. Quizzes, Polls & Giveaways are a fun way for your online audience to interact with your pre-launch design process.
Today, I will show you how to engage your audience before your website launches, build an Email Opt-in Poll and Create Buzz in 3 Easy Steps:
Step 1: Create a “Coming Soon” landing page
There are many different ways to create a “Coming Soon” page that you can use as the default landing page until your website is ready to launch. I use Elementor Page Builder for WordPress. Elementor has pre-built “Coming Soon” page templates that you can modify. I’m using Elementor Pro, but the free version of Elementor also has pre-built templates.
(Read more...)Open/Close: Click to view Step 1
First, create a new Page in WordPress and name your page Coming Soon:
* NOTE: You will likely need to change your page template from “Default Template” as seen in the above image to “Elementor Canvas” so that the template does not include your WordPress theme’s header or footer on your Coming Soon page.
Next, click the blue button: Edit with Elementor. This will take you to the page builder. Then, in the Elementor Page Builder, you will see the option to Add Template. Click ADD TEMPLATE:
This will bring up your available templates. Search for COMING SOON and choose the template that you prefer. For this example, I will choose the first Coming Soon template in the list:
Select your template, and then click “INSERT” to insert the template into your page:
Now, in the Elementor Page Builder you want to Save As Template and give your template a name:
This will bring up the option to save your template to your Library under My Templates. Give your template a name. I called mine Pre-Launch Quiz template: (NOTE: You will use this template as the home for your Interact Quiz that we will create in Step 2.)
Now you can find your newly created template on your WordPress dashboard under My Templates:
The only thing left to do now is to tell Elementor to use your new template as the default Coming Soon page. To turn on the Coming Soon page, on your WordPress dashboard, go to Elementor > Tools:
Choose “Coming Soon” mode and select your “Pre-Launch Quiz template”, then Save Changes:
Now you are ready to start modifying your Coming Soon page. In this example, I will show you how to use it as the home for your Pre-Launch Buzz Quiz that we will make in Step 3 using Interact. But, first, let’s create some easy logo designs for our quiz:
Step 2: Create some quick & easy logo designs
Now, I will show you my secret for creating quick and easy logo designs. For this example, let’s come up with some quick design ideas for Hey-USA.com (a real website that I currently have in production.) I like the name and can imagine T-shirts with this logo. What do you think?
(Read more...)Open/Close: Click to view Step 2
I really dig the cool fonts and graphics that you can find on YouWorkForThem. The fonts and designs are a great source of inspiration. Now here is my secret: Before you even purchase a font, you can use the Type Tester to generate some sample images for your logo design. Script fonts work really well as t-shirt designs and logos. Here are some logo design ideas that I created in about 15 minutes:
Note: It should be mentioned that Interact Quiz Builder offers lots of free stock images that can be added to your Polls or QUizzes. The free images are built into the app, so it’s very easy to search and add the photos or graphics that you need to give a professional look to your Poll or Quiz. It is not necessary to create and upload your own images from scratch, but you can do that if you want!
Step 3: Create A Poll with Interact
Open/Close: Click to view Step 3Let’s Create A Poll with Interact with Email Opt-in and let our online audience choose which design they like best – for a chance to Win A Free T-shirt!
In this example, we will choose Grid Poll for the type of poll that you’d like to create:
Now upload some images for the Options. It’s really very simple!
Be sure to Enable lead capture and data collection for your poll:
Next, Connect Integration. Personally, I use ActiveCampaign for email marketing but there are many integration options. Interact easily guides you through the steps necessary to connect your Quiz or Poll Results to your email lists as well as tagging contacts according to their results.
Finally, put it all together:
It’s easy to embed your Interact Quiz or Poll anywhere that you want. (You can even share it to social media.) Start generating leads and getting feedback from your online audience. Just add the Interact shortcode to embed it into the custom “Coming Soon” page that we created in Step 1. By the way, if you need to make changes to your Quiz or Poll, those changes will automatically update wherever it is embedded. Check out the Interact Poll that we created:
[interact id=”5ab02a88d9a03c00144997ac” type=”poll”]In Conclusion
In just one afternoon, you can launch a “Coming Soon” landing page for your website and start collecting feedback with a Poll or Quiz. Feedback on potential logo designs is a great way to engage an audience with the design process before your website launches. Offering a free t-shirt with the winning design creates pre-launch buzz. After growing your email list, you can announce when your website goes live! Or just send an email to your list with the winning design. Since your audience has already participated by voting, they will be curious to hear more from you. It’s a fun way to get your audience feeling connected to your brand. Your imagination is the only limit to how you can engage your online audience with creative, interactive dialog.
Tools used in this demo:
Elementor Page Builder for WordPress
YouWorkForThem Creative Web Fonts
Interact Quiz Builder
ActiveCampaign
Some links in this article are affiliate links.
Steven Gilbert