What is your "coming soon" page for?
joel.is
joel.is
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.