Build a Coming-Soon Page That Collects a Real Waitlist

A coming-soon page is one claim, one email field, and somewhere the addresses collect

You are a few weeks out. Nothing to demo, nothing to screenshot, and people are already asking. A coming-soon page catches that interest before it evaporates: it says what is coming, asks for an email address, and keeps the addresses where you can find them.

On Birta the address lands in your project's Leads tab the moment the visitor submits, and an email carrying it reaches you about fifteen minutes later.

One thing before you build anything: Birta stores the addresses and does not send to them. No campaign screen, no broadcast button, so on launch day you open the list and write to people yourself. For a pre-launch list that is usually the right instrument, and the last section says why.

What goes on the page when you have nothing to show

Every page that sells something leans on proof, and you have none yet. No screenshots, no customers, no price. That is the actual problem here, and why a coming-soon page is harder to write than it looks.

Four things earn the address:

1. What is coming, in one line, in the words your reader would use. Not the category. The thing.
2. Who it is for. A visitor who cannot tell whether they are the audience will not sign up to find out.
3. When, or an honest admission that you do not know. "Early next year" beats a fake date, and "when it is ready, and you will hear first" beats both if that is the truth.
4. What happens after they type it. One sentence under the field. That is the whole transaction.

The rest is you. With no product to show, the proof is the person behind it: your name, something you shipped before, where you are posting progress. A page with a real name on it converts better than one with a stock illustration and a logo you made this morning.

Judgment rather than measurement, and the judgment behind most pre-launch pages that fill up.

Ask for one field

An email address is the whole ask. Every extra box costs you signups and buys nothing, because you have nothing to qualify anyone for yet. You are going to write to them once.

A Birta form allows up to 20 fields. Use one. If you sell into companies and the company name changes what you build first, add one short text field and stop.

If you plan to email these people later, say so next to the field. A consent field type exists for an explicit opt-in box, and whether you need one is a question for whoever advises you on that.

Paste this into the agent that has your site, and change the specifics:

Build a single-page coming-soon site for <what is launching>.

Above the fold: one line saying what it is and who it is for, two or three lines
on what it will do, and one email field with a button. Nothing else. No
navigation, no second link, no footer menu.

Under the field, put my own sentence about what I will send and when.

Declare a Birta form with key "waitlist" and one field:
- email, email, required

Write the form markup to match the page, handle the refusal codes, and show my
own thank-you line on success. Don't publish yet, I want to read it first.

There is no form block and no template to pick from, so the markup comes out in whatever design the agent is building. The contact form walkthrough covers what it is writing, and the lead forms reference prints the running server's own field types and refusal codes.

Put it up and sign yourself up once

1. Step 1PublishThe form only works on the live site.
2. Step 2Sign upFill in the real form on the public URL, once.
3. Step 3CheckOpen the Leads tab and confirm the address arrived.

Step 1: Publish it

Ask the agent to publish. A form starts accepting submissions once the project has both a declared form and a published site, and either order works.

Step 2: Sign up on the real page

Open the public URL in a private window and enter an address you can check. Once.

It has to be the published page, because a version preview refuses every submission on purpose, and the lead-gen guide explains why. This test counts as one of the month's readable leads, and deleting it does not give the position back.

Step 3: Check that it arrived

Open the project's Leads tab. Your address should be there, exactly as you typed it. Then wait for the email and confirm it reaches your inbox rather than your spam folder, because that message is about to become useful.

Your list is in two places

The panel is the copy that matters: every accepted signup is stored on the project and appears in the Leads tab straight away, with the time it arrived and the address itself.

The email is the second copy, and this is where a one-field form pays off. A digest carries every field its leads arrived with, so with exactly one field the message in your inbox contains the address, and your mailbox quietly accumulates the list.

Give those messages a label on day one. Six weeks later that thread is a chronological list of everyone who signed up, built without you doing anything.

The timing, so you do not sit refreshing: the first signup opens a fifteen-minute window, and one message goes out covering everything that landed inside it, to you and anyone the project is shared with. The window closes on the first check after its time, so the mail arrives at about fifteen minutes rather than exactly on the mark.

Launch day: write to people yourself

You have a list. Birta cannot send to it: no broadcast, no scheduled announcement, no export button. What it has is the list and two ways to get it in front of you.

Ask the agent. Birta's agent in its chat, or the connection that built the site, reads the leads back. list_leads on the waitlist form prints the newest signups with a short preview, which for a one-field form is the address. Three limits: it hands back the 25 newest and says when there are older ones, there is no way to ask for the next page through the agent, and get_lead opens one at a time. Reading through the agent never marks anything as seen.

Or scroll the digest thread. If you labelled it, the addresses are already in your own mail, in the order they arrived, which is often faster.

Then write. From your own address, to people individually or in small batches.

That is not a workaround, it is what a pre-launch list responds to. Someone who typed their email into a page for a product that did not exist took a small risk on you personally. A note from a person, mentioning what they signed up for and asking one question, gets replies. A templated announcement gets deleted.

Your domain and the Birta mark before launch day

Free does not cap the waitlist: every signup is stored whole and opens in the Leads tab, however many arrive in a month.

Your own domain works on the Free plan, which matters more for a coming-soon page than most, because the domain you already bought for the brand is usually where you want it. Connecting the domain is its own short job.

And the "made in Birta" mark stays on Free sites as a small fixed pill in the corner. Removing it takes Team, at $12 a month; the agent cannot restyle it away.

When the real thing is ready, the page becomes the site

Nothing has to move. Ask the agent to build the real site and publish it to the same project. The address does not change, so every link you sent out over the past two months still lands somewhere sensible.

The form can go with it. The addresses do not: leads belong to the project, not to the form or to any version of the site. Delete the waitlist form after launch and its signups stay in the Leads tab, listed as coming from a form that is gone, and the tab's filter keeps offering it so you can still pull them up on their own.

Copy the list somewhere of your own before you delete anything, though. Not because Birta will lose it, but because six months from now you will not remember which form key the good addresses came through.

Frequently asked questions