3 Reasons Not to Have a “Coming Soon” Page on Your Website
I know you’ve seen it. You do a Google search for something you’re interested in, click on one of the links that comes up, and BAM! You’re suddenly met with a giant “Under Construction! Check back soon!” sign. So unexpected and jarring!
Maybe you try poking around the website to see if the other pages have any info. After finding exactly zero of the things you were looking for you hastily hit the back button to Google and safety.
Sound familiar?
I know there are a ton of articles out there telling you all the reasons why you absolutely should have a “coming soon” page on your new site. Whether it be establishing brand recognition, kickstarting online promotion, or growing an email list, there are plenty of articles insisting these are crucial reasons you need a “coming soon” page, and that this is a crucial first step for your website.
Unpopular opinion time!
I 100% disagree, and let me tell you why!
#1. Procrastination
Launching your website with an “under construction” or “coming soon” page allows you to put off completing the design as long as you want.Let’s face it - creatives and designers loooooove obsessing over a project or design. Tweaking little details here and there, adding a new font, rearranging the order of a page. This process can absolutely be a time suck, and if there’s no motivation to actually complete the thing it could drag on for weeks or even months. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t put thought and intention into designing your website. Quite the opposite! But when it comes to building a website for your business I know firsthand it can be scary to say “I’m done! Hey world - look at this!”
We want things to be perfect before presenting them (heck, I’m totally guilty of this one too!) and there’s nothing wrong with that. Except when it takes over and becomes the top priority. Newsflash - your website is NEVER going to be done.
What?? Yes! You will always be tweaking something in the design, or rearranging a flow to attract your ideal customer as you refine who that is! And honestly, the entire purpose and intent of your website may change over time, as you discover what you love most and least about your business. And all of that is 100% ok! I heard a phrase from virtual assistant turned 6 figure entrepreneur Abbey Ashley of The Virtual Savvy that really has resonated with me in my business: Action Over Perfection.
Abbey uses this phrase all the time in her business and when coaching others to help them realize the first step in getting out there may be hard, but it’s better than taking no action at all! (P.S. if you haven’t heard of Abbey and don’t know her story check it out here - she’s amazing!)Launching your website might feel super scary, but if it’s not out there how will anyone ever find it? A website with even basic information gives people more than a “coming soon” page ever will.For those of you who might be saying “But Ranita, I’m going to put a newsletter signup on my page so I can collect emails and let everyone know when the site is live!” - let me ask you this:
If you visited a website that asked you to hand over your email address so you could be notified at some nebulous future date about more information but the site didn’t actually give you anything in return, would you be inclined to signup?I know I wouldn’t.
I already have way too many emails coming in on a daily basis - I’m not trying to add one more unless it brings me value.
You might get a few signups from that, but what will it matter if you have no content to send them? The hard truth is that if you’re not sending your email list fresh content at least once a week they’re going to forget about you and why they signed up for your emails in the first place and will eventually unsubscribe.
#2. You’re Losing Potential Customers
Remember our example of visiting a website looking for information and finding that “Under Construction” page? Put yourself back in that situation. How likely is it that you would remember to return to that website in the future to check back for more info? Pretty unlikely, right? And even if you did remember for later, what does it matter when you want information now?
Having a “coming soon” page means you’re creating a non-existent or even negative brand association for anyone who happens to visit your site. After all, what’s noteworthy or memorable about a site with no information?You’re also losing out on visitors who want to book your services! If someone is searching specifically for what you offer, but they have no way to book it that means you’ve lost a sale. And even if they weren’t ready to buy now, they couldn’t even vet you against your competitors because that “coming soon” page is giving them zero constructive information.Even if you’re the best at what you do or your price point is the best around, if a customer has no way to book your services or buy your products then you guarantee your competitors will win out.
No one wants that!
The more bookings you have, the more people you’ll work with. The more people you work with, the quicker you’ll figure out who you love to work with (aka your ideal client.) The faster you nail down your ideal client the quicker you can cater your marketing and offers specifically to them - thereby generating more leads. Bottom line: snag all the customers you can!Now, for those of you planning to have your “coming soon” page redirect visitors to your social media accounts let me say this: That is indeed a better plan than giving them no CTA (call to action) at all, HOWEVER…We’ve all been on social media before, so we all know how much time you can lose to it. If people are sucked into a rabbit hole for your business, then great! But what’s more likely to happen is that a visitor finds your page, clicks through to a social media account, browses a few posts, but gets distracted by a meme sent by a friend or an interesting ad that popped up. What I’m saying is that redirecting visitors to your socials is better than nothing, but ultimately you have much less influence there - on a platform you don’t own, manage, or control - than you would have if you kept them on your website.
Keeping visitors on your website lets you lead them to the ultimate action you want them to take. That might be booking your services, sending an inquiry form, or buying a product. You will have a much harder time doing that on social media. Not impossible by any means - just much more difficult.#3. SEO
Here are those infamous buzzwords that inspire so much curiosity and confusion: SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.
Everyone knows you need it to grow your online business and help your website get found, but it’s very nebulous as to how you actually do that. The hot goss says one day you need to write 75 long form blog posts and the next day you should focus on optimizing your site’s loading speed. It’s a lot!Now, I am by no means claiming to be an SEO expert (heck, I feel as confused as the next person sometimes) but I do know a few things.
Mainly that search engines are masters of reading and categorizing data. So that means your website needs to have data to feed them! Let’s think about it like this: Google, although very powerful and smart, is not a person. It can’t see your website or interpret it the way you and I would, which is why you have to speak Google’s language.
Don’t worry - I’m not saying you have to learn
how to code!
What I mean is that you need to sprinkle in search term keywords all over your website, and I mean a LOT! The more often a keyword appears on your site, the higher Google will rank you for that keyword in searches.This applies to images as well. If you have lots of pictures on your site I’m sure it’s beautiful, but Google can’t see that. So you need to name each of those files something Google can read and understand (pop in those keywords baby!) If there’s no content on your site you are invisible to search engines.
Your “coming soon” page is tanking your SEO!
Speaking of search engines, data, and analytics… let’s talk about bounce rates. What’s a bounce rate? Every time you search for something through Google you’re presented with an optimized list of links to what Google thinks you’re looking for.When you click one of those links and then hastily click back to the search results Google interprets that as you indicating there was no relevant or helpful information related to your search term (aka a bounce.) That means Google will rank that link slightly lower because it thinks it wasn’t helpful for you. If people are visiting your website and immediately clicking away because all they see is an “under construction” notice, Google will recommend your site less and less frequently because it’s “irrelevant”. Asking people to visit a site where they immediately click away will increase your bounce rate and make it that much more difficult for you to get found when you actually do launch your content-filled site.
Bonus: Website Refresh
I know I said I was only going to give you 3 reasons not to have a “coming soon” page on your site, but I wanted to specifically reference existing websites as well!
Everything I said still applies, but I see most of these pages on brand new sites. But as I got to thinking about it I realized established websites might use an “under construction” page to hide a redesign in progress and I want to talk about it.For the record I don’t believe you need one, even when doing an overhaul or redesign on your current site. Why not? Because there are much better methods of accomplishing the same thing without hurting your business!For example, you could duplicate the pages you want to redesign but keep them hidden or inactive while you’re working on them. This would allow your current site to continue functioning as normal (and continue looking darn good) until you’re ready to launch the fabulous new, updated page. Once you’re ready, simply activate the new page and delete or hide the old one. Easy peasy!
If you’re wanting to redesign a whole site instead of a page here or there, the same concept applies. Build your brand new site, but leave the current one live until you’re ready to swap. You don’t want to lose an established source of leads with that “under construction” page! Just be sure to switch over all your old links or have them redirect to your new site.Still planning to have a “coming soon” or “under construction” page on your site?
Tell me about it in the comments! I’d love to hear your thoughts!
