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Under construction holding pages rarely offer value to your audience or marketing efforts.
A single page website can do so much more, and take the pressure off full website launch deadlines.
In the late 90’s and early 2000’s when a new website was being built, it seemed compulsory to have an animated builder telling everyone that the website was under construction.
I mean you weren’t cool if you didn’t.
If you don’t remember, take a look at this beauty below. This is not even half as bad as what we were once blessed with (please share if you have any).
But habits, it seems, are sometimes hard to break. So when a brand is launching a new product line, that has no existing website presence, they’ll usually consider an ‘under construction’ page. Although nowadays, it’s usually without our construction worker friend.
When registering a domain name, there’s usually an automatically created domain holding page. Many marketers are in a hurry to replace this with a brand logo to ensure that any curious visitors see in fact that there’s some activity on the page.
The logo is usually accompanied by the dreaded ‘This Website Is Under Construction’ or ‘Website Is Coming Soon’. Like it’s fresh out of the 90’s!
Back then a website was built in a shorter timeframe. Nobody really cared that the animated man provided little to no value. Yet today, with websites taking longer to build, we need to squeeze more from these temporary website holding pages.
Europa, shown above, was beginning to provide their logistics services in Dubai. A full scale website wasn’t required at the time. So rather than settle for a coming soon page with the company logo, we delivered a single page WordPress website, that behaved like a full website.
This was achieved with a traditional horizontal navigation, which anchored down the page to key content areas. We included various call to action buttons directing users to a contact form.
The website looked and felt like a full website, but provided just a snippet of the information that would feature on a full scale website. Yet, it meant there was no immediate rush to get a full scale site live, as this single page site ticked the short term solution box.
Yes, that’s a pun, as the website above is for a personal trainer. Visit the Fit As website here.
This website is a single page with anchor points, yet built actually more for long term use. So in some instances you might not need to replace it at all. We implemented a timeline, pricing and booking all onto a single page.
We’ve delivered similar projects for many B2B brands who’ve introduced new products. They adopt these service or brand microsites to test the water, before investing in a full scale website.
However, like I mentioned, you don’t always need to go full scale if you can get the right balance on the page. Delivering the core marketing message.
Want to avoid loads of content and a navigation altogether? Maybe you prefer to tease visitors and reveal little information. Then see the example above, that we created for Ta-Da Home Baking.
This holding page prompted users to register their email address to be notified when the new site went live. It also displayed a countdown timer to show when they could start their shopping experience.
Back in 2013, Impact helped to launch a website for Results With Lucy. A pioneer in online fitness (yes before everyone was doing it).
The holding page for the full website, tempted Lucy Mecklenburgh’s 1 million Twitter followers (at the time), with the chance to win a free subscription to the new service. They came and registered in their droves, crashing the holding page. So we learnt a very valuable lesson back then on planning for traffic spikes even for these kind of pages.
To summarise, don’t use a standard under construction holding page when waiting on a full website to launch. Try to deliver more, for users, but also for your marketing.
You’re in marketing, so stretch those creative muscles and think of something more valuable than under construction! Whatever you do, stay away from animated gifs of JCBs.
Many times when marketers are up against it with a launch deadline, they don’t consider the ideal short term solution. They’ll opt for an under construction page and engage an agency to get a website live in a few weeks. Meaning many corners will be cut and the finished website is unlikely to deliver the expected results.
If you have a new website your brand needs to launch, consider the single page website. This way you can provide value for your visitors. Delivering a credible content solution and removing pressure to get the full website live yesterday!
If you’re the sort of person that loves working to a deadline then, add the countdown timer. But use realistic deadlines and discuss these with your agency.
If you want to collect some data and test the water, a guide to download or a competition can be a way of collecting email signups that you can use to notify your audience when the big day finally arrives. As long as you’re GDPR compliant, it can be a great way to start building a healthy email marketing list.
You can also get your analytics firing, and an audience segment list building ready for remarketing and other audience targeted ads.
That’s a wrap for Swipe & Deploy #48. Join me next week when I’ll share another insight or piece of inspiration from around the web.
If you’d like to learn more about our WordPress & WooCommerce Support & Maintenance plans, drop us an email or give James a call.
Our plans provide a holistic solution to your website’s performance, reliability and security, and are inclusive of premium tools and services.
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