A Website That Still Says Coming Soon

Coming soon, since 2016

The domain was registered when the business started. The address went on the truck doors, the business cards, the invoices and every email signature.

A placeholder went up at the same time: the logo, the words new website coming soon, and an email address. The plan was a proper site within a few months. That was three years ago.

Every day since, people who saw the truck, kept the card or paid the invoice have typed the address and found the same page.

Some placeholders are older still, with a countdown that reached zero long ago, or the words under construction beside a drawing of a traffic cone.

Why placeholders stay up

• The planned site keeps growing before any of it exists.
• Busy seasons push it back, one after another.
• A rebrand is coming, so building now feels wasteful.
• Photographs and text are waiting on someone.
• Work arrives by referral, so nothing feels urgent.
• Nobody looks at it, the owner included.

The first keeps a placeholder alive longest. Each delay adds something to the plan, a gallery, a blog, online booking, a page for every service, until the site in mind is too big to start.

What a visitor concludes

People who type the address have usually met the business already. They saw the truck, were given your name, or are about to hire you and want reassurance.

A placeholder gives them none. Months old, it reads as a business that has not quite started, one that started and stalled, or one that has quietly closed.

They cannot see your work, your area, your credentials or a single review. Someone choosing between three names on a referral list keeps the two that showed them something.

What search engines see

A page with a logo and four words gives Google nothing to match to a search for your service or your town. It may show the page for your exact business name, and for little else.

Some coming soon plugins also tell search engines the site is temporarily unavailable, or ask them not to index it at all. Both are meant for a few days around a launch.

Left in place for months, they keep the business out of results it would otherwise appear in.

And the website button on the Google My Business listing leads to the same placeholder, just as someone who found you on the map is deciding whether to call.

The address is already working

This is the strongest argument for replacing it. The address is on vehicles, cards, invoices and signatures, and every one of them is sending people to the site today.

Most businesses spend money to attract visitors. This one already has them, and shows them a placeholder.

The cost stays invisible, because nobody phones to say they looked you up and left. They simply call someone else.

A small real site instead

The answer is not the big site from the plan. It is a small one, finished, that can go live within weeks.

Four or five pages cover it. A home page that says plainly what you do and where you work, with the phone number near the top. A services page, or one page for each main service.

An about page with real people and real credentials. A contact page with the phone number, email, service area and hours.

A dozen good photographs of your own work do more than any amount of stock. A phone and an hour on a few finished jobs will produce them.

A worked example

A two-person tree care company, an arborist and a groundsperson with one truck, put a placeholder on its domain when the truck was lettered in 2016.

The plan was a full site with a gallery of every job, a page per service and an online quote tool. Each spring the plan grew longer, and each spring the work got busier.

Meanwhile, homeowners who noticed the truck in their neighbourhood typed the address and found the logo. A few phoned to ask whether the company was still operating.

This autumn the owner agreed to five pages instead: home, services, the area served, an about page with the arborist's certification, and contact.

The services page covers pruning, removals and stump grinding, with photographs taken on jobs over two weeks.

It went live in November. The gallery, the quote tool and a page on hazard assessments are on a list for the new year, to be added one at a time.

Until the five pages are ready

If even five pages will take a month, do not leave the placeholder up while you wait.

Replace it this week with one honest page: what you do, the area you cover, the phone number, an email address and three photographs of real work. That is not a coming soon page. It is a very small website.

Make sure it is open to search engines and promises no launch date. The five pages then replace a real page rather than a placeholder.

Growing it after launch

Once the site is live, add one thing a month: a page for a service, a write-up of an interesting job, answers to the questions that come up on every call.

Each addition is small and complete when it goes up, which is the opposite of how the placeholder came about.

Set up Analytics and Search Console on the first day, so the searches people use to find you can shape what gets written next.

The counter-case

A business that genuinely has not opened yet can use a holding page for a few weeks, if it says what is coming, when it opens and how to get in touch now.

That is a page with an end date, not an open-ended promise.

A domain bought only to protect a name or catch a misspelling should redirect to the main site rather than show a placeholder.

And a business rebuilding an existing site should keep the old one up until the new one is ready. For everyone else: launch small and real, and grow it from there.

This month

1. Open your address on a phone today.
2. List the five pages the first version needs.
3. Set a launch date within six weeks.
4. Photograph a dozen real jobs.
5. Check nothing blocks search engines at launch.
6. Point your Google listing at the new site.
7. Add one page a month after that.

Step one is the one most owners have not done in years. Seeing the placeholder the way a customer does, on a phone, straight after seeing the truck, usually settles the question.

Getting the words written so the launch date holds is covered in the website waiting on your content.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.