Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks
Getting your Squarespace site up and running takes time, and while you’re getting it all spiffy, you’re missing out on potential visitors. The solution? A “Coming Soon” or “Under Construction” page that can act as a placeholder until your site is ready for its public debut. Squarespace doesn’t have a specific page type for this, but there’s one we can adapt very easily — the cover page.
Cover pages are designed to be standalone, with no navigation bar to link to any other pages on your site, so you can rest assured that visitors won’t start browsing your incomplete site (though I still recommend disabling your other pages while you work on them, in case someone tries typing /about or /blog into your URL to see what’s there):
Now hop back over to your Main Navigation and add a Cover Page, then name it something descriptive, like “Under Construction” or (for the Disney fans out there) “Pardon Our Dust”:
Squarespace provides a bunch of beautiful layouts and themes for their cover pages, so you’re likely to find one that captures the vibe of your site:
The beauty of cover pages is their simplicity. In just a couple of minutes I’ve put together the essentials of a Coming Soon page — your name or brand, some variation on the words “Coming Soon”, a contact button (preferably one that gets visitors on your email list so you can notify them when the site launches), and social icons:
If you are a brick-and-mortar business, you may also want to include additional contact information, such as your address and phone number. (Note: For web-based businesses, remember the more direct contact info you give out, the fewer people will sign up for your email list.)
Once your page is looking exciting as hell and you know visitors won’t be able to wait until launch day, you can set your under construction page as your home page under the page settings:
Now when users go to www.yournameorbusiness.com it will take them to your placeholder page, without access to any of the other pages you’re working on.
Then, when it’s time to launch, all you need to do is enable your other pages, disable the placeholder, and reassign your home page to your actual home page.
So get building, and let the world know something awesome is coming!
Get stories like this one delivered to your in-box weekly: Subscribe to the GSD newsletter.
GSD: Tips and Tricks is brought to you by Xero, the cloud accounting software solution for your small business. With Xero, you can log in anytime, anywhere to get a real-time view of your cash flow and manage your books. Start your free 30-day trial today.