Eliminate Under Construction
There are a lot of sites out there that are “under construction”. It’s easy to find an entire site that’s under construction, like TaxpayerBillofRights.com, or maybe just a section or a page is in the works. I have a couple of thoughts on this.
First, in terms of usability, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have a section of your site that’s under construction, especially if it’s in your site’s navigation.
People will click a link expecting to see “T-shirts”, “boats”, “free beer” or “hot sexy singles” - whatever. Instead they’ll see… nothing. You’ll leave people disappointed (especially those seeking the sexy singles). Not a good impression for your site.
It would be better in most cases to either leave out that page/section completely, until it’s ready, or at the very least, put more enticing information about the content that’s coming soon and, ideally, a date when the page will be ready for a return visit. Then at least you can encourage people to come back.
My second thought has to do with search engine optimization. If you are selling products online and have plans for line extension (you sell shirts and will expand to sell pants), you may want to have some sort of page that has some copy optimized for the new product line, to give the search engine spiders something to latch onto and bring the Googlers over to your site even before the line is out, in a form of advance online marketing.
Anything, though is better than “Under Construction”, which simply sends the message that your Web designer hasn’t built a page yet and there’s no telling when it might get done…
