The purpose of your web site is to inform or entertain your audience. When people visit your site, they expect to find something there. What they don't want to see is a Coming Soon statement or a Site Under Construction statement. The only thing worse than that is an image or animation that tells the visitor that there is nothing to see yet! Why would someone pay for a domain name and web hosting to display nothing? And why would a visitor want to wait for a page to load that has no relevant contents?
Okay, so what should you do when you want to include the page to prepare for its future need? Many people have sites to advertise their services, but don't have a portfolio ready for inclusion. Ideally, you should have the portfolio ready before adding this page, but this is not always possible. Try to include descriptions what will be included on this page and when to expect the new contents. If you set a date, stick to it. If you can't make that date, post an apology and an update. The main point is to have contents on every page or don't include the page. Don't waste your visitors' time or your bandwidth.
Before I launched this web site, I created graphics, banners, and entire web sites to include in my portfolio. Why would someone hire me instead of my competitors without looking at my work? I cannot tell you how many sites I have seen that had no examples of their work. Web designers are not the only ones guilty of this. I just want you to put yourself in the place of your visitor. Would you buy from you? If you have no portfolio, my guess is no. If you need help deciding how to add useful contents to your site, let me know.
If you have an e-commerce website, you should have payment, shipping, refund and privacy policies on your website. The links to those pages should be available from main pages and product pages. If you do not include your company name, address, phone number, fax number (if applicable) email address, business (calling) hours and other important information, you could lose sales. I wouldn't pay for products or services online without knowing this information.
Look at similar websites to yours to see what they include or exclude and ask yourself why you would or would not buy from the website. Then look at your own website again and decide what changes you may need.
Yvette Kuhns, Power Pages Web Design, August 19, 2002
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