Putting something online before your website is finished

There is an awkward stretch when your business has a web address and nothing at it. The name is on the card, the card is in someone's pocket, and the address they type leads nowhere. That stretch lasts longer than anyone means it to.

You have three options in it, and only one of them is any good.

A dark address. The name is registered and points at a parking page, or at nothing at all. Whoever types it decides you are broken, or gone.

A sign with a date on it. "New website coming soon." Nobody can do anything with a promise. They came to check your prices, your hours or whether you cover their street, and a countdown timer answers none of it.

One true page. Four answers and one way to get in touch, at the address you already own. That is a website. It is not the finished one, and it does not have to be.

Here is how to write that page in one sitting, and what to keep off it so it does not turn into a liability.

What the page has to answer

Someone arriving at a half-built site is almost always holding a phone, standing up, and deciding something. Four things settle it:

• What you do, in one sentence a stranger could repeat out loud.
• Where you are, or the area you cover.
• When you are open, including the day you are closed.
• How to reach a person, and roughly how quickly they reply.

Give the page one action: ring this number, or send a message here. One, not five.

A piano tuner's entire page could read: "Piano tuning and repair, home visits across the north of the city. Weekdays and Saturday mornings. Ring or send a message and you will get an answer the same day." That is four lines a visitor can act on, and it beats a beautiful site that does not exist yet.

What to keep off it until the real site lands

• A launch date. A date is a claim with a deadline attached. When it slips, the page is wrong and you are explaining yourself.
• A question box pointing nowhere. A form needs somewhere to receive and store what people type. Without that, it looks fine, accepts the message and delivers nothing.
• Half-empty sections. A gallery with one photo, or a services page with a single line, reads as neglect. Here is what belongs on the finished page; leave anything you cannot fill properly for later.
• Prices you are about to change, and anything seasonal. An old price on a live page is a promise you will be asked to keep.

One page that answers real questions beats six that each answer half of one.

Keep the address, keep the words

Publish at the address you already printed, if you have one. Something plain and true beats waiting for a design you are proud of: it keeps every van, receipt and email signature pointing at something real.

If you have not registered the name yet, choose one you will still want in three years. That decision is worth an afternoon. This page is worth twenty minutes.

Then start a note file next to it. Every question a customer asks you on the phone goes in, in the words they used. "Can you come out on a Saturday?" "Do you charge for the first visit?" Each one becomes a heading on the real site later, so the site grows out of questions people actually asked.

That file also means whoever builds the real site starts with your facts and your sentences, not a blank page.

When there is nothing to publish yet

If you cannot write the one sentence — what you sell, to whom, roughly where — the page is not the problem and publishing it will not help. Write the sentence.

It takes ten minutes, and everyone else needs it from you: whoever builds the site, the printer making the cards, the neighbour who asks what you do now. Everything else on a page is that sentence plus the facts around it.

Tonight's version

• One sentence: what you do, where, and for whom.
• Your hours written as words, including the closed day.
• One way to reach a person that a real person actually watches, with a reply time you can keep.
• One photo of your real work.
• Nothing dated, promised, borrowed or half-built.
• The address on the page matches the one you have printed.

Put it up wherever your address points, then open it once on your phone to check the number dials and the message arrives. After that, get on with the work, and let the rest of the site arrive when it is real.

Sitewright is still being built, so there is nothing to sign up for yet and no date being promised; the waitlist on the home page is the only thing that is open. The page above works today, on any host, made any way. If you want the one email when there is something to try, you can join the waitlist.