How to Start a Website with a Splash Page

You have decided to launch a website and you’re beginning to make a list of everything your site needs before you launch. After all, the last thing you really want is a page that just says “under construction.”

The list continues to grow, every idea you add to your list will increase the authority of your brand, highlight your work, show you help people and, ultimately, give you an edge in convincing your visitors that you have what they’re looking for.

There’s only one problem: your site isn’t launched yet. For all intents and purposes that “under construction” sign is front and center.

In this article you will discover how to launch a website with what is known in the web industry as a “splash page,” and in less than a week have your site live, ready for visitors while, in the background, you continue to build out everything on your list.

Rather than waiting months to finally get all your content together and then launching with a loud bang (more on this later), you can get your business and brand online immediately, providing an instant resource for your ideal clients who are searching for you RIGHT NOW.

Everything You Want Live On Your Website at Launch

The list you’ve made of everything you believe your website needs at launch most likely contains a combination of the following:

  • About page
  • Contact page
  • Home page
  • 5-10 blog entries
  • Welcome video
  • Products page
  • Category page

The good news for you is that you do not need to wait to actually get this content live.

How to Start a Website with a Splash Page

A splash page is essentially a single page that contains the most basic information about your business or brand. Rather than your website visitors being met with a “this site will be live soon” construction page or worse, a web host holding page, they will have access to the essential details of your business, allowing them to confirm you are a real entity and providing what they need in order to contact you about your products or services.

How to start a website with a splash page comes down to adding the following content to one single page:

  • Your name
  • Your business name
  • A subtitle of what you do
  • Your logo (if you have one)
  • Your physical address (if you have one)
  • Your mailing address (if necessary)
  • Your email address or contact form
  • A photo of you, your business building or your team
  • A brief statement about what you do

That’s it. With a comprehensive splash page live at your domain, you can begin sending clients, leads and visitors to your site knowing that it paints an accurate picture of who you are, what you do, how you help people and how they can work with you.

If you ask some folks in your same position, “when is your website going to launch?” they’ll respond with something along the lines of, “well, I will be able to launch it once I get my first ten blog posts written, record my welcome video, have my professional headshots taken and get all my products and services listed.”

Accomplishing all the “stuff” folks think they need to have before going live can take four to six months to accomplish – not because it should but because that’s just what happens. In some cases, it will take years. Or worse, never launch.

When you decide to launch your online brand with a splash page, you get ahead of every other person or business out there “planning a big launch,” all while having NOTHING in place until things are finally “ready.”

The Website Launch Heard Around the World

Splash pages aren’t as widely used as they should be. You may not want to use a splash page because you have the “website launch heard around the world” mentality. This mentality is essentially the belief that once you click a giant “publish” button, thousands of visitors will immediately bombard your website, clamouring for the content you’ve created.

This is rarely the case, however, let’s just pretend that this is how it happens… just for the sake of my next point.

If you believe that hundreds of visitors every day, thousands every week, will come to your site as soon as you launch, you wouldn’t be able to handle the traffic.

Why?

Because you’ve probably skimped on a decent web hosting plan. You probably have tried to find the cheapest hosting plan available and are paying something like $4 a month to share a server with 998 other websites. If your site launched to thousands of visitors, your host would be crippled, providing slow load times and driving people away by the hundreds.

See this post on selecting a web server.

Back to reality – your site will not launch to thousands. It won’t launch to hundreds. Chances are there is a completely different launch scenario that you haven’t considered but is more realistic for you.

The Real Story of How Your Website Will Launch

No one is waiting around for your website to launch. Unless you’ve run a successful crowdfunding campaign and folks are excited to learn more about you and your company, you have no audience.

You don’t.

You are brand new to the online marketplace. You may be a brick-and-mortar marketplace, maybe even going on decades of business, but to the online world, you’re a nobody.

When you launch your website it’s most likely that the following will be true:

  • People who have caught wind of your name, through referrals and recommendations, will find your website when they search your name.
  • You will share your new website with friends, family, colleagues and on social media, giving you a few dozen, maybe even a couple hundred visits in the first month.

That’s it. No joke. That’s the reality that you’re looking at for your website launch.

What’s more, the visitors that do look at your website will not have any idea what you had planned to launch – only what you actually launched with.

Another way of saying that is if you launch with eight pages, visitors to your website will believe that those eight pages are the totality of your website. They have no idea you were going to launch with ten pages but scrapped the last two in order launch earlier.

How to Incorporate Blog Entries Into a Splash Page Launch

Perhaps you’re on board with the idea of a splash page but you really need to launch with a few blog posts and maybe some additional content… not a problem at all.

If you must launch with blog posts, then you want at least one post to cover each topic you will discuss on your website – or one for each product/service.

For instance, if I were to launch my website as a splash page but with a few blog posts attached, I would have three posts – one for each topic I discuss on my site. One post would be all about web marketing, a second post would be all about email marketing and the third would be about social media marketing.

Why?

Because those are the only three things I talk about. There are plenty of other sub-topics that I could add in the future – such as a post about splash pages to the website category – but to launch, I want these posts to give readers a good feel for my approach to web, email and social to help them see that they want to work with me.

In fact, the current site for my business is a bit like this.

There are lots of posts you could write, but for your splash page you want to get the most important ones written so you… can launch your website! Focusing on the top level topics, products or services will serve you well as you seek to build business through the internet.

How to Actually Create a Splash Page to Launch Your Website

Your site visitors have no idea that you are building a great page behind the scenes, all they know is they need to get in touch with you. When you create your splash page, you’ll give them exactly what they want.

If you are using a website builder such as Squarespace or something similar, they will have sample splash page templates that you can access. If you’re like most online businesses, you’ll want to use WordPress because of it’s flexibility, ease of use and overall feature set (through plugins and themes).

I have put together a few very basic steps for you to follow in order to get your splash page live this week.

Step 1: Secure Web hosting

If you have not yet secured web hosting, that is where you will want to start. I have put together a post here that will help you navigate selecting a host that suits you. Personally, I have been recommending Wirenine for the last year. It may change in the future, but their SSD servers combined with their reasonable pricing and their consistent support staff has made the experience satisfying.

You can learn more about Wirenine at my affiliate link here.

Step 2: Install WordPress

WordPress can be installed in one of two ways: manually and through an install script.

Manual installation will require you to create a MySQL database and user – super easy but I know that even those words freak many out. If you’re interested in knowing how to install WordPress manually, you can watch this video which does a decent job of explaining the process.

Most web providers, including Wirenine, will have script installers that allow you to install WordPress on your server with one click. This is going to be your preferred method of installation.

The ONLY downside is that typically web hosts will have deals with other businesses and when you install WordPress, a few plugins may install as well. For instance, one provider I was using was installing Mojo Themes with every new WordPress plugin. This is very similar to buying a new PC and upon starting for the first time there is a ton of “software” installed that you never wanted in the first place.

All that said, there is nothing wrong with installing via script.

Step 3: Purchase A Website Theme

If you’re serious about this online business thing, you do not want to use a free theme. Free themes will typically put your site at security risk, are not well updated and you will not find any support when you get stuck.

I recommend using the Enfold Theme by Kriesi. The important thing is that you want to have a theme that allows you to hide sidebars, main navigation, footers, leaving only the main body content. Using the Enfold Theme, you can select a template that does this very thing.

Along with recommending the Enfold Theme specifically, I also recommend using a theme that has a drag-and-drop editor, as Enfold does. Another theme that many love for this same reason is Divi Theme by Nick Roach and the folks at Elegant Themes.

Both Divi and Enfold are fantastic themes. The important thing is that you get a theme which allows you to achieve the look you want through a simple, easy to use interface.

You can find Divi Theme here. You can find Enfold Theme using my affiliate link here.

Step 4: Select Colors for Your Business or Brand

If you’re brand new to online business, or business in general, chances are you don’t yet have a logo or a color palette. While you can get more “official” in the future, the goal here is to be as quick as possible. You will want to select a temporary color palette to use for your splash page; if you want to change it in the future, you can.

Adobe provides one of the best color resources on the web appropriately titled Adobe Color CC. You can easily create a palette of complimentary colors based upon a single color you have a taste for, or you can use their explore tab to search thousands of palettes that others have created and uploaded to Adobe.

I have used the explore tab more than once to provide a nice palette for clients; you should be able to find something that you’ll really like using either one of these features.

One other website that does a similar function to Adobe Color CC is Coolors.co. It’s a very straight forward color palette service that allows you to select a combination of five colors. It’s worth a look.

Step 5: Design Your Splash Page

Designing your splash page doesn’t need to be hard. Why? Because there are so many examples on the web that you can follow. Here are a few examples you can begin with, then if you need more, I’d encourage you to click here for more options.

As I mentioned before, don’t forget to include the following content on your splash page.

  • Your name
  • Your business name
  • A subtitle of what you do
  • Your logo (if you have one)
  • Your physical address (if you have one)
  • Your mailing address (if necessary)
  • Your email address or contact form
  • A photo of you, your business building or your team
  • A brief statement about what you do

There is a lot you can do for a splash page. The bottom line is that you want your splash page to be simple, communicative and reflective of your business or brand.

Step 6: Get a Second Opinion

You’re not a website expert. You never wanted to be. You are only doing this because it is a necessity to launch your online business.

No matter how much you like (or dislike) what you create, you want to get a second opinion. Good web design is not about preference but rather art and science. There are people who spend their entire lives dedicated to understanding the art of the human brain and how it interacts with design experiences.

You will benefit greatly from getting several eyes on your splash page. You want to ask folks who will be honest with you and are on your team. People who want you to succeed at your work and who will tell you the truth versus affirm what you’ve done.

Never Wait for Your Website

As helpful as a website will be in attracting clients and securing work, it is a tool, it is not a substitute for good business and a solid sales process. The belief that a website will do all the hard work and you can sit back and do nothing once it’s live, that’s just false.

If you ever find yourself saying something like, “once my website goes live, then I can start making sales,” means you have unreal expectations for your site.

There are, of course, exceptions. If you’re selling a product and taking sales through your website, yes, you need to have a website. Using a splash page, you can sign up for a simple tool like SendOwl to facilitate the sale of your product online until your full website is done.

Online business is an all hands on deck effort, and your website will work in harmony with your social media, email marketing and in-person sales processes. Even if one is down – i.e., you’re finishing your website – you need to keep the others running so you can continue to grow your business, brand and authority.