Links to "Coming soon" pages - what do you think?

[Manores]

Hi all

I just wanted to take ideas of "design people" about something which really annoys me.

You see a link in a site that really interests you and you immediately click it and ta taa! You see a page "Coming soon!"

I really love sitepoint, but we also have something similar in the "My Sitepoint" section, the favourites link. It does not work, and I don't like non-working links?

So what are your ideas, it is a problem or not?

[samsm]

I think "Coming Soon" is fine as long as that page is "coming soon". However, most the time you see "coming soon" that message has been there for months and will be there for months.

A better message would be "Coming in late October" or such, so you don't have to keep checking back.

[sbdi]

If its not there dont put a link up for it. Make sure your site can be easily changed to suit the new addition. If you had a dead link up for a couple of weeks less people are likely to click it, but if its a new link people will want to see whats there

[Manores]

Hi again

There 9 votes but the thread seems to be viewed around 50, which means more than half of the viewers did not vote. Please do vote, whoever reads this thread and we get a larger sample and a more applicable "data".

[sonjay]

I voted "annoys me a lot."

I see nothing wrong with announcing some new addition as "coming soon," but just put the announcement on the original page NOT as a link. Just a plain old plain text announcement: "This is coming soon." Then when the new addition is ready, put your link up.

Why waste people's time by sending them to a page that contains nothing but "coming soon"?

[Siltrince]

I voted : Annoys me

It actually annoys me in specific cases ( wich are unfortuatly about 90% of the coming soon pages )

I have absolutely no problem with "coming soon" pages if they put a date on the soon.
Something like "coming soon (expected date ...)"

But like I said , in most cases they don't put a date ( nothing actually) so then it annoys me.

[kilcher]

I like knowing of new features but I think they should be listed seperately. The thing that annoys me most about this situation is that the internet is filled with half-finished projects. You don't know if the page really is "coming soon" or if it's been like that since 1997. On SitePoint I'm sure it's safe to assume that it really is being worked on but as someone pointed out, even then you don't know if it'll be 2 days or 2 months.

[Ruchir]

Internet Filled with half-completed pages ? That's a reality .. so i aint anyways against any "Coming soon" pages unless the fact that the site isn't being worked upon and its just wasting our tie looking out for it... Coming Soon would make the best sense when they've got the countdown counters or something that tells us when its really gonna be on !!

[iFroggy]

I think "Coming Soon" is fine as long as that page is "coming soon". However, most the time you see "coming soon" that message has been there for months and will be there for months.

A better message would be "Coming in late October" or such, so you don't have to keep checking back.

Exactly.

[Adam P.]

Coming Soon is fine if the page is actually coming soon, like samsm said, but I think it's even more impressive to just have the link show up one day. Then the people will be like "ooh, wow, something new!" If there's a coming soon page up for a month or so, people could lose interest and then when it finally does come, it won't be such a big deal.