Have you ever visited a website and saw the all too familiar message “this page is under construction” or something like “this section will be available soon”? Unfortunately, coming soon pages are a fact of eCommerce life. Webmasters tend to use these pages for two big reasons. One, these categories or pages establish a method in which a shopping cart software owner can market a new idea which might still be in development.  One company who uses such a method is the magazine subscription company usubscribe.com. On their website they have a tab for “single copy and back issue magazines’ to the surprise of many usubscribe.com does not sell single issues, but instead offers a message that says

“Thank you for clicking!We are currently researching what types of products our users are interested in. By clicking on the link that brought you to this page you have effectively cast a vote in favor of this section. Nothing is more important to us then user feedback. If you would like to make an addional comments or suggestions about our site please use the form below.”

This is a great way of doing a little bit of market research to find out if a new product or service is desirable by your customers. The second reason many webmasters use under construction pages is to start the SEO ball rolling. By inserting specific keywords in to your new page the search engines will begin to know that you are adding a new section. Once the new product or service launches the keyword  process will become a lot easier because Google would have already indexed your page.