Cover pages are ideal for short-term features like blog series, challenges or events; as well as being ideal for the relaunch or redo of websites.
Cover Pages (also referred to as Coming Soon pages) provide visitors with a quick preview of your website before they navigate directly to its home page.
Add a Page
Squarespace’s Cover Page feature was an effective way of welcoming visitors to your website prior to them reaching its home page. Full-screen pages could be used to promote an upcoming message or product launch or collect email addresses from site visitors – however this feature has since been retired from Squarespace platform as of version 7.1.
Now we can easily create something similar using regular pages and the Per-page Code Injection feature. The key to creating such a page is hiding its header and footer so only its content is visible; code for doing this should be straightforward enough and the final product looks quite similar to a Cover Page.
This strategy works best if your website is small and doesn’t need to prevent visitors from accessing pages before its release date. As it can be tricky to implement, I wouldn’t advise using it on sites with lots of pages or multiple domains.
As your cover page will display differently from your main site templates, setting all fonts, colours and logos separately can be both beneficial and disadvantageous depending on your needs.
Start by creating a new page in your site. Give it a title, permalink and SEO description so search engines understand its contents better. Also include a short explanation as to its purpose; this won’t affect rankings but should let users know why they’ve come. After that click Change Layout to select one for your page.
Add a Layout
Cover pages provide information in an eye-catching format that makes an “Under Construction” page, product launch announcement or email collection more noticeable to visitors. Although these pages cannot be accessed directly via navigation, they should remain live as long as your website and commerce billing plan remain active.
Although your cover page may not offer as many customization options, you can still use all the same content types via insert points and blocks – with one exception: adding header or footer images won’t work as easily allowing for uninterrupted page creation.
Add action buttons, navigation links or form blocks to customize the layout to the content type. However, due to limits imposed by cover page templates you are limited to adding two action buttons and five navigation links and one form or newsletter signup on any cover page at one time – to avoid detracting from your message make sure all text stays below a specific width limit.
Note that while you can add a logo to your cover page, it will not always be visible due to a design decision that helps maintain an organized and focused content area.
Cover pages should not be used to alter fonts, colors or other aesthetic aspects of your site; rather, these should be set through the separate Style panel (or per-page Code Injection), so any changes to the template won’t affect your cover page design if necessary. This approach can help maintain consistency within brand identity when designing custom cover pages for different businesses.
Add a Headline
Cover pages are an effective way of conveying information in one page with bold visuals, making an immediate statement or gathering visitor email addresses. Unfortunately, Squarespace 7.1 removed this function; however there’s an easy workaround available that restores this capability!
Start by visiting your website’s dashboard and clicking Pages, followed by scrolling to the Not Linked section and creating a blank page (name it as you would any other page on your site), before using the Edit button in the upper-left corner to personalize and customize it further.
Make sure to fill in all three fields within Page Settings: Title, URL Slug and SEO Description. While SEO Description won’t impact search engine ranking directly, it should provide clarity for viewers of your page about its purpose.
Add a call-to-action on your cover page as well. For instance, if your goal is to collect email addresses via your cover page, be sure to add a clear sign up form that’s easy for people to find. Don’t forget your social links just in case someone wishes to connect outside your website!
Your cover page can also function as a mini blog or microsite if you’re running a short-term series, challenge, event, or gathering for customers. Doing this allows them to engage with what’s offered while giving you an opportunity for brand building without too much pressure or risk.
Add a Logo
Since cover pages feature more minimal designs than other pages in your website, the only place for adding your logo is in the header section. When using cover pages to gather leads, it’s crucial that your logo be appropriately sized so it stands out and looks crisp on a screen – make sure that no less than 2500 px wide logo is added for optimal performance.
Squarespace 7.1 removed the option for creating Cover Pages from within the Pages panel, but we can hack our way back by writing just three short lines of code. First, create a blank page and mark it as Cover Page within your Not Linked section in Pages Panel; once live we will add this code into Per-page Code Injection Field:
Add Content
Squarespace makes creating and customizing cover pages different than regular pages due to their purpose and use; cover pages feature layouts designed specifically to showcase certain content types like showing locations or previewing videos, or making a bold visual statement.
Example layouts could include record layout for audio releases or promotional efforts while Premier layout can help announce special offers or events. Cover pages can also serve to promote short-term series or challenges within your business or even one-off gatherings or events – useful tools when working in creative industries as they often utilize multiple formats simultaneously! Creative businesses in particular often rely on this type of strategy – thus having a separate page that is easily search engine indexed can provide invaluable results.
Cover pages can include up to two buttons, five navigation links and a form or newsletter signup. To create these elements, select Action in the menu and click Create Element before filling out all relevant information and selecting one of three styles of button shapes – circle, rectangle or triangle).
Though cover page layouts may limit what can be added, there are ways you can easily tailor them to meet your needs. For instance, changing the background color in Media panel or making minor modifications in layout may help suit your aesthetic better.
Note that due to design restrictions, you cannot use per-page code in a cover page. While this may be frustrating for users browsing your website while you work on its structure.
