Here are some of the most common reasons NOT to do splash pages: Does not allow the company to be ranked highly in search engines. Obviously, meta tags are not enough, these days crawlers need actual content. We don’t want to break search engines.
1. This annoys return users, and keeps new users an extra step from the content they really want.
2. Some studies have shown that up to 25% of users leave a website during splash pages, before actual content loads.
3. Basically Splash pages handicap search engines, and have the potential to annoy many end users and have them leave. – They dramatically decrease conversion rates for these two reasons alone. And the same stuff can be shown with animation on the homepage.
Not to mention that other studies have actually shown people to use words like “pretentious” “useless” “annoying” – this is all true stuff, and not just my opinion J I think many CEOs and hire ups think that there is certain elegance to splash pages, like opening up the “story” of their company, drawing back the curtain. But the web isn’t not the same as T.V. and a website isn’t a commercial. Users are trying to complete a very specific task, be it to buy something on ecommerce, search for more information on a company, or research competing companies to make a decision on whose services they will employ. Anything that gets in the way of reaching the goal/completing the task is frustrating (not a great feeling to associate with any brand).