Are you planning on releasing your website soon? Are you currently working on your website, either designing it or recreating pieces of it from the start? Coming soon pages are quite popular among webmasters as they give off an announcement that you are currently working on your website and that it will be launched soon enough. If you create a coming soon page for your website you can it will drive off traffic right from the very beginning of your website.
It can create excitement and you’ll be telling your users when to expect the big day. A custom coming soon page is an attractive way of connecting with your audience even if your website is not ready for display yet. Under no circumstances your website should not look its best, even as you are designing it.
That is why in this article we will show you how to create a coming soon page in WordPress in under 5 minutes. Yep, it’s that easy. WordPress by default does not provide a coming soon mode, but as you’ve figured, there’s a plugin for everything in the WordPress repository.
For all the Neuron users, you can easily put your website to Coming Soon mode and design custom coming soon pages that look stunning and in this guide, we will show you how to create a coming soon page all from scratch and assign it to your website with a single click.
Why Create a Coming Soon Page in WordPress ?
Your website should mirror professionalism and competence in all instances even from the beginning. If you create a coming soon page, it will add credibility to a website and will need to serve its purpose to get the attention of every user that lands on your website and convince them to come back by email notification or social media updates.
Giving a teaser of your work will keep people interested in what’s about to come next. You don’t have to waste time and lose precious leads waiting for your website to be fully published, you can anticipate what’s about to come with a beautiful custom coming soon page.
Here are a few reasons as to why you should create a coming soon page for your WordPress website.
- Establish brand awareness before launching your website
When displaying a coming soon page before the release of your website you get the chance to increase brand awareness and by adding some content, images, a strategically placed newsletter form, or your logo will be enough to entice users and expect the full release of your website. It’s better to create a coming soon page and display it while you are still working on your website so that users who land on your website will not be disappointed by a black default page. This helps you create a base of users before launching and creating a buzz around your website or product. - Better for search engines
Search engine optimization is a big deal in the digital world, you want your website to be found and crawled by search engines to establish the foundation of your website as soon as possible. To create a coming soon page means to be visible for Google crawlers and search engines, even if your website is still unfinished. One good SEO practice, in this case, will be to go ahead and add the meta description, the keywords, page title, and some content this way you can improve SEO on your coming soon page. Even the head of Google’s webmaster’s team admits that coming soon pages are good for SEO and can help establish the base of your website which in the long run will help you rank higher in search engines. While you are designing and building your website it should always be set on coming soon mode, not maintenance mode as this prevent your website from being indexed by Google. - Grow your mailing list beforehand grow your mailing list
A coming soon page is a great chance to collect leads and even before your website is launched. By simply incorporating a beautiful, engaging design and a newsletter form you will invite users who come across your website to expect updates from you and this will raise the anticipation even more. You can build a solid audience that you can connect with, promote your products, and convert leads. Be sides newsletter forms, you can also include your social media platforms to boost your social media engagement and following. You can connect with them by posting updates and news from your products or your website.
What to include on your Coming Soon Page?
Your coming soon page should be effective in order to create your audience before the website launch. When you create a coming soon page, keep in mind the main characteristics that make it successful and reach your marketing goals. At the end of the day, a coming soon page can be a great pre-launch marketing tool to announce the launch of your website. Pay close attention to the elements we include to take full advantage of the coming soon page.
- Countdown Element – You should always include the launch date when you start to create your coming soon page because this will transmit a clear and precise message as to when your website will be live. You can use a countdown element that shows the days, hours and minutes, to raise anticipation. A coming soon page without a launching date is useless, you might as well not display such a page at all.
- Write a Description – Besides the launch date, writing a clear and concise description of your website can provide a powerful message for all your websites visitors. Keep in mind that coming soon pages have no other links to navigate to and you can expect users to leave your website in a short period, so you have a small window of opportunity to keep their engagement and convince them to take an action.
- Social Media Icons – In the previous section we mentioned the importance of coming soon pages to create your audience before website launch, for this reason, it is crucial that you add social media icons on your coming soon page so that you can grow your community in advance.
- Email Subscription Forms – One of the most important elements to include when creating a coming soon page for your WordPress website. Make sure you don’t include any CTAs when you create a coming soon page. This will prevent the confusion of the user as to what action to take first. Coming soon pages are great for growing your mailing list, make this a priority, and place your email subscription form strategically on your design.
How to Create a Coming Soon Page in WordPress?
Now that we have everything clear on coming soon pages, their benefits, and what components make up for effective and successful designs we will show you how to easily create a Coming Soon page in WordPress in a few simple steps. Follow us along.
Note that for the purpose of this article we will be designing this coming soon page using Neuron Builder and we will then assign our page template to be displayed on our website so that visitors can not wander around your unfinished website.
Step One: Create a Coming Soon Page Template
To begin the process of designing and creating a coming soon page in WordPress we will need to create the page template using the powerful drag and drop page builder that is Elementor. To create a coming soon page first navigate to Templates > Theme Builder.
Next, click on Add New at the top of the page.
Select the template type, for this example, we must leave it at Page, and in the next field, you will need to type in the name of the template. You can simply name it the Coming Soon page for better template organization in the future. When you’re done with naming, click on “Create Template” to get started.
Step Two: Design the Coming Soon Page
After you create the template, you will be redirected to the Editor where you can create your magic. On the left panel, you have all the elements to design and create the template. Simply drag the elements onto the page and stylize them as per your desire. Everything is reachable. We will first fix the layout of the page.
Since this is a Coming Soon page, we won’t be needing the header nor footer. Click on the cog icon on the bottom toolbar. Locate the Page Layout option and choose Elementor Canvas. This will eliminate both the header and the footer, leaving you a blank canvas to work on your design.
We will create a coming soon page all from scratch and build up the design by adding all the necessary elements that we need. Let’s begin by adding a section, click on the plus icon and choose the preferred structure. We only want one column.
Next up you will need to configure the section’s settings. We will change the Content Width and set it to Full Width, also the Columns Gap will need to be set to No Gap. And all the other arrangements until we are happy with how our section sits on the page, as this will be the foundation of our coming soon page.
We will add a background image for more impact to all the users who visit our coming soon page. When you create a coming soon page you make sure that every element, every media used is properly aligned with your brand. We will need to go to the Style tab and from the background, we will first select the background type to be classic and we will add our image. Like so
We will also add some padding value on the right and left sides of the column from the Advanced tab. We will add an inner section to organize our content. This is where we will be adding our site logo and some strategically place social icons. We will first arrange the configurations for the inner column. Let’s set the Content Width to Full Width to match the configurations of the section.
And now it’s time we add our elements. First, let’s search for the Site Logo Element and drag it onto the page. The element will display dynamic content, meaning it will extract the logo from the Site Identity. We will make the necessary arrangements to have our icon be an appropriate size and we will place it on the left.
Let’s also search for the Social Icons element from the left panel, drag the element on the page. From the Content tab select all the preferred social media platforms, add the proper links to them so that when users click on them they will be redirected to your social profiles. From the Style tab, also configure their size and spacing, and this is what we have got so far.
Let’s add another inner section, delete one column, and make it Full Width. Now we will add the main components, we will drag a heading element onto our design, and let’s type Coming Soon so that our users know this is a coming soon page. We will also stylize our heading as per our needs, you can get creative and any preferred font or size. In Neuron Builder, you can also add custom fonts and use them on your designs seamlessly.
We will also add a Text Editor Element to make a nice description for our coming soon page. We’ve already established that when you create a coming soon page, effective descriptions play a crucial part. We will tweak the typography options and set the text color. These are all optional as you can arrange your design the way it fits your brand. And last for this inner section, we will add a subscription form.
We will need to search for the Form Element from the left panel and drag the element onto the page. We wanted to keep it simple and not overload our users with tons of components, thus we will only leave the email field. To learn more about how to create and designs forms in WordPress please refer to this video. We will also style our form with the tools available from the Style Tab. It’s all starting to fall into place.
For the last component, we will add a countdown timer that will show the launch date of our website. This is probably the most exciting part of our coming soon page. As per usual, search for the Countdown element and drag it onto the page. All you need to do is set the due date, and the element will do the rest.
You have the option to show or hide, the days, hours, minutes, seconds, and more as well as the possibility to write custom labels for the values. From the Style tab, we will make it blend with the rest of our design, for a more cohesive look.
Now all you need to do is publish your template and you have successfully created a coming soon page
Set your website in Coming Soon Mode
After you create a coming soon page, it’s time you set your website on Coming Soon mode and assign the template you just created to your website. From the WordPress Dashboard, click on Elementor > Tools > Maintenance Mode.
On this screen, you will see three options. The first one is the Choose Mode option. You can choose between Coming Soon and Maintenance Mode. Just to note that although sometimes used interchangeably, these are two different options. Usually Coming Soon mode is used when you have major changes going on your website that need a release date. For minor updates, that doesn’t take much time, you choose to leave the Maintenance Mode on.
The second option gives you control over who can access your website during the process of designing and publishing your website. It is recommended to leave it to Logged In as only users who are logged in to your website can have access to it.
And lastly, from the drop-down menu, select the coming soon template we just designed to be displayed to all the users who visit your website. If you don’t see the template, it is probably because you haven’t published it, so make sure you have published your template and it should be visible in the drop-down menu.
Once everything is set you can go ahead and click on the Save Changes button for the changes to take place. Make sure you run some tests to see if it works. Log out of your website and visit it as a guest. See if your template is assigned to your website.
Final Thoughts
Coming soon pages are helpful and informative, they also provide quite some benefits to get your website up and running. Before you decide to launch your website, make sure to have a neat and beautiful coming soon page in place, as it will help you grow your mailing list before you even publish your website, create an audience, grow your social media profiles as well as create a sense of anticipation for all the users that have come across your website and have been well informed about everything they need to know.
We’ve shared our guide on how to create a coming soon page in WordPress using the powerful tools of Neuron Builder and how to set your website in Coming Soon mode with Elementor. Both offer all the flexibility to design and create any type of page design you wish, just make sure it resonates with your brand.
Include all the components that make up for a successful coming soon page ( we’ve shared our best tricks in the sections above). Share your thoughts with us in the comments section down below of what makes a great coming soon page and what are the best tips you use when you create a coming soon page.
