A coming soon page does two jobs at once: it stops visitors seeing a half-built site, and it starts collecting interest before you have anything to sell. It is worth building for a brand-new site, for a redesign, and for a new product or section on an existing site. Done properly it feeds the launch with an email list and social followers, which is where the first revenue tends to come from.
This guide covers why the page matters, what to put on it, and the current ways to build one in WordPress, with the block editor, the Site Editor or a dedicated plugin, and how to hand over to the live site without hurting search visibility.
Last updated: 2026. Written for WordPress 6.8 with the block editor.
Why is it important to make coming soon pages?
Announcing something before it exists is standard marketing: film trailers, product teasers, “opening soon” signs. The logic is simple. People who know a launch is coming are more likely to show up for it, and a page gives them somewhere to register that interest. For a website there are four concrete benefits.
Lead generation
An email form on the page turns curiosity into a list. Anyone who leaves an address has already told you they want to hear when you launch, which makes the first campaign you send far more effective than a cold one. Connect the form to your email tool (Mailchimp, MailerLite, Kit, Brevo) from day one so subscribers land in a real audience, not a spreadsheet.
Improve user experience
A domain that shows a default server page, a broken theme, or “Hello world!” tells visitors nothing and looks abandoned. A page that says what is coming and when gives them a reason to come back. Visitors who arrive from an ad or a social post especially need to know they have landed in the right place.
Increase sales and conversion
Interest compounds. Each subscriber and follower gathered before launch is a visitor on launch day who already trusts you enough to have opted in. For a product, that translates into first-day sales; for a content site, into early traffic and shares that would otherwise take months to build from zero.
Improve your visibility and online identity
The page is the first thing search engines and social platforms see at your domain. Give it a proper title, description and Open Graph image so links to it look right when shared, and link to your social profiles and any existing sites. A short paragraph about who you are and what is coming establishes the brand before the full site does.
How to create a coming soon page on WordPress?
Whether you are new to WordPress or have built many sites, the steps are the same: plan the content, pick a method, build, then switch off cleanly at launch.
Start with a draft
Decide what goes on the page before opening the editor. A useful coming soon page includes:
- Your brand name and logo
- Launch date, or at least a month, if you are confident in it
- One or two sentences on what the site or product is and who it is for
- A countdown timer, only if the date is fixed
- Email subscription form with a clear reason to subscribe
- Links to your social profiles
- A contact method
- Optionally, a short video or a few screenshots
Keep it short. The page has one goal, the sign-up, and everything else supports it. Write two or three headline options and choose after seeing them on the page. Free icon sets cover social icons and small visual cues without design work.
Get a page builder tool/plugin
Option A: the block editor, no plugin
WordPress 6.8 ships everything needed for a simple page. Create a new page, use a Cover block for the headline and background, a Paragraph for the description, Social Icons and Buttons blocks, and a form block from your email provider’s plugin. Set the page template to “Blank” (block themes) or a full-width template (classic themes) so no header or footer shows. Under Settings > Reading, set it as the static homepage. The limitation is that the rest of the site remains reachable by URL, so this suits sites where nothing else is published yet.
Option B: a coming soon plugin
A dedicated plugin shows the coming soon page to logged-out visitors while you keep building behind it, and adds countdowns and form integrations. Current, maintained options include SeedProd (free tier with templates and a drag-and-drop editor), LightStart (formerly WP Maintenance Mode), and CMP – Coming Soon & Maintenance. All three let you design the page separately from your theme and switch it off with one toggle at launch.
Whichever you use, check one setting: the HTTP status the page returns. A coming soon page for a new site should return 200 so search engines index the domain. A maintenance page on an existing site should return 503 so search engines keep the old pages indexed and come back later. Good plugins offer both modes; using the wrong one on an established site can drop rankings.
Design and refine
With the content decided and a method chosen, the build itself is quick. Whether you are dragging blocks or using a plugin’s editor, a few design rules hold:
- The headline is the largest element and states what is coming in plain words.
- The launch date or countdown sits directly below it, clearly visible without scrolling.
- The email form and its button are the only call to action above the fold.
- Description text stays under three sentences; save the detail for the real site.
- Use the same colours and typography you plan for the live site so the launch feels continuous.
- Test on a phone. Most first visits from social links are mobile.
Before publishing, set the SEO title and meta description in Yoast or your SEO plugin, upload an Open Graph image, and add your analytics tag so you can measure pre-launch traffic. Then publish, send the link to anyone who has already asked, and post it on your social channels.
Launch day
Turn off the coming soon mode or change the static homepage, clear any caching, and load the site in a private window to confirm the real homepage shows. If the coming soon page had its own URL (for example /coming-soon/), redirect it to the homepage with a 301 rather than deleting it, since it may have been shared and indexed. Email the list you collected the same day.
Which Canyon theme fits
Pick the launch theme before you build the coming soon page so the two share colours and fonts. For a business or agency launch, Business Way includes a full-width page template that also works well for the coming soon page itself. For a blog or personal site, Danfe keeps the same clean layout on launch day.
Summary
A coming soon page is cheap to build and pays off in a list of people waiting for your launch. Decide the content first, build it with the block editor for a new site or a coming soon plugin when you need to hide work in progress, return the right HTTP status, and redirect the page when you go live. Following the steps above, the whole thing takes an afternoon.