What to put on a coming soon page before you launch

What the page is actually for

Its job is small. It tells someone who finds the address that a real business stands behind it, what that business does, and how to get in touch before the full site arrives.

It is not a place to hide while you wait. A good holding page is the first honest page of the final site, kept short on purpose.

Treat it as the first draft of your front door. If the words on it will still be true after launch, you wrote it well, and you can reuse them on the real home page.

What belongs on it

Your business name, one or two plain sentences about what you do, the area you serve, and a way to reach you. A lead form is on every page of a site built here, so a visitor can leave a name and a message.

Add an opening month in words if you know it, and say it may move. Our guide to a product launch page shows how to build interest when you have more to say.

Include the town or area you serve. Someone looking for a business near them decides in seconds, and a name, a place and a way to reach you give a stranger something to hold on to.

What to leave off

Leave off a countdown you cannot keep to, placeholder text, and a sign saying under construction. Leave off a long list of features you have not finished writing about.

Never leave filler on a public page. Lorem ipsum reads as a business that does not look after details, which is the opposite of what you want a first visitor to think.

Leave off a social media feed that is out of date, and any row of links that go nowhere. A short page where everything works is better than a long one with loose ends.

The search caution: placeholder or indexable

Search engines can store whatever they find at your address. A near-empty page can end up listed under your name, and the real pages may take time to replace it. If your tool marks a page to be skipped by search, remember to remove that mark when the real site goes up.

Our page on meta robots and noindex explains the instruction. The safest habit is to keep the holding period short and replace the page, not stack new pages around it.

If the address was used before, decide in advance what happens to the old pages, so that no visitor lands on a dead end after launch.

Replace it at the same address

Build the real site while the holding page stays up, then publish it to the same address. Your site can be scheduled to go live at a date and time in your own time zone, which means the changeover happens when you choose.

Work through our website launch checklist before that moment. Every publish keeps a version you can roll back to, so a mistake on launch day is not permanent.

Collecting interest while you wait

The lead form lets people leave a name and a message, and the newsletter opt-in box, unticked by default, lets them choose to hear when you open. Ask only for what you will actually use.

Tell people what they will hear from you and how often, and keep that promise. Optional follow-up emails to quiet leads are off by default, so nothing is sent unless you turn it on.

Read the messages as they arrive. Early questions often show what your real pages should answer first.

Mistakes that make a holding page worse than none

These are the habits that turn a short pause into an embarrassing fixture.

A holding page is quick to put up, and the real site can be written from a conversation with the in-app assistant while it waits. A check that runs before anything publishes applies to every page of that site, so the replacement is ready when you are.

• A countdown that reaches zero and nothing happens
• Placeholder text or an under construction sign
• No way to reach the business at all
• A holding page left live for a year
• A page marked to be skipped by search and never unmarked
• Promises about the launch you cannot keep