When a sale ends, a timer full of zeros tells the visitor nothing. A short sentence in its place — “This offer has now closed” — does.
The Countdown widget in The Plus Addons for Elementor can swap the timer for a message you write, without you editing the page on the day.
For the full settings tour of the Countdown widget, see Countdown Widget: Settings Overview.
Requirement – This widget is a part of The Plus Addons for Elementor, make sure it’s installed & activated to enjoy all its powers.
Before You Start
- Edition: the Countdown widget itself is in the free plugin, but this page uses a Pro setting (see the next line).
- Pro feature: Select Action and Expiry Message is part of The Plus Addons for Elementor Pro. In the free plugin the control is either missing or replaced by an upgrade notice.
- Prerequisite: Elementor (free) installed and active.
- Widget to enable: go to The Plus Addons > Widgets, search for Countdown and turn its toggle on.
Steps
- Edit the page in Elementor and drag the Countdown widget where you want the timer.
- In Content > Layout, leave Countdown Setup on Normal Countdown and set Launch Date to the moment the offer ends.
- Open Content > Special Option and make sure After Expiry Action is on.
- Set Select Action to Message.
- Type your text in Expiry Message. It starts out as Countdown Has Ended.
- Publish the page.
Settings
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| After Expiry Action | Master switch for everything that happens at the deadline. With it off, the timer simply sits at zero. | On |
| Select Action | What replaces the timer: None, Message, Template or Page Redirect. | None |
| Expiry Message | The text shown in place of the timer. Plain text. | Countdown Has Ended |
The section is called Special Option — singular. Older versions of this page added an s, which is why searching the panel for it finds nothing.
How It Behaves
This was checked on a published page, not read from the settings:
- While the deadline is in the future the widget shows the normal timer.
- When the deadline arrives, the timer reaches 00 00 00 00 and stops there. Nothing changes on screen at that moment.
- The message appears the next time the page is loaded after the deadline. On that load the whole timer is gone and only your sentence is rendered.
- The message is styled under Style > Expiry Message.
Limitations
- The after-expiry action only happens on the next page load. This was watched on a published page: the timer counts down normally, reaches 00 00 00 00 — and then nothing else happens for as long as the visitor leaves the page open. The message, the template and the page redirect all appear only when the page is loaded again after the deadline has passed. A visitor who is already sitting on the page when the timer runs out just sees a row of zeros. Plan for that: put the real information somewhere the zeros cannot contradict, and do not promise visitors that anything will change in front of them.
- Launch Date is only accurate to the minute. The date picker stores hours and minutes; seconds are dropped. A deadline set for 10:30 fires at 10:30:00, so do not build anything that depends on a particular second.
- The deadline is your site’s clock, not the visitor’s. The target time is rendered from the WordPress timezone on the server. Visitors in other timezones all see the timer end at the same moment, which is usually what you want — but it will not match “midnight” where they are.
- Turn Elementor’s element cache off for this widget. Elementor’s Element Cache is on by default and stores rendered markup for a day, which can serve a stale deadline. Set Advanced > Layout > Cache Settings to Inactive on the Countdown widget, or disable it site-wide under Elementor > Settings > Performance.
- The message is plain text. Expiry Message is a plain textarea. If you need a button, an image or a layout, use the Template action instead.
Troubleshooting
The timer is showing 00 00 00 00 instead of my message
That is the expected behaviour for a visitor who was already on the page when the deadline passed. Reload the page and the message appears. There is no setting that makes the swap happen live.
Nothing happens even after reloading
Check that After Expiry Action is on and Select Action is Message — the action list defaults to None, so it is easy to set the message and forget the dropdown. If the page is cached, clear the cache: a cached copy from before the deadline still contains the timer.
The message is there but too small or the wrong colour
Style it under Style > Expiry Message. The countdown’s own typography settings do not apply to it.
Not verified
So you know exactly what has and has not been checked:
- Every Style > Expiry Message control. The message was seen rendering and being replaced; its colour, typography and spacing controls were not exercised one by one.
- Behaviour behind a page cache or a CDN. Testing was done on an uncached local site.
