5 Ways to Use An Announcement Bar on Your Website
Using an announcement bar on your website is a common way of drawing visitors’ attention to particular Call to Action.
It’s different from using a pop-up, as it only appears at the top of the screen and is therefore less intrusive. Your website visitors can easily close to hide the bar at any time, but it’s just a great way of bringing a certain promotion or announcement to the forefront of peoples’ minds.
What is an announcement bar and how do I get one on my site?
You will probably have come across an announcement bar on a website at some point; it is simply a thin coloured bar at the top of a website (above the header where the logo and navigation are) that will have a short line/sentence of text, and occasionally a button or link, as well as a little ‘X’ button to close it when your visitors want to hide it.
Squarespace website users are very fortunate; an announcement bar is a built-in feature that is super easy to set up! Check out this quick tutorial on how to do it here:
1. Display your availability with a CTA
For service businesses who want to fill up dates in their calendar with projects, using an announcement bar to show your upcoming availability can be a great way to get visitors to do a second take at the thought of booking you. I have this currently on my website, but there are a range of ways you could write this, eg:
“LAST MINUTE slot available: Book your project to start next week!”
"COMPLETE YOUR PROJECT BEFORE CHRISTMAS - get in touch today.”
”Last few slots available for December - HIRE ME NOW”
2. Announce a sale, limited time offer or discount code
There’s nothing like the sense of urgency to get visitors fired up to ACT NOW! Whether you have a sale on for your products, or are offering a limited time discount on your services, using an announcement bar is the best way to promote this. It’s also the perfect place to display a discount code that people can enter at the checkout too - just remember to set up the discount code in your ecommerce system before adding it to your announcement bar!
3. Encourage newsletter sign ups or opt-ins
This is probably the most commonly used way of using an announcement bar; I see it all the time but it can be extremely effective. If you have an opt-in freebie that will draw people in to signing up to your mailing list, using an announcement bar to shout about it is perfect for getting peoples’ attention. Below are a few different examples of how people do this:
4. Promote a new product or service
Just launched a brand new product or service? Pop it up on your announcement bar to get people interested! You have nothing to lose by promoting your products in this way, as long as you change it up regularly and don’t permanently have a ‘NEW!’ sign hanging above your website.
5. Notify people of an event
Whether it’s a physical event, workshop, or retreat, or an online webinar or course date, an announcement bar is the ideal place to promote this on your website, because it’s likely you’ll only want it up there temporarily, which always gives these bars the most affect.
Announcement bars are super useful for getting important messages across to your website visitors, but I’d recommend using them sparingly! Consider only leaving your announcement bar up for a couple of weeks maximum, and leaving at least a couple of weeks in between using it again, and maybe even changing the colour each time you do. This way, regular visitors won’t become ‘blind’ to it, and it won’t lose its effect.
