Setting up the Announcement Bars app
The Announcement Bars app is a simple yet highly versatile app that can serve multiple purposes that will suit any scenario. Be it informing your visitors about promotions or updates, capturing their email addresses, offering a discount, increasing their trust, and even calculating the free shipping goal, the Announcement Bars app can do it all!
Here's how to set up Announcement Bars in your store.
Setting up an Announcement Bar on your store starts with creating one by clicking the Create Smart Bar button. Once you do so, you will need to choose the Smart Bar type you want to make.
There are 5 types of Smart Bars, as follows:
- Text bar - a simple, static Smart Bar that will display the text that you choose. This can be specifically useful if you want to inform customers of some promotions, shipping delays, etc. Learn more about configuring the text bar here.
- Free Shipping bar - a dynamic Smart Bar that will calculate and display how far away your visitor is from reaching free shipping, based on the shipping rules set up in Shopify. Learn more about configuring the free shipping bar here.
- Email Capture bar - a handy Smart Bar that will let you capture your visitors' email addresses and offering them a discount code for doing so, which they can use on your store. Learn more about configuring the email capture bar here.
- Countdown Timer bar - a beneficial Smart Bar if you're running special, limited-time promotions, which will display the countdown until the offer expires to create urgency. Learn more about configuring the countdown timer bar here.
- Order Counter bar - a Smart Bar that will display how many orders you have on your store, using actual data directly from Shopify, which will increase your visitors' trust. Learn more about configuring the order counter bar here.
2 settings apply to all of them. You can give the customers the option to close the bar, and you can also enable a CAPTCHA solution to avoid abuse from bots.
Please keep in mind that only one Smart Bar can be displayed at a time in the store. You can have as many Smart Bars created as you wish. However, only one can be enabled at a time. Don't forget to enable your Smart Bar as well as the app itself.
Testing or troubleshooting the Announcement Bars
First of all, you need to make sure you have a Smart Bar created and enabled.
In the case of the Free Shipping bar, remember that it is related to the shipping rates you set in your Shopify account, so the app is displayed only for the customers coming from countries that are included in those specific rates, which you can check here.
For example, if you have a shipping zone set for Europe and check your store from the US, you will not see the Smart Bar. It is displayed based on the user's location and the rules you set. Ensure you meet the location conditions you set by accessing the store using a VPN and opening a new incognito window.
You can find a full tutorial about using a VPN here.