Yay for new toys to play with!
Today’s New Tool Tuesday feature is something I’ve had on my site for a few months now, and I really like it.
Hello Bar is a little piece of code that you can customize to give messages to your readers, direct them to specific pages or sections, and be just another call to action to help your fans know what to do when they arrive.
There are free and paid versions — I had the free version until last week, when I asked the Hello Bar team to upgrade me for the review (disclosure: this was done at no charge).
The Hello Bar works for multiple platforms, but for we self-hosted WordPress folk, there’s a plugin that makes the integration super simple. And both the free and paid versions offer some really cool stats so you can see how many impressions you’re getting per day, per week, per month or per custom date range. You can also see how many people click the link in the Hello Bar, which means that you can play around with different messages and see what gives you the best clickthrough rate.
The paid version has a feature that I absolutely DROOL over (it’s also available for a 14-day trial to free accounts): A/B testing. A/B testing allows you to put two different messages into the system, and they will be served equal amounts of time to your readers. So you can immediately see which message gets you better results. I’ve just implemented that feature — one message directs people to my Welcome page and the other directs people to my social media category.
I think this is especially good for bloggers who are marketing e-books, store products or other sales items — or for anyone who wants to keep a “sticky” message at the top of the page.
You can customize everything about how the bar looks:
And your readers can collapse the bar if they don’t want it expanded (although it’s pretty unobtrustive).
What do you think? Is this something you’d consider adding to your website?
Your turn: pick a question!
a) With Hello Bar, you get 85 characters for your message. So tell me what YOUR blogging mission statement is, in 85 characters (or as close as you can).
b) I’m going to Italy this fall, and will be saying “Ciao” instead of “Hello.” Do you speak any other languages?
About Katy
That hello bar sounds really neat! Thanks for sharing. I hadn’t heard of one until now.
We tried it, but our webmaster (aka my fiance) is opposed to using a third party application for something like this, because in order for your site to load you now have to wait to connect to a third party. It was pretty slow when we used it, but that was quite a while ago!
I’ve had Hello Bar on my site for awhile now, and I love it. They made some really great upgrades when they came out with the paid version. I didn’t upgrade after the free trial, but if I was really interested, it’d be worth it to continue seeing the A/B test information!
Heather @ Side of Sneakers recently posted..Almost Wordless Labor Day
Sounds like a neat addition to the blog! My blog is intended to document my culinary and fitness journey as I discover delicious eats and ways to stay active in Orlando!
Jessica @ Sushi and Sit-Ups recently posted..Shipyard Emporium
This is intriguing. I’ve only been readig your blog for about a month now, and I really love learning about all of these gadgets…even if I probably won’t use most of them.
My blog, in exactly 85 characters:
Your life is your project. Be active. Experiment until you find the things that bring you the most joy.
Stephanie @ Love Life Project recently posted..Adventuring
I love all of the tools you share! This looks really great! I’m looking forward to trying it out.
Allison recently posted..Crafty!
Yeah, I have the free version on my site right now and was just informed that I’ve maxed out my click-throughs something-something so it’s going to be gone for the rest of the month (urk, maxed out 5 days into the month makes for a lonely top of my page!) but I’m really not willing to pay $5 a month to keep it up there. I did really like how it tracked stats though, and how non-ostentatious it was. So, I guess come Octobe first it’ll be back… for like a day. In the meantime, I’ve succumbed to the WP Greet Box plug-in which is slightly more annoying in that it’s at the top of every post/page, but hopefully is the call-to-action that some people need to subscribe! (And can also be manually closed by the reader anyway.)
Gretchen @ Honey, I Shrunk the Gretchen! recently posted..How Laborious (Weigh-in)
I’m generally all for the least-obtrusive widgets possible, so I disliked this one at first, but it totally grew on me.
However, I tried signing up for the free version right before HLS and it told me I needed an invite?
Theodora recently posted..Getting Organized and The App That Will Change My Life and Make Me Use My iPad
I’ve been noticing this one on lots of blogs lately. At first I thought it added clutter, but now I’m trying to think of ways to showcase my products with it. Thanks!
As for languages, I speak some Spanish and Hebrew, and would like to polish those up while also learning French. One day I’ll have time, right?
Lisa Fine recently posted..Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon Training: Week 14