Sticky Bars are the less intrusive cousin of the noble Popup. They appear at the top or bottom of the page (and sometimes the sides) when a visitor arrives, leaves, scrolls down or up, stays on the page for a certain time period or clicks a link or button. They have a million useful use cases, some of which you may not have considered.
In today’s Product Awareness Month post, I’ll be sharing:
- 9 Sticky Bar Examples From Out in the Wild: These are examples the team has found on other folks websites, and a couple of our own.
- 21 New Unbounce Sticky Bar Templates: Check out our latest designs that you can use today.
To get things started, here’s an example that I’ll talk about later in the new templates section. Click to show a Sticky Bar with a countdown timer.
I’d love to see your Sticky Bars too, so drop me a link in the comments, please.
9 Creative Sticky Bar Examples to Inspire Your Next Campaign
Discounts and newsletter subscriptions are valid, common and effective use cases, but I want to explore different types of interaction design, or campaign concepts that can compliment what you’re already using them for.
#1 Maybe Later
If you’ve been following along with Product Awareness Month (PAM), you’ll have seen the “Maybe Later” concept. This is where an entrance popup morphs into a persistent Sticky Bar when your visitors click the middle “Maybe Later” button instead of yes or no.
You can see a live demo of how it works here. A popup will appear when you arrive. Click “Maybe Later”, then refresh the page and a Sticky Bar will appear, and can be configured to show up site-wide until you convert or say “No Thanks”.
#2 Sticky Bar to Popup
This concept is the exact opposite of “Maybe Later”, and it uses a concept known as a two-step opt-in. Instead of showing a form on the Sticky Bar, it just shows a button to express interest.
Click-Through Sticky Bar
When you click the Sticky Bar CTA it launches a popup to collect the email address. This two-stage concept can increase conversions because the first click establishes intent and a level of commitment to continue – while not showing a scary form right away. I’ll be discussing the two-step opt-in in a future post.
Lead Gen Popup
#3 Sticky Video Widget
You’ve seen these on many blogs I’m sure. It’s really cool functionality for increasing engagement in your videos. You can see a demo here. And instructions on how to implement it can be found in the Unbounce community here.
#4 E-commerce Product Reminder
This example is really cool. As you scroll down a product page on an e-commerce site, an “Add to Cart” Sticky Bar appears when you scroll past the main hero image.
#5 E-commerce Checkout Discount Nudge
This Sticky Bar sticks with you for every step in the photo creation and checkout process. Clearly, they are comfortable with the coupon being applied to the sale because it’s an incredibly competitive business niche and let’s face it when you see a coupon code field you go searching for one. So why not just offer it straight up.
For the record, trying to buy canvas prints to deliver to family in the UK is a freakin’ nightmare. I had to try 8 different sites before one of them would allow me to put a Canadian address in the billing info fields. They are losing a TON of money by not realizing that customers can be in other places.
#6 On-Click Side Slide
On-click Sticky Bars and Popups are the best kind when it comes to a permission-based interaction. You make something interesting and ask people to click on it. In this example, there is an element on the left side of the page which slides in from the side when clicked.
Unbouncer Noah Matsell created a similar thing in Unbounce (see demo here). It doesn’t actually use a Sticky Bar. Instead it’s just a box with text in it. I love how it works. Try it out, and think about all the cool stuff you could stick in a sidebar.
#7 EU Cookie Policy
European Union laws around privacy are some of the toughest in the world, and for the last few years, the EU Cookie Privacy Law required that all EU businesses, as well as international businesses serving EU customers, show a privacy statement with a clickable acknowledgment interaction. I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know all the ins and outs, but needless to say, it’s a great use case that you may not even know that your web team or legal team actually needs.
Coming up in May is the new GDPR legislation which will usurp this law, but offer its own needs and requirements, so stay tuned for more on that, and how you should be dealing with it. In fact, I did a quick poll on Twitter to see what people thought about the cookie law and got an interesting mix of responses. Don’t be in the “Haven’t dealt with it yet” camp when it comes to GDPR. That could get you dinged.
We released a new Cookie Bar template below that you can use until you deal with the new legislation.
#8 Microsite Navigation
Another example from earlier in Product Awareness Month. You can use a Sticky Bar as the connective global navigation that turns a group of landing pages into a microsite.
A really simple way to create a multi-page marketing campaign experience.
#9 Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter Score surveys are a method of measuring how your customers feel about your product or service. Based on a scale from 0-10 and the question “How likely are you to recommend {company name} to a friend?”
Co-founder Carter Gilchrist made this NPS demo to show how it works:
Follow our Product Awareness Month journey >> with a subscribe form (it uses our on-click trigger feature).
21 New Unbounce Sticky Bar Templates You Can Use Today
We just released a whole bunch of new Sticky Bar and Popup templates which you can see inside the Unbounce app screenshot below. I chose a few of them to showcase below based on some of the examples I discussed above.
Sticky Bar Template #1: Countdown Timer
Countdown timers are great for creating a sense of urgency, and can have a positive influence on conversions as a result.
Click to show this Sticky Bar at the bottom | at the top.
Sticky Bar Template #2: Location Redirect
If you have multiple websites or online stores, you can use Location Targeting (Unbounce supports city, region, country, and continent) to let people know there is a local version they might want to switch to.
Sticky Bar Template #3: Product Release
Announce product releases on your website to drive people to the features page of the new product.
Sticky Bar Template #4: Cookie Privacy Law
As I mentioned earlier, this is big for companies in Europe, and also businesses who have European customers. On May 25, 2018 this law will be usurped by the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Sticky Bar Template #5: Product Beta Access
Build an email list for an upcoming beta release.
Sticky Bar Template #6: Product Hunt Launch
Product Hunt can be a great place to launch new products. To be successful you need to get upvotes and you can use a Sticky Bar to send people there from your website.
Check Out Our Sticky Bar Live Demo
We built a cool tool that shows what Sticky Bars and Popups look like on your site. Simply enter your URL here to preview. It even grabs your brand colors and in this case, Amanda from Orbit Media makes a cameo appearance.
Cheers
Oli Gardner
p.s. You should check out The Landing Page Analyzer. Why? Because – hyperbole alert – it’s the single greatest tool in the history of the world when it comes to grading your landing pages.