Quick Tip: Using the Announcement Bar

Fair warning, I haven’t seen The Sound of Music before. I know. I consider that a travesty, too, but it’s not going to stop me from using a gif from that film.

Anyway, I’m sure everyone’s had some piece of news that was of such importance that burying it somewhere within your site would be the same as never mentioning it in the first place. Whether it’s an important date that you need other people to know about or a new product that everyone should see, you just have to get it out there.

You feel like you just need to make your way up to the top of a lush, grassy Austrian hilltop surrounded by snow-capped mountains in the distance. What better way to tell the world than by spreading your arms and singing your news to the world?

We’re no Julie Andrews, certainly, but we can raise our voices and emphasize an announcement ahead of everything else on our Squarespace site.

The Announcement Bar is a useful tool to do just that. This is a piece of text, that may also act as a link, highlighted and displayed at the very top of your site.

We view content from top to bottom, so this bar is the first thing that a visitor will see. This is a powerful tool that can immediately catch the eye and transmit information.

Setting Up the Announcement Bar

In the Squarespace menu panel, click on Marketing followed by Announcement Bar.

The first thing to do here is click the drop-down menu and select Enable Announcement Bar.

A familiar text entry box will pop up below the drop-down menu. Here, you can type whatever you’d like and change the text formatting.

Underneath the text entry box is a Squarespace link field. Clicking there will allow you to choose a page on your site or elsewhere. With this field filled in, a visitor who clicks on the Announcement Bar will be taken to your chosen link. This is useful if you want to direct a visitor to a particular page on your site.

After you’ve added everything you want to feature, click Save at the top of the page.

Remember, you can also change the text font and bar color by going to Design -> Site Styles and adjusting the look of the bar.

In just a few easy steps, you’ve greatly expanded your site’s effectiveness. It’s now become even more of an active participant in presenting information or driving eyes to your services/products.

I encourage you to make the Announcement Bar a regularly updated feature of your site. It’s one of those small but meaningful touches that visitors of all types will appreciate.

Sing it loud and proud, cats.