An insightful and well written piece of content is invaluable, but words alone won’t result in leads or sales. Instead, you need a well-oiled conversion machine to guide your loyal visitors to the next step – whatever that step may be. Lightboxes have long been a go-to conversion solution for marketers, but at the end of the day, these boxes can be obtrusive and obnoxious.
One quality alternative is Hello Bar, an unobtrusive toolbar that lets you “direct your visitors and promote your website’s most important content.” Essentially, it’s a small toolbar that lives directly above all other site content, including your navigation bar. As visitors scroll, the bar maintains its position at the top of the page, so that it is always in visitors’ line of vision. The bar can be used to remind visitors to take a specific action – from signing up for email alerts to downloading a white paper to circling you on Google Plus.
While lightboxes interrupt the content consumption experience, Hello Bar is a discreet addition to your content that quietly points toward your conversion point. Many major sites across the web are already using Hello Bar, from The Content Marketing Institute to Eric Ries and Gary Vaynerchuk’s sites.
The free version includes up to 25 clicks per month, A/B testing, unlimited bars, customized appearance and statistics. Starting at $4.95 per month, the pro version of Hello Bar has more advanced features, including an unbranded toolbar. Read more about the tool here.
Hello Bar was acquired by analytics company Crazy Egg in August 2012.
