What’s the most critical part of your website? Different marketers will give wildly different answers—but most will agree that everything "above the fold" is mission-critical.
A sticky bar can help reinforce that crucial messaging as visitors scroll down the page.
Similar to announcement bars, sticky bars are one of the first things a visitor sees when they land on your website for the first time. That makes them prime real estate for marketing messages—pushing visitors towards discounts, deals, or special promotions.
Want to use one for your site? This guide shares six examples, a handful of templates, and best practices for making your own sticky bar.
What is a sticky bar?
A sticky bar is an announcement or call-to-action message that appears at the top or bottom of a page on your website. The bar "sticks" to the page: as a visitor scrolls down, the announcement scrolls with them.
All types of websites can make use of them—including ecommerce stores, landing pages, blogs, agencies, and more.
What to use sticky bars for
Unsure on what to use a sticky bar for? They have a variety of purposes, such as:
- Capturing leads via email opt-in forms
- Promoting an upcoming webinar
- Sharing discount codes
- Announcing flash sales
- Explaining free shipping thresholds (i.e. “spend $50 for free shipping”)
- Cross-selling relevant products to the one a visitor is viewing
- Announcing new products
- Pushing people to book calls
...the list goes on.
Basically, you can use them to display any message you like—usually aiming to either announce something important or get visitors to take a specific action.
Now that we know what a sticky bar can be used for, let’s take a look at six examples from ecommerce sites, SaaS companies, and agencies.
The goal? To spot what makes an excellent sticky bar (so you can replicate it).
1. Nectar Sleep "flash sale" sticky bar
If you’re running a flash sale, a sticky bar is the perfect place to highlight it—especially since it’s always visible on the page, regardless of where a visitor scrolls to.
This example from Nectar Sleep shows precisely that:
But instead of a boring announcement, it gets people excited about the flash sale by using a countdown timer in the sticky bar.
Plus, to claim the offer, visitors need to enter their email address. This helps build a list of potential customers for Nectar Sleep’s email marketing team to retarget in the future.
SEE MORE: How Nectar Sleep Grew Revenue From $44m to Over $500m in 3 Years While Using ConvertFlow
2. Huel "free shipping" sticky bar
Did you know that 65% of consumers check free shipping thresholds before adding items to their online shopping carts? They want to know minimum order spends and whether a site offers free shipping before they think about buying a product.
Including that information in a sticky bar, like this example from Huel, makes it easier for them to find it:
People see the information they need to feel comfortable adding items to their cart, regardless of which page they’re viewing.
On top of this, the sticky bar automatically slides through multiple messages:
So, it's constantly there reinforcing the free shipping offer—but also announcing a new product and pushing the "subscribe and save" discount.
SEE MORE: 6 Creative Free Shipping Bar Ideas to Drive More Sales & AOV
3. Vital Proteins "subscribe & save" sticky bar
Speaking of "subscribe & save" offers, here’s another sticky bar example that shows how Vital Proteins promote its version of this program:
Granted, customers can order singular products without subscribing.
But for most ecommerce brands, convincing a customer to commit to a replenishment subscription—like a constant supply of vitamins—can create revenue on autopilot. The sticky bar is a great place to highlight the benefits of subscribing.
4. Golde sitewide "free shipping" sticky bar
Most of the examples we’ve shared so far are sticky bars from product, home, or category pages. However, Golde uses its sticky bar to highlight its free shipping offer across the entire website:
This means even people viewing a blog post see the free shipping offers, and could be nudged into potentially making a purchase.
5. beelove "we're moving" sticky bar
Are you experiencing delays in shipping? It might sound counterintuitive to highlight delays in your sticky bar.
However, beelove uses one to explain that there’s a slight delay on orders because they’re moving:
This helps to set expectations before someone purchases. If anyone does buy during the moving period, they won’t spam beelove's customer support team with "where’s my order" messages. Shoppers already know there’s a slight delay.
If you have any operational issues that need mitigating against, addressing them head on with a sticky bar announcement like this could be a great way to do it.
6. Neil Patel "Q&A" sticky bar
It’s not just ecommerce websites that can use sticky bars. Neil Patel’s blog has an announcement bar that asks visitors a simple question: "Do you want more traffic?"
Spoiler alert: because most of his readers are marketers, the answer will be "yes" more often than not.
What’s interesting about this sticky bar, though, is that it appears on a blog post (rather than a product, category, or home page).
Neil Patel uses the free content to attract people from search engines and convince them that he knows what he’s talking about. The sticky bar then plays on a very specific pain point to push people toward using his consulting services.
There’s no doubt that sticky bars have the potential to drive more awareness of your special promotions—whether that’s a free shipping offer, flash sale, lead magnet, or anything in between.
Ready to make your own? You’re in luck.
The ConvertFlow template library is home to tons of high-quality, premade free sticky bar templates. Each is fully customizable, so you can use them for any type of offer and choose which URLs it’s displayed on.
If that wasn’t impressive enough, you don’t need coding knowledge to install the new sticky bar on your website. Our integrations with website providers like Shopify and WordPress mean your new sticky bar can appear on your site with the click of a button.
Here are a few template ideas to get you started:
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