Sometimes, being too aggressive (using popups) may irritate visitors, and this tactic could backfire on you. Or, you can try the smart way and use Hello Bar to generate leads. HelloBar is a website service that helps you to design messages for your visitors. The service has tools and features that provide the right timing of messages you would like your visitors to see. This Hello Bar Review will look into various features that make the service stand out.
The software claims to boost your website to have more visitors and subscribers. HelloBar plugin has a neat dashboard and requires zero technical skills to start running it. Hello Bar floats on top or bottom of any page. It is also used to promote links, display your contacts, show your social share button, and make an announcement.
The software works with any device, and its simple interface and visual editor allows you to alter color, font, and textures to maximize user visibility.
The Hello Bar WordPress plugin is simple, even for starters. You need your website’s URL, and you will be issued with a guide on how to display ads, installing barcodes, and more. Email integrations ensure that your inbox is synced to top email service providers. It is a great tool to attract visitors.
Table of Contents
What is HelloBar?
HelloBar is a web-based that allows you to design messages for your visitor. The service has tools to schedule alerts so that the visitor gets them on time. You can use it to enhance your site’s performance by increasing engagement and conversions.
Using HelloBar is pretty easy, even for beginners. All that you need to do is key in your site’s URL. You will then receive instructions on how to display ads and install bar codes. Hello Bar integrates with major email services to ensure that your inbox is synced. If you want to attract customers to your site, this is the best tool. Visitors are more likely to click the Bar if they see what interests them. This will greatly increase your site’s dwell time as well as conversions. It will also increase clicks of pages linked to your website. Sales and referrals will also increase if you are running affiliate programs.
The popups on HelloBar looks like this:
In 2012 Hello Bar was acquired by Crazy Egg. This provides analytics solutions in marketing and reporting. If you want to use this service, you need to also research on Crazy Egg. This helps to avoid mishaps in the future.
Hellobar Benefits
The software lets you extract subscriber data. AWeber, MailChimp, and Campaign Monitor will have all the lists of your subscribers where you can contact them and send emails with the latest plans and offers. Social media promotion is another great feature of this software. Your content is exposed to top social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. You can rest assured to get more subscribers and followers through this feature. Visitors may also follow your page through social media linking. HelloBar offers to follow buttons for your social media pages as well. The hello bar plugin also provides A/B testing services where you can change words or color to ensure that only the best comprehensive messages are read. Hello Bar WordPress plugin enables you to target a particular group of visitors and decide which message your visitors read. This works well with visitors who continuously visit your site. User experience is enhanced greatly by these interactions. Targeting will depend on your requirement—single or multiple conditions. You can target users or devices to give an impression of being contacted. This makes it easy to convince them to buy your product. Hello Bar may not be ineffective if poorly implemented. If the notification bar is not obtrusive enough, it may be ignored by visitors because popups can annoy sometimes. The trick is to ensure that your message is noticed by visitors. Popups are effective only if the message is urgent enough to justify its interruption. Otherwise, they can irritate.
Overview of HelloBar Features
- Sharing on Social Media
- Hello bar Ads
- A/B testing
- Increased following
- Dashboard
- Targeting
- High Conversion Rate
- Increased Subscribers
- Social media buttons
- Analytics
Tips For An Effective Hello Bar
• Make it stand out. Unlike popups, hello bars don’t block your visitor’s view so for it to be effective, ensure that you use strong colors and generous fonts
• Notification bar should be selected carefully. If you can’t contract a good message, get a wordsmith to help you. Notification messages are supposed to be clear and straight to the point to be effective
• Test its effectiveness. Make use of analytics to track your notification bar’s effectiveness and make adjustments if necessary, to enhance its effectiveness.
HelloBar Pricing Plans
I am a huge fan of HelloBar. One problem with them is that you must register first to check their price plans. This is not cool. I think they do this to boost their conversion rate, but still, it’s not cool. The marketing team should try something else to convert more. Just be open to how you work out your pricing plans.
Here is a breakdown on how pricing is done in Hello Bar:
If you are just beginning and you want to taste the water, the free plan is a good option. This plan has limited design options of 5,000 page views per month. The Hello Bar branding is included.
Hello Bar has three SMB and enterprise pricing plans derived from the number of click-throughs.
- Free Trial
- $4.95 per 100 click-throughs
- $12.95 for 500 click-throughs every month
- $29.95 per month for every 2500 click-throughs
What is HelloBar Good For?
Web owners can use the HelloBar WordPress plugin to do many things. Generally, you can use this awesome tool in two major ways:
- To generate leads
- Communicating to your customers using messages
Before picking this tool, you need to know first what you intend to do with it.
Do you intend to capture more leads and grow your email list? Are you concerned about increasing your social media followers? These are the questions you have to ask yourself when opting for this tool. Hello Bar is also a great tool to entice your audience with. This is achieved by having a sales discount and telling your audience about it. They’ve got you sorted even when you want to drive traffic to a particular piece of content.
How to generate leads using HelloBar
One way to ensure that your online business grows is by generating leads. This makes this process crucial in running any business. It offers a great way to talk with your visitors even when they have left your site. It is not easy to convince visitors to convert on the first day. You have to device effective ways to follow up. This is how people make sales and convert. Leads are about getting users’ emails and using them to send offers to entice them. Users are more likely to engage with you using email rather than social media.
Dangling what we call a “lead magnet” is what the majority of marketers use to generate leads. This method will give you quick results. Just like dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit, a lead magnet works the same way. You offer them something in exchange for their email address.
This can be done by offering to give them more detail on a topic you discussed. You can also promise them a discount on the next purchase or an eBook.
With HelloBar plugin, you can control the lead magnet and determine who sees it. The time when the message displays are also subject to any alters. Understand what your target audience wants and their online behavior. This will allow perfect display time for a lead magnet. For this method to work, perfect timing is important. Your readers will surely convert if you are offering something useful to them.
Telling Users about a Promo
The tool is also useful to tell the user about a sale. This helps to drive traffic to a specific page that you want them to visit. Since you have given them the info about your promo, they won’t miss your best offers. It also reduces the bounce rate on your site while increasing dwell time. Dwell time is the time that users spend on your site when they visit. If you are offering that interests them, they will spend more time on your site. Your site rank will go up because of this.
Using HelloBar to Improve Site Results
The power of lead generation is great when it comes to improving site results. This plugin will help you improve your lead generation by up to 11%. And this translates to more sales and revenue. Awesome right?
By putting into practice what we discussed earlier, you can also get great results. These crucial tips will help you achieve your goals:
- Your Hello Bar Message should help you engage with your visitors
- The popup or top Bar should have a great design
- It is also a good idea to A/B test several versions of your popup
- Your popups should help you, collect emails, direct traffic to your site, and much more
Start targeting your leads the moment they start trickling in to get early results. Email marketing is the best way to target your leads. You will see a spike in your conversion rate once you do this.
Although the popup method seems annoying at first, it is a sure way of getting good results. In a few weeks, you will start seeing changes.
Hello Bar Examples
Here are several working examples of this lead generation tool. They should help you get effective ideas on how to use this software.
ActiveCampaign
First, let’s see how ActiveCampaign has to use the HelloBar plugin on their website. As you can see in the screenshot below, they have used the floating Bar that shows below the page.
Although it’s a simple way to capture leads, it produces great results in building an email marketing list.
Advisor Coach
Advisor Coach is another company that got its success from using a floating Bar on its blog posts.
Like we said earlier, design plays s great role in the success of your campaign. In the above example, the back bar contrasted with the white web page.
The yellow call to action button is yellow, making it perfect for eliciting reactions from their readers.
Jeff Bullas
This site has a black hello bar with facts to tell users about their social proof. This information is used to entice the visitor to sign up. When you want your visitors to be curious, provide compelling information. Readers can clearly see the call to action button since its green and contrast with black.
Kennedy Blue
Another good example of an effective hello bar is one used by the Kennedy Blue website. They have placed it such that it directly impacts the bottom line.
The contrast of hello bars has a great effect on how they are going to perform. In this example, visitors are enticed by the dark blue floating Bar. The contrast is created by combining it with the rest of the site which has a pastel tone. You can see the white text inside the blue Bar.
Agency is created by the countdown timer, and coupon code also lures in the reader. This marketing campaign boosted its sales by 50%.
Optimize My Airbnb
Our fifth example is the Optimize My Airbnb website, which uses the mentioned methods to make it’s floating hello Bar unique and effective.
Here they have used the green background, which contrasts with the website. This makes the hello bar pop and quite visible. They have put a yellow call to action button, which is also another great idea. Another interesting thing about this campaign is clear their offer is when visitors sign up.
Visitors will find the yes/no forms useful when they decide to sign up. This helps them to increase their conversion rates.
WPForms
Our final example is WPForms. They also used the countdown timer in their floating Bar. It is hard to miss the shouting red timer that shows how argent the offer is.
How to start using Hello Bar for your blog
We have given you all the notable features of HelloBar WordPress plugin and how you can use it in your campaigns. Let’s now look at how to get started with this lead generation tool. We will show you how to set up and configure Hello Bar on your website so that you can get started with your marketing campaign. Before getting started, here is what you do to succeed.
Choose Your Campaign Goals
Once you’ve signed in to Hello Bar, you will receive wonderful tips that will quickly help you to achieve your set goal.
Options include:
- Using an opt-in form to collect emails
- Direct organic traffic to a particular URL
- Telling people about a promo to generate sales
- Announcing something to your readers.
- Allowing people to contact you with a simple click
- Use the social media handles to engage with your readers
Let’s look at the first option of using Hello Bar to collect emails, which is just an example. You will, however, get a set of options with different methods. We are going to look at some at the end of this review.
Choosing the Type of Message to Display
Now that you have chosen your goal, it is time to pick the kind of message you want your visitors to see.
Here are a few options:
- Page takeover
- Alert Bell
- Modal popup
- Slider
- Coming soon – this is not only good for your prospects, but loyal visitors too.
The beauty of using Hello Bar to display your messages is that it will give you suggestions to optimize your goal. This is a great thing, especially for newbies.
Let’s pick the recommend Page Takeover option.
See More:- WP Mail SMTP by WPForms
Message Design and Customization
You will get an interface, the moment you decide on the type of content you want to show. Once you are given an interface, you can:
- Select and edit templates
- Set up basic settings
- Tweak targeting options
- Decide the next step an after a user converts
Hello Bar provides 11 different templates for Page Takeovers and Auto detect colors from the site button. This option is unique, and it’s hard to find in other similar tools.
What the Color Autodetect button does is find a matching color that goes well with your site style design. That’s really cool! The pre-made templates are also great choices if you want to use them. They are awesomely built to suit any website.
Once you’ve picked your template, you can consider tweaking these options:
- Decide which form field you want to be seen
- Change the background styling manually for the button, form fields, and more
- Insert an image
- Edit text
Although the interface doesn’t have a drag and drop feature, it offers inline editing. You can’t rearrange elements using the drag and drop editor. Editing is done by clicking on the chosen design and typing. This is quite friendly to newbies.
The example below will show you how to easily change the headline:
To edit the button text, just click on it and type. Inline editing offers a pretty detailed toolbar compared to other tools. Alignment and colors are easy to change. The tool allows you to place emoticons to make it playful. Another awesome feature of Hello Bar is called the Leading Question option. When enabled, it creates a two-step opt-in effect. This is done by asking the visitor a few questions before they can see the form.
The Zeigarnik Effect in this feature will allow you to boost the conversion rate on your website. It is not common for other tools to have this unique feature, and it’s hardly implemented. We are now done with the design settings.
How to Configure Basic Settings
It is easy to configure some catch-all settings, once you head over to the Settings tab. Here are some of them:
- Choose if you want to animate the entrance/exit
- Asking readers to fill out the second opt-in form before adding them to the email list (GDPR compliance)
- When to show your notification
Form/Notification Targeting
This is the fun part of using Hello Bar. When you head over to the Targeting tab, you will see three basic to configure.
- From which device should the user view the form. You can focus on the Mobile users or Homepage, or choose Everyone.
- The time it will take to hide the form after a user closes it
- The time it will take to hide the form after a user converts
The real deal in this tool is the feature called Create new customer targeting rule link. This rule lets you set up conditions to be met by the user before he or she can access the form. You can ask for all the conditions to be met first before displaying it. Another way to allow the form to be seen by the user as long as he has fulfilled one of the conditions set (i.e., AND vs. OR rules). The conditions are powerful since they are quite detailed; allowing you target by:
- Geolocation
- Device
- Date
- Ad campaign
- Every X session
- Number of visits
- Days since last visit – “Welcome Back, we’ve not seen you in a while!”
- Referrer
- URL path/query
- Previous page URL
For us, what stood out in Hello Bar is the intensity of the rules. They allow you to use your creativity using pinpoint targeting and personalized notifications.
Choosing What Happens After Conversion
Proceed to choose what happens after conversion when you are done with your targeting rules.
Here, you can either:
- Display a message or
- Redirect them to a different URL
Publishing Your Notification Form
We have finished with all the settings, and now it’s time to publish the Hello Bar. To do this, simply click on the Save & Publish button.
To display your form, the Hello Bar code snippet is required. You can add this code to your website in two ways:
- Do this manually
- Use a plugin or Wix app
Paste a snippet from your Hello Bar dashboard into the plugin’s interface. This will allow you to configure the Hello Bar WordPress plugin. It is that simple.
That it. Your form will now display on your WordPress website so that you can continue with your campaign.
Tracking your Form/Notification and Creating A/B Tests
Once your form is published, you can view its impressions and analytics in real-time. This is done through the Hello Bar dashboard.
You can also access different aggregate data for all your campaigns in the Analyze tab. Spinning up a new A/B test from the Manage tab allows you to optimize your campaigns quickly.
To create a new variant, just click on the Create Variation, which will take you to the previous editor.
After creating and publishing the new variant, label it as the B variation in the Manage tab.
Different Options for Different Campaign Goals
As we promised earlier, we are now going to show you different options that will give you different results. We have shown you the different ways to build your email list with Hello Bar. However, there are other goals that you can choose to give you different results. This doesn’t mean that you are not going to benefit from these options.
A good example is when you decide to go to the promotion bar. Once you select this, you can send your visitors where you want and ask leading questions.
To drive phone calls, just add your phone contacts in the provided field.
This means goals are customized in their own unique ways, but still give positive results.
HelloBar Alternatives
FireBar
This is a perfect alternative to the Hello Bar plugin because it also helps you capture emails. You can get it for $18.
Sumo Smart Bar
Sumo Smart Bar is a great affordable alternative to Hell Bar for its Free & Premium versions.
WordPress Notification Bar
With this plugin, you can get a freemium option to your list. Depending on the version you have picked (free or pro), you can add several types of notification bars. Although it has limited features, users can still drive sufficient traffic to their sites.
Foobar
This another WordPress Notification Bar that goes for a $17 one-time payment. It is quite affordable compared to Sleeknote or Hello Bar.
WP Front Notification Bar
With WPFront Notification Bar, users can display a custom message. This is done using another optional button. One unique thing about this tool is that it allows you to customize the Bar’s height. Users can also specify a delay before it appears. This is a great way to attract visitors.
BugmeBar
This tool offers cookie expiry time, and it a premium solution.
Hello Bar Reviews
The decision to buy conversion rate optimization software is greatly influenced by not only how experts evaluate the product on their reviews, but also on customer satisfaction. Hello Bar, behavior-based Customer Satisfaction Algorithm gathers customer reviews, comments, and Hello Bar reviews on social media sites. The data is then presented to show both negative and positive experiences with Hello Bar. This information will help you to make an informed decision before buying that you won’t regret it. The Hello Bar WordPress plugin allows extensive customization options and various display modes. You can also use the software to drive traffic to your affiliate links and drive traffic to any page you like.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Has tools that seriously boost your conversation rate to increase your subscribers and followers
- It accommodates small, medium businesses and larger enterprises
- The product is free for up to 10 sites
- It is the fastest way to generate leads or clicks
- You can target specific actions or visitors
- A one-month free trial
Cons
- Bar branding is only available with paid plans
- Ads are shown once for every ten visitors
Customer Support
Hello Bar, customer support is free and is provided 24/7 via phone call and email at support.hellobar.com. You can inquire about the installation process, email integration, billing queries, Hello Bar, targeting, and provide tutorial guides. The support can also handle information about how to display, edit, and remove the ads on the Bar. Password reset on your Bar is also allowed.
Devices Supported by Hello Bar
- Mac
- Windows
- Web-based
- iPhone/iPad
- Android
- Deployment – Hello Bar is Cloud Hosted
- Language Support – The plugin supports English
- Pricing Model – You can pay for it monthly or subscribe annually
- Customer Type – Anyone can use Hello Bar including small businesses, large enterprises, and medium-sized businesses
Conclusion: HelloBar Review
As you have read in this Hello Bar Reviews, this powerful software is helpful in website enhancement and lead generation. It is effective for bloggers, marketers, e-commerce sites, and business owners. This plugin provides a great opportunity to increase your conversion rate and acquire more subscribers and followers. Its setback is that ads are shown to one in every ten visitors on the free trial. Overall, it’s a wonderful tool for those intending to build traffic on their websites. The hello bar pricing is rather expensive, but you can choose plans according to your business needs.
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