How to Increase Conversions by 25% Using a Hello Bar

More email signups. The name of the game, right? You want to increase the value of each and every visitor that comes to your site, and that’s done by getting their information. What better way to do that than with a warm, friendly, welcoming hello bar?

Keeping people on your website and getting them to do what you want – stay around, subscribe or buy – is always a challenge for marketers. There are plenty of tools that promise to help you with that – but hello bar actually delivers on that promise.

What is Hello Bar?

While it might sound like a friendly neighborhood hangout, the Hello Bar is actually a plugin that sits at the top of your website, and politely asks people to opt into your list. Conveniently, this handy little bar integrates with most email marketing services, making its use a breeze.

A few ways to use it along with general lead capture:

  • Bloggers often use it to promote their posts
  • You can use the bar to sell your products or services
  • Get people to opt-in to your email list
  • Drive traffic to your landing page, or wherever else you want it to go
  • Encourage social media sharing with the Hello Bar

Who can use it? The short answer would be everyone, but to give a few examples:

  • Marketers
  • Bloggers
  • Business owners
  • e-Commerce sites

Hello bar examples

Why does Hello Bar work?

Ok, at this point you might be thinking “I’ve used plenty of plugins without much success, why is Hello Bar different?”

Because Hello Bar accounts for 11% of all the collected leads on Neil Patel’s QuickSprout website. Cosmetic Capital saw a 300% daily increase in leads, accumulating more than 18,000 contacts during the campaign involving hello bar.

Cosmetic Capital hello bar

Want more examples?

Perhaps the most notable name on that list is Timothy Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Work Week. He used Hello Bar to promote his new book, The 4-Hour Body.

Tammy Camp, an entrepreneur, and self-described adventurer used Hello Bar to link to a page with a list of 10 reasons to subscribe to her site.

Finally, Chris Brogan used Hello Bar to promote Kitchen Table Companies from his domain sharing his name. He showed Hello Bar can be a great way to get users from one of your projects to the next.

Now let’s discuss why hello bar is such an MVP in your conversion game. The greatest asset of hello bar is the fact that it blends two seemingly contradictory qualities – constant visibility and non-intrusiveness.

Hello bar LookFantastic

Hello bar is around the entire time you are on the website, but unlike pop-ups or banners, it doesn’t get in the way of your interaction with content.

Another reason lies in its simplicity. You’re asking your site visitors to perform a certain behavior, whether that’s giving you their email address in exchange for new content, sharing something on Facebook or whatever it may be, but you’re asking them to do it in a way that isn’t in their face. That approach can actually have a more significant impact on a lot of visitors.

How do I maximize Hello Bar effect?

Ok, we established it – hello bar does a great job of generating leads and converting to sales. But keep in mind people won’t click on it just because it’s there. Before you put your hello bar up, think what’s your goal and strategy. There are three main things you can do with the hello bar.

1. Ask for subscription

The simplest way to use hello bar is to let a visitor peruse your website freely, and then simply ask them if they’d like to subscribe and receive the latest news and offers.

How to Increase Conversions by 25% Using a Hello Bar
Source: Buffer Blog

This type of Hello bar is fairly simple and straightforward. It is a good option if you are simply looking to gather subscribers and generate more traffic. However, there is no particular strategy here – you are simply relying on your content to be sufficiently appealing to get visitors to want more and subscribe.

If you want to attract visitors who haven’t made up their mind yet, you will have to get more creative.

2. Offer a lead magnet

Offering a lead magnet means providing website visitors with some sort of value in exchange for their email address. There are dozens of possible lead magnets, and we will start with the most exciting one.

a) Quizzes

The best quiz platforms have found that more than 82% of users will take part in a quiz if they see it on their social newsfeed. Hence the popularity of all those Buzzfeed quizzes.

But our team at LeadQuizzes experimented and found that quiz is equally irresistible on your hello bar. To be successful, the quiz title and content should reflect the ultimate goal of your website, be it more traffic or purchasing your product. If you create a good quiz or survey, you will generate leads AND be able to segment them at the same time (segmentation is insanely important for you, and here are some guidelines how to do it right).

For example, this quiz will enable you to acquire contacts and divide them into several groups according to their answers. That way, you can send your subscribers highly personalized newsletters and offers.

hello bar quiz

But let’s say that you want people to try out your new software. You can lead them towards the quiz slowly. Using the hello bar, you can first segment your visitors into potential customer groups, like we do.

hello bar leadquizzes

The answer can lead them straight to the pricing plans or a special offer…

hello bar leadquizzes

…or, if you are wiser, towards a quiz that will show them which product of yours fits their specific goals and needs.

hello bar quiz leadquizzes

hello bar quiz leadquizzes

You can apply this strategy with basically any type of content, website, product or strategy. Results? Out of all people who saw the quiz, more than a quarter of them completed it and subscribed to our email list.

How to Increase Conversions by 25% Using a Hello Bar

Want to try your luck? Here you’ll find advice on how to create a high-converting quiz that will make your hello bar really count. If you want to try what quizzes can do for your business, click here – you get one month for free to see if it’s worth it.

b) Educational material

Educating your customers is one of the cornerstones of content marketing strategy – just ask Hubspot. It also helps you assert authority in your respective field, and boost your brand. Little educational packages prepared specially for your visitors can easily earn you hundreds of contacts.

hello bar DogsNaturally

The simplest way to gain a contact this way is to offer visitors access to the premium content in exchange for a subscription. Another amazing thing you can offer to your visitors are guides and tutorials – they can be in the form of audio, video or text. You can create many hello bars, each for a specific page and tutorial connected to the topic your visitor is exploring.

Finally, you can offer a free ebook to the new subscriber. However, be careful with this strategy, because ebooks ARE a bit heftier piece of content and people may not be patient enough to read them. This is why you have to make sure that the ebook you’re offering provides genuine value to the subscriber.

c) Practical materials

You can also offer subscribers useful materials such as cheat sheets, free templates, examples, samples, and toolkits. The writer at DIY Themes used Hello Bar and found that when he tested an option with what he called a “tangible promise” like an eBook or a webinar, he got 28% more clicks as compared to a Hello Bar design with an “intangible promise” like free updates or news.

Finally, what does everyone in this world like? Free stuff of course. Free giveaways and free trials can be a great way to convert visitors into subscribers and subscribers into customers.

hello bar jeff bullas

However, free giveaways do have a tricky side to them – make sure you’re giving away something that reflects your product and brand – not something that people will simply take and never think about you or your website again.

3. Running a sale

Finally, little sales tricks go a long way with the hello bar. You can use hello bar to promote sales, special offers, perks, and discounts.

hello bar FragranceX

The deadliest trick, however, proved to be a countdown timer, showing how much longer the sale or offer lasts. It creates a sense of urgency, especially with customers who are prone to dilly-dallying around your website (a type of person well known to online sellers).

hello bar optinmonster

4. Do Split Testing

We’re always big fans of testing your lead generation strategies, and implementing the Hello Bar is no exception. Experiment with everything from design details and colors, to your copy to find the combination that works best. Testing it takes a little more time, but once you get a combination that works you can save it and use it over and over again. Definitely worth the upfront time investment to get some options that work really well.

How do I create a Hello Bar?

There are several online tools that enable you to create and easily customize hello bars on your website. Hello bar is usually a part of the greater package that is worthy of exploring and utilizing if you want to maximize your website’s conversion rates. We will offer you several suggestions you can choose from.

Hello Bar

Hello bar is probably the most basic and straightforward tool on this list. It enables you to customize your bar design to match your logo and branding colors, set up targeted campaigns, and analyze your conversion rates.

hello bar

If you are not interested in anything other than hello bar, you can get all of this for free if you run up to 10 bars on your website. Paid plans start at $15 per month, and for this, you get SSL support, no branding, RSS, and Twitter feed.

Before you create your bar, you get the option to make some customizations. The first asks you what you want to use Hello Bar for.

hello bar dashboard

Then, let’s say you opt to grow your mailing list. You’ll get something that looks like this. You can use the namesake, which is the bar-style, but below are some of the other design options also offered by Hello Bar.

hello bar dashboard

After that, you can proceed by adding your custom message and call-to-action. Edit the appearance to make it distinctive or you can also use a default theme if you’re really short on time. This is how the dashboard looks like.

hello bar dashboard

And this can be an example of the result. This one had a 25.15% conversion rate and generated 214 signups in a month. 

hello bar slider

Save that theme so you can easily access it later. Installing Hello Bar is also a breeze, as it easily integrates with several platforms. You can install it on:

  • Google Tag Manager
  • WordPress
  • Wix
  • Shopify
  • Weebly
  • SquareSpace/li>
  • Blogger/Blogspot

If you want to install hello bar all by yourself, you need to go to the settings section of your Hello Bar dashboard and locate the link titled Installation Instructions for the Hello Bar code.

This code is just a single line of HTML. It is recommended that you install the code before the closing body tag on your page or site template. However, if you need it somewhere else, it can be installed anywhere on the page.

That’s it, really. If you want to change the look or text of your Hello Bar, no problem. Just jump into the visual editor, make the changes and you’re done.

You also have options as far as who you’ll target and how you’ll do it. You get significantly more options depending on the subscription plan you choose. There is a basic free option, but you can customize your targeting pretty extensively if you upgrade to Growth or Elite versions of Hello Bar.

hello bar prices

Hello Bar alternatives

If you are interested in a bit different or more comprehensive software to optimize your website, here are some alternatives you could try.

SumoMe

SumoMe offers optin pop-up windows, welcome mats, scroll boxes and hello bars. If you want to check out how these tools look when you put them to work, click here. SumoMe has plugins for WordPress, Magento, Shopify, Google Tag Manager, and Bigcommerce.

hello bar SumoMe

In this package, you also have access to analytics tools, such as AB testing, heat maps, and content analysis.

SumoMe free plan comes with pro design tools and basic email integrations for small businesses with up to 200 subscribers. Pro plans start at $29 per month.

OptinMonster

Optinmonster is a bit more robust tool, providing you with lightbox popup, fullscreen welcome mat, slide-in scroll box, floating bar, countdown timer, sidebar forms, inline forms, and content locker.

This comes with comprehensive tools that enable you to set up triggers for these pop-ups and bars, customize targeted campaigns, test them and analyze their effect. For a detailed guide on using OptinMonster, click here.

hello bar OptinMonster

OptinMonster monthly plan prices range between $14 and $106. If you are looking for a multifaceted optin tool for your website, this is probably the best value you can get for your money.

Conclusion

I always take extra time to say something to this effect – no tool will work until you do. Many people install a bunch of tools and use dozens of apps only to be disappointed by the lack of palpable results. However, these results depend entirely on your vision and your business – there is no one-size-fits-all solution in marketing.

So how do you make those lead magnets more attractive to your audience? Try to find an answer to that question in this article.

Build Your Email List By 100K This Year Using Quizzes

Get Started

Build Your Email List By 100K This Year Using Quizzes

Get Started