Notification bars or promo bars provide an easy way for website owners to grab the attention of viewers. They use a limited amount of screen space while still prompting them to take an action. You can use a promo bar or a notification bar for a lot of things such as getting customers to sign up for your email newsletter, asking them to purchase a product, subscribe to your social media accounts and so on.
In this post, I will give a brief overview of the best WordPress promo and notification plugins that you can use to get better conversion today.
MyStickyMenu
First on our list is MyStickyMenu that you can use to create a lot of things including a sticky menu, floating notification bar, announcement banner or a sticky header.
With its default settings, you will be able to create a sticky menu that stays in place when you scroll. It uses the class .navbar to determine which element should be sticky. So, you will have to change the plugin settings to specify your own class based on the theme to make the menu sticky.
You can also turn on what the plugin calls a Welcome Bar in order to add sticky notifications or promo bars to your website. The plugin settings allow you to control a bunch of options such as the background color, text color as well as the button color. You have full control over the frequency at which the welcome bar is shown to users. It can either appear on every page, once for a visit, or disappear after users click the button.
You can also add some custom HTML to your notification or promo bar to make the text bold, italic or underlined. You can also change the font size or font family if needed.
The pro version of the plugin includes some additional features such as a countdown timer or discount coupon.
Notibar
The Notibar plugin is a lightweight solution to create a sticky header that can either be used as a notification bar or a promo bar.
This plugin will add a top notification bar to your website which you can use to make any major announcements about sales or other promotions. You can also configure the dismiss button to either hide the notification or promo bar permanently or toggle it based on user’s preferences. The dismiss button can also be disabled if you want the notification bar to always be visible.
The instant live preview will help you see any changes you make to the plugin settings in real time. There are some preset styles available for you to use directly. You can also provide a custom color, custom text and a custom click-to-action button in the promo bar.
WPFront Notification Bar
The WPFront Notification Bar is an easy to use notification bar plugin that you can use to inform your users about any promotion or other events related to the website. The plugin comes with a huge number of configuration options.
As usual, you can display any message you like along with an optional button to take some action. It allows you to position the notification bar or promo bar either at the top or the bottom. You can also make the position of the bar sticky so that it is still visible to users when they scroll down.
Other options include the ability to specify the time after which the notification bar should appear on the screen and specify the time after which it should auto close. You can even provide start and end dates for the promo bar if you want to display it during specific periods such as Christmas, Diwali, or Black Friday.
The notification bar also gives you the option to even process shortcodes to help make the message more dynamic. You can change the color of almost all elements of the notification such as the bar color, text color, button color and more.
HashBar
The HashBar WordPress notification bar plugin is a great option for people who want to add multiple notification bars to their website. This plugin comes with a huge set of features for customizing the promo bars and collecting related analytics data.
Hashbar comes with support for the Gutenberg editor as well as the Elementor and WPBakery page builders. You can place the bar at the top, bottom, left or right edge of the screen. If you don’t want to display the notification bar on the entire website, it is also possible to display the notification bar on selected pages such as the homepage, all posts, all pages, specific posts, specific pages and so on.
A recent update added new analytics options to the plugin which allow you to track the total number of views, total number of clicks and the CTR. The pro version allows you to track all this data for each notification bar separately.
The design customization options include the ability to update features like the background color, the text color, the button color, the button opacity, the notification bar opacity, or the hover color of different elements.
Easy Notification Bar
Are you looking for a simple plugin that you can use to easily add notification bars to your website? Then the Easy Notification Bar plugin is an ideal option for you.
This plugin comes with the basic functionality that you expect in all such plugins like the ability to provide custom notification text and a button to take some action. You can use the notification bar to let people know about any upcoming promotions, sales or other events.
Easy Notification Bar uses a newly introduced hook to make sure that the notification bar is properly placed without relying on absolute positioning. This results in perfect integration with the existing layout of a lot of themes.
Since the plugin is placed statically by default, it also means that it scrolls out of the viewport or screen just like other elements. However, you can also enable an option to make the position sticky so that the notification bar stays visible even after users scroll down.
You can also disable and enable a closing button that hides the notification bar from users. There are options available for you to change the background color, text color, text alignment and font size for the notification bar.
The plugin itself is very lightweight so you don’t have to worry about it slowing down your website.
NotificationX
While the NotificationX plugin allows you to add a notification bar to your WordPress website, it is capable of doing much more than that.
The plugin works on the principal of social proof and how people don’t like to be left behind. If will let people know what others are buying on your website or what content they are reading, commenting etc.
The newer version of the plugin is a lot faster and easier to use than its predecessor. It comes with support for WooCommerce and easy digital downloads in the free version. The simple interface with ready-made themes and custom design options makes it easy to use.
You can add notifications about sales or other purchasing activities by users on the website. It is also possible to integrate download counts and reviews in the notification system.
The support for notification bar allows you to add a notification about sales or discounts at the top of your website with a countdown timer to instill a sense of urgency.
WP Notification Bars
The WP Notification Bars plugin is a light weight and easy to use alternative for people who want to add custom notification bars to their websites.
One of its advantages is that you can create an unlimited number of notifications bars with your desired color schemes. You can also modify the font size and the CTA button in the notification bar according to your requirements.
One unique feature of the plugin is that it allows you to define whether you want to specifically target visitors from Google or Facebook. You can also control whether the notification bar appears on the homepage, other website pages or blog posts.
The notification bars are responsive and can be positioned either using fixed or absolute positioning.
FooBar
The last plugin on our list is the FooBar notifications plugin. There are three different types of notifications that you can create using the FooBar plugin—any announcement, a call to action, or a cookie notice. It offers you customization options for your notification message, call to action buttons and the cookie notice.
You can control the visibility of your notifications by specifying on which pages you want the notification bar or promo bar to be present. The bars do support emojis in case you want to add them.
There are quite a few options that you can set for the plugin under general settings. This includes the position of the bar, whether it is open or closed by default, if the bar is shown over the main content or pushes the main content down to keep it visible.
The announcement bar, call to action bar and the cookie notice bar all have their own settings for specifying the bar text, the URL to open an so on. This means that they can all work independently of each other.
Final Thoughts
I have reviewed some of the best free WordPress promo and notification bars in this post. All of these are good enough for adding simple notification bars to your website. However, my choices here are the WP Front Notification Bar due to its decent feature set with an easy to use interface. You can also consider using NotificationX if you want to use the notification system for other purposes such as users making a purchase or posting comments etc.