How to manage the Announcement Bar on Squarespace
Do you have a Squarespace website? Do you use the announcement bar
Have you ever wondering how people change and adjust that little announcement bar at the top?
This step-by-step guide is going to walk you through exactly how to make these changes all on your own. If you prefer to watch how to do it check out the video here.
First, why is the announcement bar an important thing for you to know how to change.? Here are a couple of reasons why.
You have a sudden change perhaps it’s the middle of winter and there is a massive storm and you need to let your clients know you’re closing.
You’ve decided to have a special sale and you need to put in a new link for that sale
Maybe you use the announcement bar to book consultations and you’re all booked up for this month and you need to change some of the wording.
….The list can go on and on.
Let’s get into how to do this.
Follow along with the screenshots and step-by-step process on how to use and update your announcement bar on Squarespace. I have a screenshot from my sample site for you to follow along with each step of the way.
Once Logged in on your menu tree on the left go to marketing
After you log into your site you’re going to go to the tree on the left-hand side. Once there you’re going to click on
Marketing
This will bring you into another tree section with lots of good stuff. Today we’ll only be focusing on the Announcement Bar,
This is where you will select announcement bar under the marketing tab.
Once you get into this tree you’re now going to select Announcement Bar.
The announcement bar is a great place to share all sorts of information.
A few examples I’ve used in the past when I was running our Pilates Studio and Gym.
Unexpected closures due to weather
Holiday Schedules
My evergreen and always-up was a link to booking a Free consultation.
If I was running a special program or sale I would link to this
Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty and honestly it’s pretty easy to change this. Many clients I work with sometimes get scared/overwhelmed with making changes to their site. This is an easy place to start and not too much can go wrong, if it does it’s pretty easy to fix.
One thing to note the screenshots I’m showing you are from a demo site. You’ll notice that the announcement bar option is only available when you have a business plan or higher. If you’re only on the personal plan you will need to upgrade.
Step one:
You’ll need to enable your Announcement bar. Once you do this it will be live on your site after and I repeat only after you hit SAVE in the top left.
Highlighting a word and selecting the Link button will open up the link editor
After switching from the default of disabled to Enabled you can start making changes.
Step 2:
Just below the enable you’ll be able to enter the content you want to share. For this example, I’ve entered “This is a very important announcement”
You can put whatever you like in here. We’ll use that for this example.
Step 3:
Our next step is linking either the entire announcement bar or a specific word or phrase in it to something. We’ll start by stepping you through linking just one work and in this example we’ll be linking the work Announcement.
To start first highlight the word you would like to link, then on the top you’ll click on the little link symbol right next to the underline symbol and that will pop up a new window. (the link editor)
Once you are in the Link Editor we have several different options. You can link our example to the following different things.
Email:
Web Address: (this is typically if you are going off your site)
File: (say you have a Free Download)
Page: This is going to be if you are redirecting them to another page on your current site)
Phone:
Typically you’ll want to toggle the open in a new window switch on if you are sending someone to a site that is not your own. We usually want to keep people on our own site as long as possible and this button will make sure a new window opens if it’s another site like (acuity, mail chimp, an email etc)
Linking your announcement bar to an external site
I’ll step through a couple of different options.
External Link:
I find myself using this one the most. You’ll select Web address. Once you do that you’ll past the web address you would like to redirect people to when they click on your announcement bar. you’ll then select the open in a new window option.
There are two more steps at this point. The first is to hit save in the top left under the link editor. Then you’ll select save again when you are in the Announcement section.
Enabling your Squarespace announcement bar/banner
What if you want the entire announcement bar to be a clickable element?
That’s easy you’re going to follow the exact same process as above except instead of highlighting the words and using the link option you’ll use this little gear icon I’ve circled here. It will pop open the exact same Link Editor Menu.
At this point, all the steps are exactly the same.
Just a few more steps to make sure your announcement bar is working!
Once you hit save in your site preview and on your live site you’re announcement bar is going to be visible as shown above.
What we didn’t talk about is styling this bar to make sure it matches the rest of your site’s branding. . Not to worry I’ll be sharing details on how to do this in the near future.
Key things to watch out for if the announcement bar on your Squarespace site doesn’t seem to be working.
Always check your live site to make sure the changes you made are working.
If you make changes check to make sure you’ve hit save and apply. If you haven’t there is a chance the links won’t get updated as planned.
If you are linking a word and the entire announcement bar make sure when you make changes you’ve made them to both and you’ve saved those changes.
Check on both your mobile and desktop views to make sure it looks great on both!
I have provide a video walk through on how to manage this Announcement bar. Feel free to watch this instead!
Would you like to chat about designing or updating your fabulous Squarespace website?
You can schedule your Free Consultation below
Hi I’m Sara
While I’m not working on helping awesome people with their website and automation you can find me outdoors in Utah or teaching Pilates and Fitness classes.