Say “Hello” to Your Site Visitors With Hello Bar

Ya know those annoying, eh hem I mean cool, pop down bar type things that some websites have on load? You know the ones I’m talking about; after the homepage loads this little 25-50px tall bar slides down from the top of the window usually advertising some thing or other. With me so far? Good because I came across a new service whose sole purpose is to help you add this type of irritating, I mean nifty, functionality to your own website. It’s called Hello Bar and in this post I’ll take you on a tour and discuss whether you should add it to your own site.

Now before we get started, you might have noticed a bit of sarcasm in the opening of this post about whether this type of functionality is really a good thing. Personally I place this feature in the same category as pop-up windows and those really annoying flash ads that start talking to you after loading (I hate those things). However, I wanted to do a post on this service because it’s really a pretty slick web app and it’s made by the same people that brought us SlideDeck which is totally cool! So in an attempt to give them the benefit of the doubt, and showcase a very well put together interface, I decided to take a swing at writing an impartial review of the service. Here goes nothing.

Initial Setup

To get started you will need an account. Hello Bar is currently in a private beta, so signing up on the homepage will only get you so far. I have a hand full of invites to share if anyone is interested (just leave a comment).

After logging in for the first time you come to a dashboard of sorts that will eventually display all of your bars for management. The interface leaves little to the imagination as to what you need to do to get started with your first bar. Click the “Create New” button and you are served with the hello bar editor.

The bulk of this service revolves around this bar editor screen. This is where you actually construct your hello bar and it’s loaded with options. You can either create a static bar with text you enter manually or populate the bar dynamically from an RSS feed (you can even configure it so you can update your bar via Twitter). Once you’ve decided on the type of bar you’re creating you can get to customizing every aspect like link text and colors. There really isn’t much that you can’t customize easily through the interface.

Once you’re satisfied with your hello bar (by checking the preview) you are presented with a little bit of JavaScript to copy and paste into your websites body tag. After that you should be up and running with your brand new hello bar.

Wait, is there more?

Up until now you might be wondering why you would use such a service and not just go hunting for a jQuery plugin or something. Well the true value in Hello Bar comes after you copy and paste the JavaScript. Once you have created your bars you can manage them all collectively from your account, turning them on and off remotely as needed. I can see this as a very handy feature for those people who have several dispersed web properties to manage.

And if that’s not enough for you there are also statistics. Hello Bar tracks impressions, clicks and the click through rate for each bar in your account. You can then filter that data by day, week or month.

While it is true that you could track the same data leveraging a jQuery plugin (using Google Analytics) that takes time. I was up and running with my hello bar in LESS than 5 minutes. Setting up Google Analytics alone will take more time than that.

Final Verdict

When I first came across Hello Bar my thought was “Really?? Someone made an entire web app just for these annoying little drop down bar things?” However, after taking a look at all the features and statistics tracking I have to say I’m impressed. Seems like a useful feature set paired with a kick ass interface, definitely a winning combination. Now if it only wasn’t for those annoying drop down bar things that remind me of pop-up ads.

All jokes aside, I will not personally be using this service, but I do recommend it to anyone looking for this type of functionality. Very solid tool!

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