Two Ways To Display A Temporary Announcement On Your Squarespace Therapy Website

Whether you want to let website visitors know you’re accepting new clients or you have a new service offering to tell folks about, it can be tough to find the best way to get the word out.

In this blog post, I’m going to show you two easy ways to display a temporary announcement on your therapy website. The best part? These methods don’t require you to change your site design or add new pages, and the announcements can be turned off when the announcement doesn’t apply anymore.

Temporary website announcements may be helpful in any of these scenarios: having a full caseload, launching a new service or offering, moving office locations, or announcing a new staff member.

To add temporary announcements to your Squarespace therapy website, you have a few options:

Option 1: Enable an Announcement Bar

In Squarespace, you can display a message in a bar across the top of your website. When enabled, the announcement bar appears at the top of every page of your site (except Cover Pages). Like this:

Example of announcement bar displayed on the Canvas & Brush Template

STEP 1: CREATE YOUR ANNOUNCEMENT

1. In your Squarespace home menu, click Marketing, then click Marketing Tools.

2. Click Announcement Bar

3. Select Enable Announcement Bar from the dropdown menu.

4. Enter your announcement in the text box that appears. You can create hyperlinks if you’d like people to take specific action, or…

5. Make the whole bar clickable by inserting a web address in the Clickthrough URL box.

6. Click Save at the top of the page to publish your announcement bar.

STEP 2: STYLE YOUR ANNOUNCEMENT BAR

Squarespace 7.0 instructions:

1. In the home menu, navigate to Design, then click Site Styles.

2. Hover your mouse over the announcement bar and click to bring up the Announcement Bar style tweaks.

3. Customize the background color, font color, and font style to match your website.

4. Click Save.

Squarespace 7.1 instructions:

1. Click Edit on your page editor, then click Site Styles (the paintbrush icon in the upper right corner of your screen)

2. To edit your Announcement Bar font:

   1. Click Fonts

   2. Click Assign Styles

   3. Under “Announcement Bar”, click Text

   4. Select a present font style, or select “Custom” to set a font style for only the Announcement Bar

   5. Click Save

3. To edit your Announcement Bar color:

   1. In Site Styles, click Colors

   2. Choose the color theme that is assigned to your site header

   3. Under “Announcement Bar” adjust the color tweaks for Background and Text

   4. Click Save

Whenever you’d like to disable your announcement bar, simply navigate back to Marketing, then Announcement Bar, and select Disable Announcement Bar from the dropdown menu.

Using the Announcement Bar feature is a great option for urgent announcements as it’s one of the first things visitors will see on your website, and it can be an unobtrusive way to give visitors the information they need.

The downside is that if visitors close the announcement bar (using the ‘x’ in the top-right corner), they won’t see the announcement again unless you manually reset visibility. If you have an announcement that you’d like to keep visible, a pop-up might be a better option.

Option 2: Add a Promotional Pop-Up

Despite its’ name, promotional pop-ups aren’t reserved for marketing and promoting your mailing list. You can use Squarespace’s seamless pop-ups to display urgent messages and announcements to everyone who visits your site.

Like this:

Example of pop-up displayed on the Andrea Template

STEP 1: CREATE YOUR POP-UP

1. In your Squarespace home menu, navigate to Marketing, then Marketing Tools, then click Promotional Pop-Up.

2. Use the Change Layout panel to choose a pop-up design (pro tip: choose a design that doesn’t take up the entire screen).

3. Use the Action panel to add buttons (pro tip: link to your online scheduler or contact page)

4. Use the Content panel to add your pop-up copy.

5. Use the Display & Timing panel to set how the pop-up appears (pro tip: make sure your pop-up is set to appear on ‘Any First Page’ so that no matter where someone enters your website, they’ll see your announcement).

6. (optional) Use the Image panel to add an image.

7. Use the Style panel to customize the colors, fonts, and mobile styles.

STEP 2: DISPLAY YOUR POP-UP

When you’re ready to enable your pop-up announcement, switch the Display Pop-Up toggle switch at the top of the panel to black, then click Save.

Whenever your pop-up announcement doesn’t apply and you’d like to disable it, simply switch the Display Pop-Up toggle switch back to grey, then click Save.

One of the benefits of using a promotional pop-up to announce urgent news is that they’re more commanding than announcement bars, so they’re more likely to be seen by all website visitors. The other thing I like about this method is that you can control the display settings and appearance more than a simple announcement bar.

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Regardless of the method you use to make your announcement, remember that your website is your online “home base” for your practice. Make sure it’s up to date with the latest information and announcements so your visitors can feel safe and supported.