Announcement Bar Messages for Shopify: What to Write
What earns a place in your Shopify announcement bar, how to word a message people read in a second, and examples for sales, shipping and deadlines.
A bar is read in a glance
The announcement bar is the thin strip at the very top of a store, above the header. It is the first line of text a visitor sees on every page, and the one they spend the least time on. Most people give it a second, often less, on their way to whatever they came for.
That changes how to write for it. A bar message is not a headline, a slogan or a welcome note. It is one useful fact, short enough to read in that second, about something that changes whether someone buys today. When it does that, it quietly answers a question before anyone has to ask. When it does not, it is a strip of colour people learn to skip.
This post covers what earns a place in the bar, how to word a message so it gets read, and a set of examples you can adapt.
What earns a place in the bar
Before writing anything, check the message against three questions:
- Does it change a buying decision? Free shipping, a sale, a delivery deadline, a way to pay: yes. “Welcome to our store!”: no.
- Is it true on every page, for every visitor? The bar shows across the store, so a message about one product, or one country, is in the wrong place unless it says so.
- Would a shopper otherwise have to ask, or find out too late? The best bar messages remove a surprise at checkout or an email after the order.
If a message fails all three, it does not belong at the top. If it passes, the next job is wording it.
How to word a message that gets read
A few rules cover nearly every good bar message:
- Lead with the thing that matters to the shopper. “Free shipping over $50” puts the benefit first. “We are happy to offer free shipping on orders over $50” makes them read eight words to find it.
- Use a number or a date, not an adjective. “Order by 18 December for Christmas delivery” can be acted on. “Order soon for the holidays!” cannot.
- One idea per message. If you need “and”, you probably need two messages, or one fewer idea.
- Fit it on a phone. Most visitors see the bar on a small screen, where it has room for roughly one short line. Read it there before you publish it.
- Link only when there is somewhere useful to go. A sale message should open the sale collection; a shipping message can open your shipping page. A link to the homepage is not a link.
- Keep the tone of the rest of the store. All capitals and exclamation marks read as shouting at the top of the page, especially in a long message.
Examples you can adapt
These are starting points, written the way the rules above suggest. Change the numbers and dates to your own, and only use the ones that are true for your store.
Free shipping
- “Free shipping on orders over $50”
- “Free delivery inside the city, $3 elsewhere”
Choosing the threshold is its own decision, covered in how to set a free shipping threshold. In the bar, the number is the whole message.
A sale, with its end
- “Autumn sale: 20% off knitwear until Sunday”
- “Code SPRING15 takes 15% off everything until 30 April”
Always say when it ends. If the sale has a code, write it exactly as the customer must type it and state any minimum or exclusion in the same line, or on the page the message links to. Unclear codes are one of the most common reasons a customer writes in to say the discount did not work.
A delivery deadline
- “Order by 18 December for delivery before Christmas”
- “Orders placed after 2 pm ship the next working day”
Deadlines only help if they are seen before the deadline, which is exactly what the top of every page is for. The full thinking on cutoff dates is in holiday shipping cutoffs.
A way to pay
- “Cash on delivery available across the country”
- “Pay with bKash or Nagad at checkout”
A shopper who only pays one way wants to know before filling a cart. Use this only for methods your checkout actually offers.
Something new
- “New: the linen collection is here”
- “Back in stock: the large tote”
Useful when it is genuinely new. After a couple of weeks it is not news any more, and it should come down.
A standing promise
- “Free returns within 30 days”
- “Handmade to order: ships in 5–7 days”
These are quieter messages that set expectations. They work well as the steady message between campaigns, and they must match your policies word for word.
What does not belong at the top
Some messages show up in bars all the time and rarely earn the space:
- Greetings. “Welcome to our shop” tells the visitor nothing they did not already know.
- Urgency that is not real. A countdown that resets on every visit, or “only today” on a sale that runs all month, works once. After that, it teaches shoppers that your bar is not to be believed, including the true messages.
- Messages that expired. A sale that ended last week is worse than an empty bar: it promises something the checkout will not honour.
- Several conditions in one line. “20% off selected items over $40 excluding sale, new arrivals and gift cards” is a policy, not an announcement. Say the offer, and link to the conditions.
- Things that belong on one product. Size notes and care instructions go on that product page.
One message or several
Some bars can rotate through more than one message. That helps when you have two or three things that are all true and all useful at the same time, such as a shipping threshold, a sale and a delivery deadline. It hurts when the rotation becomes a place to put everything, because each message then gets a fraction of the second the visitor gave the bar.
A simple rule: the most important message goes first, and if you would not miss a message, leave it out. If you rotate, give each one long enough to be read in full.
Keep it current
The hardest part of an announcement bar is not writing the message. It is taking it down. Put the end of every time-bound message in your calendar on the day you publish it, together with what replaces it. The day a sale ends, the bar should change before the first visitor of the next morning arrives.
Where we come in, briefly. Announcement Bar is one of three blocks in Store Essentials, the free app we build at ShopAppsLab. It puts up to five rotating messages at the top of every page, in your colours — switched on once from the theme editor, with no code. There are no paid plans, and the app asks for no access to your store’s data. Everything above works without it — that is the honest version.
If you do one thing this week
Open your store on your phone and read your announcement bar as a stranger would. Ask whether it is still true today, whether it has a number or a date in it, and whether it changes what someone would do. If not, replace it with the one fact your customers most often ask about before ordering, and write the date you will change it next.