Add & Manage Your Banners

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While your website might have all the information everyone needs to know about upcoming events, there are most certainly going to be times when particular events need some advertisement. (e.g. Signing up for a church-wide potluck.)

Or perhaps there is an immediate need to announce a last minute change, and try as you might to contact everyone who needs to know about the widespread change, announcing it on your website helps to cover all your bases. (e.g. Canceling a service due to a significant weather storm.)

Whatever the case, Banners are there to communicate important information to your church on your website.

The best part? You can create a button in your Banner that takes people directly to an action in The Launcher, making it that much easier to take next steps at your church!

To begin, you’ll want to go to your Banners in your Next Steps. Click here for a quick link.

In this guide, we'll cover the following topics. Click on any one to jump ahead.

Install Banners On Your website

Banners operate through the same installation code as The Launcher. So as long as you’ve installed The Launcher correctly on your website, any published Banner will load on your site as well according to its schedule – automatically! 😎

If you haven’t yet installed The Launcher, no worries! We have some visual guides for that.

For instructions on how to install The Launcher on a Nucleus website, click here.

For instructions on how to install The Launcher on other websites, click here.

When To Use A Banner

Because of the real estate that Banners take up on your website, Banners should be reserved for the highest priority information, used only for time sensitive announcements and the most crucial next steps in your church. (A best practice is to correlate in-person service announcements with next steps to Banners on your website with an action button.)

This is a general guiding principle that will help limit the amount of Banners used, which helps to prevent people being so inundated with Banners that they ignore any and all Banners that appear on your site in the future. 

So while Banners are a great tool to pair with The Launcher, it’s important not to overuse them, lest they become ineffective.

Two Different Styles

While managing your Banners, you’ll notice that there are two different styles: inline and floating.

Inline (announcement) Banners sit at the very top of your website, pushing the site down just a bit. These type of Banners feel like they’re a part of your website, and when you scroll down, it stays at the top of your website. As such, you have the ability to choose whether an “X” close button appears on them, or if they remain permanent at the top of your site. Inline Banners also display faster than floating Banners so they feel like part of your website.

Inline Banners are great for announcements, especially ones that affect a large amount of  people (e.g. canceled services, urgent need, etc.).

Floating (notification-style) Banners on the other hand, enter and cover a small top area of your website, kind of like a notification on a smartphone. Because they sit on top of your website, people will always have an option to close the Banner with a “X” button. Floating Banners wait until all other elements of The Launcher are loaded until they appear, which also helps make them feel more like a notification showing up while browsing your church’s website. Because floating Banners load on top of your website, as you scroll down the site, they scroll with you.

Floating Banners are great for nudging people with time-sensitive next steps (e.g. deadlines to sign up for an activity, prompts to join a livestream, ask how you can pray for someone, etc.).

Interacting With A Banner

Mentioned above, on all floating Banners, there is a “X” close button; and on inline Banners, you have the option to provide the close button.

So what happens when a visitor on your website clicks the “X” button?

To avoid Banners becoming a nuisance, if someone clicks the “X” button, it will disappear and as long as someone visits your site using the same device and browser, the Banner will not appear again for about 5 days.

Now, you also have the ability to add an action to your Banner (i.e. a button people can click on to learn more or sign up).

If your Banner has an action attached to it, and someone clicks the action button, you can turn on the option so that the Banner will disappear. Similar to clicking on the “X” button, as long as someone visits your site using the same device and browser, the Banner will not appear again for about 3 days after.

Again, these rules were set based on best practices for ensuring Banners do not become annoying to your website visitors or your congregation. In other words, they’re automatically optimized for engagement 😀

Create A Banner

Creating a Banner is simple. First, choose whether you want to create an inline style Banner, or a floating style Banner by choosing the appropriate section. Then click the + Add New button.

Then fill in the available prompts starting with naming your banner.

Note: The name of your banner will only be visible to admins to help you stay organized.

Then fill in the headline, which is the one required section, and will be visible on your website. Then pick an emoji and fill in the body text if you want to give you banner a bit more pizzazz.

If you're setting up your banner with the intention that it will lead to a next step, you'll want to scroll down and select the type of action you want to connect to your Banner. Here you can choose to have the button in the Banner lead to an existing Flow, PrayerFlow, GivingFlow, Page, Info Card, or a direct URL. Then go ahead and label your button.

While the default setting of a Banner is to match The Launcher colors, you can override those settings. This can be helpful when wanting to draw extra attention to a specific Banner. If you do want to adjust your colors, under the Colors section, you can choose from a set of standard colors, or enter in a specific hex code. You can also adjust the Vibrancy Slider to find the right intensity of color for you. You can also choose which color mode the Banner will operate with:

  • Auto will dynamically adjust the color mode of the Banner to be in line with whatever device it's being viewed from.
  • Always Dark will load the Banner in a darker color mode no matter what mode is toggled on the device it's being viewed from.
  • Always Light will load the Banner in a lighter color mode no matter what mode is toggled on the device it's being viewed from.

Finally at the bottom of the page, you'll be presented with a few Save options. You can choose to save the Banner as a draft, Start Now (which will make the Banner live on your website immediately), or set your Banner for a scheduled or recurring period of time. Keep reading for more information on Scheduling 🤓

Schedule A Banner

While creating a Banner, you will have the option to save as draft, publish now, or schedule to go live on (and be removed from) your website.

Scheduling Banners is a helpful way to make sure planned, time sensitive announcements and notifications always show up on your website when needed.

When selecting a date range, you can choose when the Banner will appear in the future, as well as when the Banner will stop showing on your website - down to the exact minute. Only the start date is required for this option, so if you don’t have an end date in sight, no worries.

If you have a recurring announcement that you only want to load on your website for a certain window of time each week, you can select the Show Weekly option. This allows you to enter a start day/time and an end day/time for each week.

Manage Your Banners

All of your Banners exist under Next Steps and will either be under the Inline or Floating sections.

While we recommend reserving Banners for only the most relevant of next steps, it is possible to have multiple Inline or Floating Banners active at a time. When there are multiple Banners published, only one of that type of Banner will be displayed at a time. A visitor on your website can then choose to scroll through each Banner using the arrow buttons provided on the Banner itself.

To choose the order in which the Banners appear, click the double lines beside the Banner and move them up and down. Whichever Banner is at the top (that is also published) will appear first, followed by the next published Banner below. When you move Banners up and down, these changes are saved automatically.

If you need to make changes to an existing Banner, duplicate it, or archive a Banner that you are no longer using, you can find all of these options by clicking the small arrow beside your Banner.

If in the future you need to view Banners that you've archived, you can do this at any point by clicking the View Archived button at the top of your Banners list 😊

Preview Your Banners

Before setting Banners live on your website, you can preview your Banners by clicking on the Preview button in the upper right hand corner. 

This will open a new tab where your Launcher, Banners, and Info Cards (if you have any) will load. All you need to do is imagine your website in the background 😉

What Next?

Interested in learning about more next steps products and features? Click any of the links below:

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