A countdown timer is considered an effective marketing tool for attracting the attention of potential customers to the start of sales, the end of promotional offers, and other actions. It is used for both offline business and e-commerce. Countdown timers for websites first define a set start date for sales or any promotions, and then the time until their end.
Scripts of this type eliminate the need to perform unnecessary calculations. This makes the resource itself more modern and the work of the site more efficient.
Using a timer allows you to know how much time:
- left before the holiday (New Year, Christmas, others);
- the sale will last;
- have the client to buy a service or product at a low price;
- left until the end of the promotion, event on the blog.
Why do we need to set the timer on the sites
Primarily, this tool is needed for site owners who will be running various promotions, or creating their own sales pages. By counting down the time on the site in reverse order, the timer is a visual notification of the hours and minutes, as well as the number of days left until the end of offers (sales, giveaways, promotions). This encourages potential customers to take action, for example, to purchase a product advertised on the page.
Countdown timers have long acted as an important tool for landing pages. They are necessary to create the effect of limited offers of goods or services, urgency. Visual countdown timers are no less popular and in demand for upcoming holidays and important events. Placed in the header of the site, sidebar or on the main page, such timers will notify visitors to the resource of the events that are approaching.
Another common use of the timer is to place them on page-slugs of resources that are under development, on sites that are undergoing reconstruction or undergo maintenance. In such cases, the counter indicates the time remaining until the resumption of attendance at the site.
Basic types of counters for websites
Increasing landing page, or site conversion – the main task of countdown timers. The use of the counter contributes to building a flexible communication with the users of the resource. There are several basic types of countdown timers.
Before a certain date
Counters of this type allow you to set the time when the timer will end, taking into account the local time of users. What does this mean? The timer will automatically recalculate the time for users who are in different time zones. In this case, there is no need to choose the most convenient options, how to complete the action for a particular country, in a single time moment.
You can also select a specific time zone in the counter. Using this option is often common for online stores or local sites from specific regions or cities.
For the time interval
Counters in this format will be effective when used for timers that count down a few minutes, hours. They make visitors to the resource more quickly perform the target action on the site.
For example: “Only 15 minutes left to apply for a 40% discount on all products. The countdown can begin momentarily, or from the moment the customer visits the site for the first time. The time for each new user who visits the page will be counted down automatically.
Timers looped
These types of countdown counters are among the most popular and in demand. Timers have the ability to restart at the right time and every day at a certain interval. The counter can be set to a specific time zone, or to the local time of the user.
Timers of this type are used when restarting promotions for the most popular products (services). For example: “Hurry up to buy the site on the action only today with a 30% discount”.
Countdown timers from PromoFeatures are a great way to inform visitors to the resource. Based on the nature of their use, they add a kind of temporal relevance to the proposal product (goods or services).
Distinctive features
There are two types of countdown timers on the market today, which can be used for websites:
- Common.
- Evergreens.
Each of them has its own distinctive features.
The regular timers are timers that count down to a specific time or date. This means that regardless of who visits the resource, all timers will count down in the same way.
Evergreen includes timers that were created as a marketing tool to call potential customers to action. Such timers create an artificial sense of urgency, for each visitor to the site they provide a unique countdown counter. For example, for each new customer, the countdown to the end of the promotion will start the first time they visit the page.
Ways to create timers
They are created in several ways.
HTML timer with a special service
In these timers, the countdown to a specific number in a future period is in seconds. Counters, which are generated with the help of services, are not blocked by mailers, the time to a certain event is displayed in them correctly, they perform their tasks flawlessly.
GIF animation
These are counters in the form of animated images, so-called gifs. Such timers are created using a graphics editor. But their peculiarity is that the counting of real time in them does not occur, although the numbers in the image in this type of timers and change. Timers of this type are also not blocked by mailers.
