A Countdown is an input field designed to motivate visitors to act quickly on time-sensitive offers and promotions. BDOW! provides two main types of Countdown depending on the needs of your campaign:
Evergreen. Since the clock on these timers is unique to each visitor, they can be used in ongoing campaigns without the need for maintenance. For example, every visitor may have 12 hours to take advantage of an offer, but the 12-hour countdown begins for an individual visitor when the campaign is first viewed. Available only on Pro and Plus plans.
Fixed Date. This type of timer is global for all of your visitors. The clock will tick down to a single deadline. This is great for promotions tied to the calendar, such as a Black Friday sale or an Early Bird event registration offer. Available on all BDOW! plans.
Adding the Countdown
Like all input fields, you will add it to your campaign form in the Design tool.
Sign into your BDOW! Site Manager and access the Design tool (either create a new form or edit an existing campaign).
Hover over the Add New button and select Countdown.
The new Countdown will appear on the popup, but it still needs some editing so it matches your brand identity and looks great in your campaign! Select it and refer to the left-side menu to continuing establishing its functionality and styling.
Configuring Countdown behavior
The next big step is selecting the type of Countdown.
On the Design tab, choose between Evergreen and Fixed Date options.
Select how the Countdown should behave when the timer expires:
Stop showing the popup to the visitor. This will simply make the campaign popup disappear.
Show an expiration message. With this option, your popup will remain visible but the timer will be replaced with a message of your choice.
Redirect to another page. Specify a URL destination to redirect your visitor (such as a landing page).
Restart timer. Only available for Evergreen countdowns, this option will keep the popup displayed, simply set the timer to the original value, and start ticking down again.
The next option is the Style. More details on that in the section below.
Configure the expiration time as needed for the goals of your campaign. The fields will vary based on the Countdown type:
Evergreen. Set the duration of the offer.
Fixed Date. Specify the date and time that the offer expires. Double check the time zone to ensure that it will expire exactly when expected:
Adjusting the Countdown style
Now that you have the Countdown configured for your campaign, you can focus on ensuring that it looks good and matches your brand identity. The look and feel of a Countdown is its Style, and BDOW! has several options. You can tweak the color scheme on each as well.
Preview the different styles in the designer:
The Classic option is the only purely text-based style, so in addition to the color scheme you can also set the font itself, size of the text, etc.
Integrating with your overall campaign
The Countdown itself is a visual effect, so you can incorporate it as one component of a broader campaign. For example, it is great to pair with BDOW!'s ability to generate discount codes!