Modules

Announcement bar

Put one or more short messages at the top of your cart drawer, rotating between them on a timer that shoppers can pause.

What it is

The announcement bar is a small tinted strip inside the cart drawer. It shows one line of your own text. If you write more than one line, the bar cycles through them on a timer.

In the admin the module is called Announcement.

When to use it

A shipping cut-off: Order by 2pm for same-day dispatch
A running promotion you want repeated in the cart
A delivery or returns note, linked to the page that explains it

Keep each message to one short sentence. The bar is a single row of small text, and a long paragraph will push the rest of the cart down the screen.

The bar sits in the scrolling part of the drawer, not pinned to the top. As a shopper scrolls down through their items, the announcement scrolls away with them. This is deliberate — a permanently pinned banner eats the vertical space that the checkout button needs on a small phone.

Set it up

In the app, open Carts and click the cart you want to edit. You land on the Cart builder screen.
Scroll to Add a module, choose Announcement from the Module list, and press Add.
Find the new row in the Modules list and press Settings.
In Messages, type your text. One message per line.
If you wrote more than one line, set Seconds between messages.
Optionally set a Background and Text colour.
Press Save.
Go Back to modules and use the up and down arrow buttons on the row to move the bar to where you want it among the other body modules.
Press Review and publish. Nothing you change reaches a shopper until you publish.

Adding a link

To make a message clickable, put a vertical bar after the text and then the link:

Free shipping over £50 | /pages/shipping

The whole message becomes the link. Everything after the first vertical bar is treated as the link, so do not use | inside your message text.

Settings

Setting	What it does
`Messages`	One message per line, in the order they will be shown. Add a link with a vertical bar, as above. Blank lines are ignored.
`Seconds between messages`	How long each message stays on screen. Minimum 4, maximum 60. If you leave it empty the bar uses 5 seconds. Four is the floor because a bar that changes faster than a sentence can be read is a bar nobody reads.
`Background`	The strip's background colour. Left empty, it uses a light tint of your cart's accent colour.
`Text`	The text colour. Left empty, it inherits the drawer's normal text colour.

How it behaves for shoppers

Rotation

One message shows at a time. The bar moves to the next one on your timer and loops back to the first.
With only one message there is no rotation and no pause button.
Rotation pauses while the shopper's mouse is over the bar, and while their keyboard focus is inside it. It resumes when they move away. A shopper reading a message never has it swapped out mid-sentence.

The pause button

When there are two or more messages, a small pause button appears at the end of the bar. Pressing it stops rotation until the shopper presses play again. This is an accessibility requirement, not an option — anything that moves on its own for more than five seconds must be stoppable.

The wording read out for that button (Pause announcements and Play announcements) can be changed on the Shopper copy screen, under Announcements and errors.

Shoppers who have asked for less motion

If a shopper's device is set to reduce motion, the bar does not rotate at all. Instead it shows every message stacked one under the other, and no pause button appears. They get more of your text, not less. Write your messages so they still read sensibly when they all appear together.

Limitations

These are things merchants reasonably expect and the app does not currently do. They are listed here rather than left to be discovered.

Display rules do not affect this module. The Announcement settings screen offers an Add a display rule button, and a rule you save there is stored — but the announcement bar is not one of the modules the storefront rule engine can hide. The bar shows to every shopper whenever the module is switched on, whatever the rule says. To stop showing it, press Hide on its row in the module list and publish.
The "no text" warning is shown even when you have written messages. On the Cart builder screen you may see "This announcement has no text, so nothing will appear." next to a fully configured Announcement module. The warning does not read the Messages setting correctly. Check the preview to see the real state of the bar, and ignore that banner.
No scheduling. There is no start or end date, and no per-message timing beyond the rotation interval. A seasonal message has to be edited or hidden by hand.
Shoppers cannot dismiss the bar. There is no close button; it stays for the whole session.
No sticky option. The bar cannot be pinned to the top of the drawer. See the note above for why.
Messages are not translated. Whatever you type is what every shopper sees, in every language. Only the pause and play button labels are translatable.
No formatting. Messages are plain text. There is no bold, no emphasis, no images, and no HTML. If you need markup, use the Custom HTML module instead.
The link opens in the same tab. A shopper who taps it leaves the cart page. There is no option to open it in a new tab.

Saving the settings screen does not change your live store. The success banner says so: these changes go live the next time you publish. Always finish with Review and publish.

Next steps

Use Preview and publishing to watch the bar rotate against a real cart before any shopper sees it. If the bar is not showing on your storefront at all, start with Troubleshooting.