How to Create a Countdown Timer Inside Your Membership Site

You can use a countdown timer on AccessAlly to display based on a user’s actions, a limited-time coupon, or simply as a universal countdown for a timed promotion.

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How to Set Up a Countdown Timer

Step 1: Create New Custom Operation: Countdown Timer

In AccessAlly > Settings > Custom Operations, click on + NEW OPERATION button.
You can name the operation, then select the Show Countdown Timer option under What This Operation Does.

Step 2: Configure Countdown Reference

Next, you need to decide the reference that the timer will be counting down towards – what will cause it to start? Will it be specific to one user, or will it be the same timer for everyone?).

You have three options to choose from:

Option 1: Contact-Specific Countdown Timer

This countdown timer is only shown to logged-in individuals when they first access the page that the countdown timer is located on. This makes it a great option for timed promotions inside your members-only area, whether that means a welcome promotion (“As a thanks for signing up…”) or something else.

How To Set Up

1. Select the Custom Field

Since the countdown timer is specific to each user, you’ll need to select a custom field in your CRM to store the reference time. (In other words: AccessAlly needs a place to reference where the countdown should be at for each individual user).

Infusionsoft: please select the Date / Time custom field type
Ontraport: please select the Date custom field type
ActiveCampaign: you can use the Date OR Text custom field type
ConvertKit: “regular” custom field
Drip: “regular” custom field

2. Calculate the “Countdown-towards” time

Now, decide how long your countdown timer lasts for. (A 24 hour promo? A week?) Please note that you must always calculate this in hours (so if you have a week-long timer, you’ll have to do the math: 7 x 24 = 168 hours).

3. What to do if the reference time has not been assigned yet

You can choose to either “show nothing” or “assign now as the field value”

4. SAVE

As always, please make sure to click on the blue “save” button at the top right before exiting the page or moving onto the next step.

5. Add the countdown timer to a page

Now, you can add it to a page using the shortcode adder. When your logged in users first visit that page, the timer will begin the countdown.

Option 2: Global Countdown to a Fixed Time

This countdown timer can be placed on a private (logged-in users only) or public page, and simply uses a date and time as the reference point. This makes it great for static countdown needs like launches, events, or other timed promotions.

How To Set Up

1. Select the expiry time for the countdown

Here, you can simply enter the date and time that you would like the timer to end on.

2. SAVE

As always, please make sure to click on the blue SAVE button on the top right before exiting the page or moving onto the next step.

3. Add the countdown timer to a page

Now, you can add it to a page using the shortcode adder. When your logged in users first visit that page, the timer will begin the countdown.

Option 3: Countdown timer to when a coupon expires

This countdown timer can be used on a page to tell a user when a specific coupon is about to expire, OR you can add it to an order form itself (leave the dropdown blank if you will be using the countdown timer in an Order Form or with a URL-supplied coupon).

How To Set Up

1. Select the Promo that the countdown timer references

If you have a timed promo created, you can select it in the dropdown. With this setup, when the promo begins (via the AccessAlly Product > Promo settings), the countdown timer will show accordingly.

If you’re using the countdown timer in an Order for (or with a URL-supplied coupon), you can leave the dropdown blank).

2. SAVE

As always, please make sure to click on the blue SAVE button on the top right before exiting the page or moving onto the next step.

3. Add the countdown timer to a page

Now, you can add it to a page using the shortcode adder. When your logged in users first visit that page, the timer will begin the countdown.

Step 3: Configure the Countdown Timer Display

Finally, you can configure how you’d like the countdown timer to display.

The placeholder tags available are:

{{countdown}} : this will be replaced by the timer that blinks down.
{{coupon}} : only populated if using with the coupon option. this will be substituted with the coupon code, so you can say something like “the coupon code ‘abc’ will expire in 30 minutes”