The interval time is designed for controlling the display so it won’t be annoying.
In terms of the best practice,
10 - 30 seconds are great. It won’t be annoying and the customer will still see the information occasionally.
If you are interesting on how the interval time works, please keep reading.
So here is how the interval works:
Let’s say:
- your “Interval Seconds Between Displays” is set to 20 seconds
- your "Seconds To Display Before Retraction” is set to 10 seconds
When a customer visits the website, the bar will display right away. The interval time won’t affect the display at this moment.
At the same moment (let’s call it Moment A), the timer starts counting from 0.
When the customer visits another page (let’s call this moment Moment B), the bar will do its math: calculating the duration between Moment A and B.
- If the duration <= 20 seconds, the bar won’t display on the page, and it won't display until the customer visit another page.
- If the duration > 20 seconds, the bar will display on the page, and it will disappear after 10 seconds according to your settings.
- The bar will do another calculation when the customer visits another page, and this repeats.
The 20 second counter will not restart until the banner appears. If you stay for 3 seconds on each page, the banner won't appear until the 7th page.
The action of “visiting a new page” is working like a trigger. It tells the bar to start calculating the duration, and compare the duration to the interval time (20 seconds), and then decide if the bar should be displayed.