Every Citrus-Lime Ecommerce site has a unique design, but one feature they all have in common is banners. These are the clickable content blocks that slot together to form most of your homepage layout. Most banners will include an image, some text and a button, but the design of banners can vary from site to site.
You can use a banner to showcase the products and other content you want to promote on your Ecommerce site.
Here is an example section from an Ecommerce site homepage, which has three banners tiled side by side. The first banner promotes classes in the workshop, the second banner promotes a women's riding group and the third links to the About Us page. (In these examples, the banner titles, descriptions and buttons are arranged below the image, but these can be displayed on top of the image instead. The design of your banners will be part of your initial site build from the Citrus-Lime Design Team.)
You can manage your banners in Cloud MT from Site Management > Banner Management. You will also find it in the ‘Quick Links’ area at the top of your Cloud MT menu.
Managing your Banner Collections
Banners are organised into collections (or groups). Typically, each collection (or group) of banners will represent a different area of your homepage, and this will be reflected in the collection name. Here is an example:
To manage an individual banner, click Edit next to the relevant collection in the grid.
(You can also click ‘Edit’ to rename the banner collections, if you would like.)
Editing your Banners
You will now see a grid showing the current banners in this collection (in other words, in this area of your homepage):
The grid contains the following information and options:
| Edit | Click here to make changes to the banner, either now or for a scheduled date and time in the future (see below). |
| Delete | Click here to delete the banner. Please note: This will leave an empty space, called a ‘container’, on your site homepage, until you activate another banner with the same Display Order as the deleted banner. The other banners will not move to fill the empty space. You should ensure you have a replacement banner ready before deleting a banner, to avoid white space on your site homepage. |
| Title | The main text for the banner |
| Description | The subheading for the banner. Depending on your banner design, this could be displayed above or below the Title. We recommend keeping the Description concise to accommodate smaller devices. |
| URL |
The page on your site that the banner will link to when clicked. The easiest way to find the correct URL is to navigate to that page on your Ecommerce site front end, and then copy the fragments from the address bar in your browser. |
| URL Text | The text shown in the clickable button on the banner (if these are configured in your site design) |
| Image | The banner image. You can read more about our recommendations for banner images here: How Dynamic Images and Banner Images work |
| Display Order | This represents the container (or space) that the banner will display in. Changing this value will reorder your banners. The lowest number will be the first banner in the collection to display. |
| Active | Active banners are live on your homepage. Inactive banners are not currently live on your homepage. |
| Scheduled Start Date | The date and time when the banner is scheduled to activate. See below for more on scheduling banners. |
| Scheduled End Date | The date and time when the banner is scheduled to deactivate. See below for more on scheduling banners. |
Here is an example of three banners in a demo environment. These three banners correspond to Display Order 1, 2 and 3 in the screenshot above.
To edit a banner, click Edit beside the corresponding row of the grid, to open the Banner Entry Edit window.
From here, you can make changes to the individual banner settings.
Click Save to save your changes.
Need more banners?
Please note that clicking the button to Add a New Banner Entry will not create a new container (or space) for a banner on your homepage. This would need to be actioned by the Citrus-Lime Design Team. Adding a new banner entry from Cloud MT is designed to help you easily manage your existing layout, especially when scheduling changes (see below).
If you would like to add more banner containers to your homepage (in other words, more spaces for banners to appear), or edit your homepage layout in general, get in touch with your Success Team. Please note that these design changes may be billable.
Scheduling your banners
You can also schedule banners to activate and deactivate at a time of your choosing. This makes it easier to manage launches, campaigns or seasonal offers.
For example, you could create a banner to promote a sale beginning on 1st April, and schedule the banner to go live at midnight on that date.
When scheduling a banner, make sure you pay attention to the Display Order setting. This will tell Cloud MT which container you would like the scheduled banner to appear in and which existing banner it should deactivate.
For example, if we wanted to replace the ‘Kids Bikes’ banner on the demo site above with a sale banner, from midnight on 1st April, the steps would be as follows:
1) Click the green button to Add a Banner Entry to create a new, empty row in the grid.
2) Click Edit beside the empty row.
3) Enter the settings for the sale banner, specifying the Title, Description, URL, URL Text and uploading an Image.
4) Set the Display Order to be the same as the banner you would like to replace. For example, the ‘Kids Bikes’ banner on this demo site has Display Order 2, so the replacement sale banner will also need Display Order 2, in order to replace it when the scheduled time arrives.
5) Set the Scheduled Start Date to the date and time you would like the banner to activate.
6) Set the Scheduled End Date to the date and time you would like the banner to deactivate. (If you do not have a planned deactivation date, you can leave this field blank, and the banner will remain on your homepage until you choose to edit or deactivate it manually.)
7) Click Save.
This will result in two banners for the same Display Order in the grid, as in this example:
In this example, at 00:00 on 01/04/2026, the current ‘Kids Bikes’ banner will be deactivated, and it will be replaced with the ‘End of Season Sale’ banner, which will activate in its place. A further banner could then be prepared for when the sale banner ends, or the Kids Bikes banner could be set to reactivate at that time.
