Pop-Ups - What They Are and Why To Use Them
Yesterday, one of our community members received some negative feedback on what I personally thought was a cute and creative pop-up. Her experience led me to consider how I use pop-ups and what "best practices" might be out there in the online marketing industry. So I did a little research, and this is Part 1 of what I learned.
Pop-ups, or convertibles, as they are also called, are those messages that come up on your screen when you are visiting a website.
There are different types of pop-ups:
- convertibles that slide out from top, side or bottom
- convertibles that pop over in the middle of the page
- convertibles that behave differently in different circumstances, for example, if you are getting ready to leave the page
There are also different purposes for pop-ups:
- to capture email addresses to generate a list. This is the most common form of pop-up.
- to generate click through. With these, you are encouraging visitors to click through to another page; therefore, your pop up is not going to have an "opt in" box, but will have an invitation message of some kind.
- to conduct a survey. You can use the information gathered to gai qualitative feedback from users.
- to take specific action, such as fill our a form or request a download
Pop-ups have a reputation for being those "annoying things" that jump out at you and ruin your experience. You do not want your viewers to become frustrated, so these are some things you should avoid:
- convertibles where it is very difficult to find the x to close them
- convertibles that are timed and you cannot close until that time has passed
- too many popups in succession that negatively affects the visitors' ability to read content
- convertibles that are not concerned with the users' interest
Google is starting to weigh in on sites that use pop-ups, and have laid out some guidelines specific to mobile sites, posting that site rankings may be negatively affected if they contain:
- pop-ups that are "intrusive", meaning ones that take over the entire screen
- pop-ups that come up immediately when you come on to websites
In the same post, Google said that acceptable pop-ups use a reasonable amount of screen space and do not immediately pop-up.
Do you use pop-ups on your sites and why?
Recent Comments
18
I don't like them when i visit a site and sometimes they get in the way of what im trying to read.I would never consider using them on my own site
If i see one pop-up on a website, I leave the website and go somewhere else, Pop-up is a no go for me....
If I decide to signup and click sign up, you can give me a pop-up to fill in the details, but that is it!
Guess you didn't grow up with Pop-ups..... see my recent post on this in my blog section.
My affilites have specifically banned pop-ups. They don't want to be associated with 'annoyances'. I have no problem with that, there are other eays to collect emails!
I just started using the free version of Mail Chimp and there is a pop up offered that shows up at about 5 seconds after a visitor hits the page.
Five seconds is the longest interval they offer which was kind of disappointing.
Since I don't have many visitors to my site right now and no one has filled out the opt-in form I'm thinking of finding another autoresponder.
Personally I don't like popups unless they show up much later in a visit and are off to the right or left hand side, so that I can keep reading the content.
I'm not sure why I'm using a pop-up. It was on my list to see if i could get it to work on my site. Success! Now what?
When I get more engagement and if the pop-up gets me subscribers then I'll continue to use them. Right now that's the key to the affiliate marketing game, as all I hear is the money is in the list.
In the meantime I need to find an autoreponder that has more flexibility in controlling the timing and location of the pop-up.
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I DO NOT USE THEM and WILL NOT use them in/on any website I have control over. I do NOT promote any affiliate product whose sales page uses them and I immediately click off of any website I run across that does use them.
I know that I go against conventional wisdom and practice.
So, sue me.