Pop-ups on websites are controversial. Some successful website owners swear by them, others will not use them under any circumstances. Another group uses them carefully by controlling when and to whom they get shown.
Mark Schaefer recently published a post on his Marketing Solutions blog on this subject.
According to his article, over 50 % of consumers say they would not revisit a site that used pop-ups.
Wearing my consumer hat, on my first visit to a site I can tolerate a small pop-up asking me to subscribe to a newsletter or promoting a special offer. If the pop-up is delayed until I am about to leave the site, I find it less irritating.
However, successive pop-ups promoting different products or services or pushing me to subscribe do annoy me intensely and have caused me to leave sites never to return.
Pop-ups From a Marketing Perspective
Wearing my marketing hat, I use pop-ups carefully. My experience is that they do work for certain calls-to-action if used with restraint.
On our Tiny Home Geniuses site, you will see a small pop-up subscription form after 20 seconds and as you leave after your first visit, a second different pop-up again asking for your email address.
Our statistics show us the following rate of subscribers who subscribe using forms on our site. About 40% of our subscribers come from landing pages.
- Exit pop-up = 50%
- Regular pop-up = 40%
- Static sidebar form = 10%
Both the regular pop-up and the static form are created using our MailChimp autoresponder service. The exit pop-up is created with the Sumo WordPress plugin and is integrated with MailChimp.
We do not use pop-ups to advertise any products or services.
I follow the same procedure on my personal blog PeterWrightsBlog.com. I have not received any negative feedback about pop-ups on either site. But we know that many dissatisfied visitors will quietly disappear without giving reasons.
Conclusion
Pop-ups work for us when used carefully. They do not work for all sites or all audiences. You need to try them and assess the results on your own sites. Because of my own dislike of big, flashy intrusive pop-ups, I only use small forms, never huge ones that obscure most of the page.
Last thoughts
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