We’ve all had that experience. You know that one - you’ve been on a website for approximately 5 seconds, you’ve scrolled past the initial welcome statement and suddenly everything’s blocked out and a pop up is encouraging you to sign up to a newsletter or get 10% off or……
You click off it but your thoughts have been interrupted. You don’t quite feel as good about the website as you once did. You persevere and go to the next page you want to read…..
Surprise! There’s that pop-up again! You click it away, go back to the page but, it’s feeling kinda icky. You go to close down the website and……. The pop up’s back! One last reminder to join that mailing list.
Back in the day every marketer would tell you to use pop-ups. It would get the audience attention, people would engage with it and you’d get more business from it. When the internet was still in its infancy and a bit of a novelty, they were absolutely right. Especially as website design was such a car crash at the time (we’re talking the late 90s, early 00s) that pop-ups were often a part of regular design and engaging by filling in your details was just what people did.
You just can’t get away with that these days. Website design has moved on, customers are more experienced in what a great user journey looks like and GDPR means you can’t expect people to give you their details using any old method.
If you’re on the fence about using a pop-up, here’s why they’re a bad idea:
They interrupt the user journey
Your website has already done the hard work of pulling people into it, the last thing you want to do is aggravate them or interrupt their journey to getting the information they want then ultimately buying, or getting in touch with you.
They’re mistimed
People read at different speeds, they also get interrupted and so don’t necessarily surf a website in a linear fashion. Setting a pop-up to load after a set amount of seconds, or on exit intent interrupts the flow for the user.
They take over the site
At the very least, pop-ups will block the passage of text or image you’re directly looking at. At the most, they also have a background mat which blocks out the whole rest of the website so you can’t see around it. This doesn’t make for a good user experience. Think of pop-ups as the person who’s holding up the giant iPad, recording the concert you’ve paid a fortune to see and is blocking your whole view. No good feelings come from this.
They don’t just give the essential info
Pop-ups always have a call to action - join my mailing list, click here for a code, etc. But people also put calls to attention in them: ‘join 7000 other successful email subscribers’ or add images which clutter the design and dilute the information. If you want someone to act quickly on something that’s flashing up, keep the information minimal.
They ask for too much info
Ultimately, pop-ups should be used for quick information - ideally a name and email address. But people go to town with info they ask: Date of birth, phone number, physical address, number 1 business challenge……
This is all information which should be collected in a contact form, which is an integral part of the get in touch information on the website. It shouldn’t be collected in a flash and you’ll miss it, pop-up.
They pop up too often
We get it. You don’t want to miss your chance of someone giving you their details but if you’re going to set your pop-up to come up on every page or exit intent then you’re going to chip away at your integrity and damage the good vibes your potential clients had when they clicked on your website.
There are different schools of thought on how often a pop-up should appear. When using them, I go for once in a session, which means they’ll only load once when you’re looking at the website and not again until you go back to the website another time.
Google doesn’t like them
Google tests websites against human experience. They don’t just use bots, they also have real humans clicking on websites, testing the user journey and navigation and ranking how well the website will show up in searches. They’re looking for websites to be well structured and to flow well, for the user journey and accessibility to score highly. Interrupting these with a pop-up will not help you to achieve the high scores you’re hoping for.
I appreciate that’s a lot of negativity around pop-ups. There are still times where they can be useful or you can look at getting creative and using other methods.
Here are some alternatives to using pop-ups:
Use floating buttons
If you’ve built your website yourself you may not know how or have the software to do this, but if you’re using a designer, this is totally doable. The idea is that the button is floating on the screen at all times (or times where you say so), unobtrusive so it’s not interrupting the design, but clickable at any moment.
The great thing about this is you can set them to trigger anything - an off-canvas pop-up (in this case it’s ok to use because the website user has clicked for it to happen). It can take you to another page, open a menu, or tabs. Floating buttons can be a lot of fun to use on the website.
You’ll see on mine, I have the ‘Keep in touch’ to pop up a subscriber form, the portfolio to take you to my portfolio page and the courses and podcasts take you to my other websites.
When using floating buttons, they will need to be in a column (which may have a transparent background like mine does) and you’ll need to allow for the column in your website design or some of your menu items and CTAs won’t be clickable.
Build the information into the page
If the information is important then have it right there, in its own section, on the page. There’s no limit to how many times you can have this - for example my courses and podcast websites have this built right into their Home Pages.
The advantage of doing it this way is that you’re not restricted by the software you’re then sending the information to. You can use your own forms element or embed it from elsewhere like Kit of MailerLite. The information will also be structured properly for SEO and, if you’re using a Lead Magnet, will appear in search results or snippets. These won’t if they’re a pop-up.
Consider whether it needs to be its own page
If the information is important and you’d really like the opportunity to sell the idea of it, whether it’s joining a mailing list, signing up to a lead magnet, getting info in a one-off product, or something else, consider building its own page. That way you’ll get to really show it off, include some storytelling, include some testimonials or reviews and people are much more likely to engage with it.
If the page doesn’t feel like it would fit into your top level menu, you can attach it to a floating button or have it in a secondary menu on the website or even a drop down from one of the top-level items.
Have it slide in
I use a pop-up style off-canvas in my courses website. I thought long and hard before introducing it and this is what I decided to:
People do sign up using it so it’s worth having it on the website. If I had it pop-up randomly and repeatedly, I don’t think it would be as successful.
Getting creative when including information you’d have in a pop-up is all part of website design.
There’s always something our lovely customers want to show off or stand out and it’s built into the skillset of the designer to make this happen.
If you’d like to have effective Calls to Action on your website and you’re not sure whether a pop-up is the right way forward, you can book a free, no-obligation call with me, using the button below and I’ll help you work the information into your website in the best way that works for you and your audience.
