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Things that make me just close tabs straight away: 1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads. 2) Pop-ups / overlays. 3) Loading lots of extra elements causing te
by tfgg 10y ago
Things that make me just close tabs straight away:
1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads.
2) Pop-ups / overlays.
3) Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around.
Especially true if I'm just browsing around and click on something that looks interesting, the above will take that thing from "this might be worth 30 seconds" to "not worth it".
Why kill that little dopamine boost someone just got from clicking on a link to your site? If you're wondering why your bounce rate is so high... though maybe these dark patterns bring in enough ad revenue that it's worth it. I don't see how 3 helps that, though, just lazy coding. Or maybe other people are more tolerant and it doesn't really affect the bounce rate.
- kevincox 10y agoI'm the same way. If there is an overlay or autoplaying video I just leave. However apparently most people aren't like us otherwise no sites would do it. And you can see that these sites get posted to HN, so at least someone is reading it. Personally though I prefer more pleasant sites.
- DanBC 10y agoI think that maybe the submitters are running a variety of ad-etc-blocking software, and so they're not seeing it.
- Symbiote 10y agoLooking at Google Analytics for a website we were about to launch, I was surprised to see hits from others in the development team, tracked by Google. I block Google Analytics (and many other things), and was surprised that none of my colleagues do the same.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tastythrowaway2 10y agoyou mean you block collection of Google analytics as an end-user? how does one go about that?
- waterphone 10y agoVirtually any adblocker has tracking script blocker lists as well, which includes Google Analytics.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sangnoir 10y ago> Looking at Google Analytics for a website we were about to launch, I was surprised to see hits from others in the development team, tracked by Google So you are OK with making Google track your users but you don't want to be tracked yourself?
- mcbits 10y agoThey might say they're using a vanilla browser to ensure everything works, but it's worth mentioning it's possible to filter IP addresses in Google Analtyics to stop those hits from being counted.
- eru 10y agoI would probably leave, unless I needed the site and couldn't get what they offer anywhere else. (Eg online shopping.) But it's all hypothetical, since my ublock takes care of it. Of course, that also means that I am no longer much exerting any selection pressure on the market in that regard.
- unclebucknasty 10y agoNever understood how autoplaying video, especially ads, became an acceptable UX for so many sites. And, it seems that the advent of ad blockers has made this worse. Like, some sites are abusing people as much possible to offset revenue losses. I was also surprised at how difficult it is to get a modern browser to consistently disable the feature.
- bunderbunder 10y agoWhen it's ads served over an ad network, the site honestly doesn't have a lot of control over what content goes in the ad boxes. Advertisers don't really care, either - it's not their user experience they're garbaging up.
- lisivka 10y agoSo use an adblocker to give them lesson.
- bunderbunder 10y agoYep, that's what I tend to do. Particularly on my mobile device, where I've settled into a scorched earth policy on ads. Sucks, though. I like having access to high-quality content, and I believe journalists deserve to get paid for their work. Unfortunately, the Internet at large has long since decided that just paying people for their product over the table is not what the norm should be.
- moyta 10y agoIt doesn't have to be that way, flattr & the like do provide a viable path to monetary gain for the news industry outside of advertisers. What this means is just like you may have paid for a paper in the past, you should set a budget for flattr and add who you want to support so they are compensated and disincentivized from advertising to you. Alternatively, if a site does non-aggressive advertising like Dslreports.com, that is quite tolerable. More niche sites are now doing delayed access paywalls too.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoYour know there are HN readers who write this crap. I wonder if they'll chime in on why they do.
- nikanj 10y agoMortgage payments
- static_noise 10y agoWhile I can't speak from first hand experience, I have an open ear sometimes. There are these developers who just made an awesome webapp or something. It's really great but there is a problem. Noone knows about it. But they have a solution for that problem. They buy some "promotion". It's articles in newsletters or outright spam directed at their target audience. I cannot tell you exactly who their target audience is but I can tell you who it is not. It's not you, me or most readers on hackernews. It's less tech savyy people with more decision power. Old people. Their site is made for old people. And they don't care about you and me or any other passer-by who won't pay a dime. They care about conversion rates and that is what they monitor all day long. It's a bit like in those scam-emails. They are so obvious that anybody with half a brain will click delete. But those who do reply, oh boy, they are so ready to be milked off by that nigerian prince.
- bootload 10y ago"There are these developers who just made an awesome web app or something. It's really great but there is a problem. Noone knows about it. But they have a solution for that problem. They buy some 'promotion'." Buying recognition is nothing new in tech. "Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time when we were assembling our own computers to save money, we were paying a PR firm $16,000 a month. And they were worth it." Read this article, "The Submarine" ~ http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- TeMPOraL 10y agoSo the other day I met the guy who makes all that crap on-line I told him you can have my cash But first you know I've got to ask What made you want to live this kind of life? He said there ain't no rest for the wicked, money don't grow on trees I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed; ain't nothing in this world for free I know I can't slow down I can't hold back though you know I wish I could Oh no there ain't no rest for the wicked Until we close the shop for good...
- svckr 10y agoRe 2): Pinterest. It's the cancer of Google image search. I don't get how Google's search ranking doesn't massively penalize that behaviour. I'd rather stomach an advertisement than the "plz register" BS.
- the8472 10y agoYeah, isn't it against google's policy to present different content to bots and to fleshy users?
- deelowe 10y agoPretty sure it is.
- freshhawk 10y agoNot anymore apparently, at least for the big players. I believe it is still the stated policy and you won't get away with it if you are small.
- georgemcbay 10y agoThat is their policy, but they don't appear to punish people who violate the "spirit" of it and many of these sites don't literally violate the rule. In the case of pinterest (and quora), for example, the whole page you are looking for is there, it just gets obscured by an obnoxious overlay that makes it impossible for you to see/interact with it all from a browser unless you register. I'm sure what the googlebot gets at the html/css/js level is the same thing the user gets. The difference being the bot doesn't care about the semi-transparent blocking overlay because the bot is just parsing text/images/links individually and not trying to interact with the page the way a human does.
- DrBazza 10y agoReminds me of the amusingly named 'expertsexchange' site, and the stackoverflow copies. Google shoved them down the ranking pretty quickly. Shame they don't do that to pinterest.
- 10y ago
- bbarn 10y agoIt actually triggers anger in me when I've started to read and something pops up over it. It's the least likely way to get me to click your thing.
- morganvachon 10y agoEven worse for me is on mobile, scrolling down a news article, and suddenly this full page ad starts sneaking up from the bottom, with tiny text that says "keep scrolling to read the rest of the article". No thanks, apparently they didn't write that article to be read but rather to be a hook to get you to see that ad which takes over the screen. It's infuriating, bait and switch bullshit.
- badwolf 10y agoOh god this is so awful. I just recently switched to an iPhone for work reasons. I used Adblock on my Rooted Nexus 6p, and never experienced this before. Now... all the frikkin time, to the point I rarely read news articles on my phone anymore.
- CamperBob2 10y agoWell, the most likely scenario is that you will click their thing. Why? Because you're thrashing around on your mobile screen trying to get rid of the pop-up or overlay. Whether you succeed or not is immaterial: the ad got clicked on, and hey, even if 99.9% of those clicks are accidental ones that will never convert, they still look like "organic" clicks and the ad revenue still gets booked. Expensive consultants like this person ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944902 ) will chalk it up in the "users engaged" column. Everybody gets what they came for... except you and me.
- mattmaroon 10y agoThe overlays. My god man. It's like every time these days. You're starting to read this link you clicked through to. It's interesting. And then the screen goes dark. If you're lucky it loads fast and the x to close is somewhere visible. You're rarely lucky though.
- Animats 10y agoIn Firefox, mouse over the offending overlay, and right click to get "Inspect Element". Mouse around the DOM inspector window until you've reached the top element of the overlay. Right click on "Delete Node". No more overlay.
- mattmaroon 10y agoThe overlays. My god man. It's like every time these days. You're starting to read this link you clicked through to. It's interesting. And then the screen goes dark. If you're lucky it loads fast and the x to close is somewhere visible. You're rarely lucky though.
- mattmaroon 10y agoThe overlays. My god man. It's like every time these days. You're starting to read this link you clicked through to. It's interesting. And then the screen goes dark. If you're lucky it loads fast and the x to close is somewhere visible. You're rarely lucky though.
- codazoda 10y agoAt my company we created an auto loading video that all the devs agreed was terrible. It was compared, statistically, to one that didn't auto play. Sure, 10% of users left immediately, killing traffic, but revenue increased more than the traffic dipped. It's still auto playing on that page. I agree that browser makers should fix this. It should probably behave like the location API and be remembered by domain or something.
- icycold 10y agoamen
- happy-go-lucky 10y agoOnce I become aware of the sites that create a hell with 1, 2, and 3, I make sure I never visit them again.
- Belenus 10y agoHave you ever tried to read a story, on those sites where it just shows you one picture at a time, and you have to click next to get to the next picture? Most of them are just ad machines, and it lags your browser so bad.
- nutbutter 10y agoNumber 3 Drives me absolutely crazy. Bloomberg and The Verge do this as an example. I'm fine with ads, as long as they don't break the page.
- ythn 10y ago> Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around. My computer is a little older, and this one is a dealbreaker. Sometimes a page is so heavy that it brings my whole computer to its knees. If I can tell a page is starting to load more than a reasonable amount of elements, I punch out as soon as possible.
- jeffmould 10y agoOne of the biggest violators of all of these is Mashable. Their site is so frustrating to visit I have it blocked completely now.
- dotGetClass 10y agoSlide show listicles
- nextos 10y agoRegarding 1 media.autoplay.enabled=false does the trick in Firefox about:config.
- ergot 10y agoOr just disable mp4, webm, flash altogether in about:config. I typically view media in specially sanctioned browsers, just for viewing rich media. E.G Chrome on windows 10 hooked up to a 4K Acer monitor via HDMI You can harden FF also and remove a few other annoyances like the default PDF reader, etc: https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js/ https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js/
- clapinton 10y ago4) Forbes "Quote of the day". Seriously Forbes, that is irritating as hell. Still, my number 1 is loading the extra content and making elements jump around. A lot of times I: 1) see a link that interests me; 2) hover my finger over a link, ready to tap; 3) wait 1-2 secs, to be sure it's done loading; 4) Ok, it's ready; 5) tap the liContent jumps and I click somewhere else. Both Facebook's and Twitter's search act like this. It displays recent search for enough time for you to move your finger/mouse to click it, then loads general results, like trending and suggestions. Waiting for the AJAX response to come back before displaying anything should be the norm.