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Designer of SA here. Kyle and I have talked a LOT about this and have gone back and forth on it. I'll say while we're not personally fans of the widgets/popups,

Designer of SA here. Kyle and I have talked a LOT about this and have gone back and forth on it. I'll say while we're not personally fans of the widgets/popups, they're there for a reason. A couple things here: - Say what you will about performance and UX, the fact is that it has (dramatically) increased conversions and bookings. - If we were optimizing for HN, the site would look and perform much differently. The target audience - as others have mentioned - aren't repulsed by the popups. Go read through Kyle's interview on IH - a lot of what he does with SA is grounded in quick iteration and "moving fast." I can't tell you how how many different techniques/widgets/plugins/etc we've implemented (and subsequently canned) over the past few years.

King-Aaron 9y ago
> Say what you will about performance and UX, the fact is that it has (dramatically) increased conversions and bookings. This is what really irks me about the design industry of late. It's become an overly self-critical echo chamber of people pushing this idea of what user experience "should be", yet totally miss the critical business decisioning behind it and ignore the fact that it drives conversions.
- trevor-e 9y ago
  Totally agree. I read an article the other week where a UX/UI person redesigned booking.com's front page as a case study, and while it looked nice I bet it would have made the company far less money. Of course everyone would love to have their website look like Airbnb's, but most don't have the luxury of being propped up by VC money. I think a lot of designers undervalue the importance of SEO as well.