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Despite this topic being brought up regularly, these pop-up forms do work. That's why everyone uses them. Disclaimer: I use them and so do many of my competito

Despite this topic being brought up regularly, these pop-up forms do work. That's why everyone uses them. Disclaimer: I use them and so do many of my competitors. "Does a poor job of increasing conversions" is the opinion of someone that has never looked at the data. You can be sure that the people interested in conversions run analytics and A/B testing on everything. If these pop-ups did a poor job and there was a better alternative, you can be sure that everyone would have already migrated to that alternative. The "rule of seven" can also be used to counter her argument. That is precisely why businesses try to get the email of visitors: to have more interactions. Otherwise, for the vast majority of visitors, the first visit would be the only interaction they will ever have. "Works against user goals" might be true for short term goals like jumping through the most amount of content. However, users have different goals and short-term ones are often not the best goals. A pop-up might address other long-term goals the visitor cares more about than going to yet another web page. But more than anything, these pop-ups serve business goals because most of these websites exist only thanks to their revenue. Without them my business would probably not be viable. I assume that many accept the small annoyance of a pop-up as the cost of keeping the websites they like running. And if the pop-up appears when the user is about to close the window, it does not even stop a visitor in his tracks. He can still close the window without any extra click.

qwertox 3y ago
Do you know the ratio of your annoyed vs. subscribed-via-that-popup users? I get terribly annoyed by them and always wonder why they don't just add a section to the page where one can easily subscribe, if one seems it to be a worthy thing to do? Edit: Also, I want to add, that sometimes I leave the page immediately because such a popup pops up. The cookie banners are annoying enough.
- PragmaticPulp 3y ago
  Measuring a conversion increase means that there was a net positive. I know it’s not a popular opinion on HN, but losing some annoyed users is an acceptable trade off if the net result is an increase in conversions. The truth is that visitors who are so easily annoyed that a simple pop-up will cause them to leave the site weren’t very interested to begin with. If you gain 10 subscribers for every 1 annoyed visitor, it’s still a big net win. Most visitors aren’t as sensitive to annoyances as a lot of the people in these comments.
  - mikro2nd 3y ago
    But do you know this? What does it look like if you're losing 10 annoyed visitors for every 1 signup?
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > The truth is that visitors who are so easily annoyed that a simple pop-up will cause them to leave the site weren’t very interested to begin with. how do you know this? They chase me away even if I was very interested in whatever the page was talking about. Yes, a simple pop-up only a minor annoyance -- until most sites do it, then it becomes a really huge deal, like a tiny pebble in your shoe on a long walk.
  - DeusExMachina 3y ago
    Absolutely. Actively disqualifying people that are not a good fit is a vital part of any business. The people that get easily annoyed are going to be a huge pain at every step, while the real customers buy silently. Also, when people have a true need, the pop-up is not an annoyance. I do agree that "subscribe to our newsletter" is not a great pitch, but it's a problem of content, not of method. If you get a pop-up on a website offering you a solution of a pressing problem you have, that pop-up is not an annoyance, but an opportunity. And finally, even if one would be interested in measuring how many of these annoyed visitors there are, that's not really something you can measure. Conversions, instead, are a concrete metric.
    - pnt12 3y ago
      I think you can use this to rationalize every shitty practice as long as it gets you customers. I'm not annoying: I'm annoyed by these annoying practices.
      - DeusExMachina 3y ago
        Correlation is not causation, and yet, a correlation exists and I'd rather lose these visitors than getting headaches later. And sure, you can always rationalize anything, but I still see a difference between a pop-up that offers something the reader might like against a dark pattern that forces or tricks someone to sing up.
- tootie 3y ago
  10,000 annoyed users who never would have given us a penny of value is worth the same as 10,000 happy users that never give us a penny of value.
tipiirai 3y ago
With this analogy everyone should use popups. But why all the big respectable brands, like Apple, Stripe are not using them? Maybe they care about UX?
- rchaud 3y ago
  Are you really wondering why multi-channel, billion-dollar companies like Apple and Stripe don't have to use the same lead generation method as a rinky-dink online blog?
  - tipiirai 3y ago
    I'm not. I think everyone gets more conversions if they focus on great content and the user experience rather than using cheap, rinky-ding methods.
outime 3y ago
>Despite this topic being brought up regularly, these pop-up forms do work. That's why everyone uses them. Unfortunately a good part of HN is quite blind when it comes to facts about things that aren't of the liking of the community. Some people seem to not be able to understand why K8s is widely used and not <whatever>, why the majority uses WhatsApp and not Signal or why the majority uses Twitter and not the <open source alternative of the year>. A not irrelevant amount of HN users will think, and many times literally say, that all these people are stupid and cannot understand how things really work. In reality, everything happens for reasons. Sure, some people will just blindly follow trends but when you see most of the big websites that have plenty of money to do studies to find out if it works continue to do it, perhaps it means it's working for them? I hate those popups like most end-users but at the end of the day I'd never think most of the website owners who do this are dumb and do it to harm themselves but rather I tend to think they have hard data that shows this actually works pretty well. I wish the community would realize how arrogant those "I don't have data on this / I don't understand why this is done therefore people who do this are just stupid" positions are.
_gabe_ 3y ago
> You can be sure that the people interested in conversions run analytics and A/B testing on everything. If these pop-ups did a poor job and there was a better alternative, you can be sure that everyone would have already migrated to that alternative. And this is the problem with modern corporate logos. They think if the A/B numbers are trending up, it must always be a good thing. Nobody does real UX testing like Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, etc used to do. You know where they actually track down a non-technical person, sit them down in front of a computer, open up the website/app, see what the user does, then ask about how the experience was. This is UX testing and will lead to meaningful impacts. A/B tests are inane methodologies that are formatted to confirm whatever preconceived notions upper management wanted to hear anyways. A more concrete piece of anecdata; my upper management told me they wanted us to boost the priority for sales eligible customers. I asked if this means we would prioritize people not paying for our service (since they're eligible for sales) and de-prioritize our already paying customers (who are not eligible). Upper management basically said, "yup that will happen. But it will increase our conversion rates which is what we care about". News flash, ruining your company's reputation for some shitty KPIs will damage your company in the long term. Prioritizing shitty A/B tests will eventually ruin your company. It may not be immediate, but the slow and inevitable degradation of a useful product will lead to utter contempt and disdain from your users and they will switch to an alternative that actually prioritizes UX. See: Medium -> Substack, Microsoft -> Apple, and more I can't think of off the top of my head. We forget that the reason the iPhone was so wildly successful was because Steve Jobs was obsessed with creating a meticulously crafted UX. We forget that Nintentdo shenanigans are tolerated only because the games are lovingly crafted and built by people that care about their target audience. We forget that Amazon took off because of Customer Obsession, among other admirable qualities (that unfortunately aren't followed as well anymore). Keep treating your users as dumb cattle and they'll wise up and leave. The users aren't stupid, they're just waiting for a viable alternative so they can finally dump the shitty product built by companies prioritizing all the wrong metrics.
- tootie 3y ago
  You're wrong though. Moderated and unmoderated user testing is more prevalent than ever.
JohnFen 3y ago
> if the pop-up appears when the user is about to close the window, it does not even stop a visitor in his tracks. He can still close the window without any extra click. That's a much better way of doing it. If sites did that, I probably wouldn't put them on my "never go back to that site" list. But most sites don't do it that way.
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  Part of the problem is that relatively few people have a "never go back to that site" list to begin with, so it doesn't even move their numbers.
BoxOfRain 3y ago
The problem is people take this perfectly legitimate bit of reasoning and apply it to the point the site ends up like your average British local news website; there's a good reason nobody bothers with local news in the internet era and not because it's unimportant it's partially because most of the sites are literally unusable. Not even in a 'I find the tendency of capitalism to turn everything into a glorified billboard depressing' sense that's a common opinion online, I mean that in a 'I've closed three nag boxes and I still can't see the content I came to read' sense.
Timwi 3y ago
> Despite this topic being brought up regularly, these pop-up forms do work. That's why everyone uses them. I think most people here know that. I was surprised by the author's claim that they “do a poor job of increasing conversions”. The real criticism is not that they don't work. The real criticism is that “conversions” shouldn't be the metric, and a web designer who prioritizes that metric over any semblance of a welcoming or pleasant experience, is scummy and is treating their users as disposable garbage. It's similar to how we all hate sleazy politicians. We want them to serve us, the people. Instead, they serve their own interests (at best, getting reelected; at worst, helping the massive corporations they invest in). Why do they do it? Because it “works”. Everybody knows that it “works” according to a metric that is not aligned with the common good. The criticism is that you should prioritize the common good.
rightbyte 3y ago
> "Does a poor job of increasing conversions" is the opinion of someone that has never looked at the data. The data is biased. The visitors signing up for newsletters are probably way more interested on average. Also, of there is an A\B test the ones that does not sign up are harder to track. The sign up could probably just aswell be replaced by a big "click this happy emoji if you like my site"-button and marketers would argue the button increases conversion rates.

qwertox 3y ago

Do you know the ratio of your annoyed vs. subscribed-via-that-popup users? I get terribly annoyed by them and always wonder why they don't just add a section to the page where one can easily subscribe, if one seems it to be a worthy thing to do? Edit: Also, I want to add, that sometimes I leave the page immediately because such a popup pops up. The cookie banners are annoying enough.

PragmaticPulp 3y ago
Measuring a conversion increase means that there was a net positive. I know it’s not a popular opinion on HN, but losing some annoyed users is an acceptable trade off if the net result is an increase in conversions. The truth is that visitors who are so easily annoyed that a simple pop-up will cause them to leave the site weren’t very interested to begin with. If you gain 10 subscribers for every 1 annoyed visitor, it’s still a big net win. Most visitors aren’t as sensitive to annoyances as a lot of the people in these comments.
- mikro2nd 3y ago
  But do you know this? What does it look like if you're losing 10 annoyed visitors for every 1 signup?
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > The truth is that visitors who are so easily annoyed that a simple pop-up will cause them to leave the site weren’t very interested to begin with. how do you know this? They chase me away even if I was very interested in whatever the page was talking about. Yes, a simple pop-up only a minor annoyance -- until most sites do it, then it becomes a really huge deal, like a tiny pebble in your shoe on a long walk.
- DeusExMachina 3y ago
  Absolutely. Actively disqualifying people that are not a good fit is a vital part of any business. The people that get easily annoyed are going to be a huge pain at every step, while the real customers buy silently. Also, when people have a true need, the pop-up is not an annoyance. I do agree that "subscribe to our newsletter" is not a great pitch, but it's a problem of content, not of method. If you get a pop-up on a website offering you a solution of a pressing problem you have, that pop-up is not an annoyance, but an opportunity. And finally, even if one would be interested in measuring how many of these annoyed visitors there are, that's not really something you can measure. Conversions, instead, are a concrete metric.
  - pnt12 3y ago
    I think you can use this to rationalize every shitty practice as long as it gets you customers. I'm not annoying: I'm annoyed by these annoying practices.
    - DeusExMachina 3y ago
      Correlation is not causation, and yet, a correlation exists and I'd rather lose these visitors than getting headaches later. And sure, you can always rationalize anything, but I still see a difference between a pop-up that offers something the reader might like against a dark pattern that forces or tricks someone to sing up.
tootie 3y ago
10,000 annoyed users who never would have given us a penny of value is worth the same as 10,000 happy users that never give us a penny of value.

tipiirai 3y ago

With this analogy everyone should use popups. But why all the big respectable brands, like Apple, Stripe are not using them? Maybe they care about UX?

rchaud 3y ago
Are you really wondering why multi-channel, billion-dollar companies like Apple and Stripe don't have to use the same lead generation method as a rinky-dink online blog?
- tipiirai 3y ago
  I'm not. I think everyone gets more conversions if they focus on great content and the user experience rather than using cheap, rinky-ding methods.

outime 3y ago

>Despite this topic being brought up regularly, these pop-up forms do work. That's why everyone uses them. Unfortunately a good part of HN is quite blind when it comes to facts about things that aren't of the liking of the community. Some people seem to not be able to understand why K8s is widely used and not <whatever>, why the majority uses WhatsApp and not Signal or why the majority uses Twitter and not the <open source alternative of the year>. A not irrelevant amount of HN users will think, and many times literally say, that all these people are stupid and cannot understand how things really work. In reality, everything happens for reasons. Sure, some people will just blindly follow trends but when you see most of the big websites that have plenty of money to do studies to find out if it works continue to do it, perhaps it means it's working for them? I hate those popups like most end-users but at the end of the day I'd never think most of the website owners who do this are dumb and do it to harm themselves but rather I tend to think they have hard data that shows this actually works pretty well. I wish the community would realize how arrogant those "I don't have data on this / I don't understand why this is done therefore people who do this are just stupid" positions are.

_gabe_ 3y ago

> You can be sure that the people interested in conversions run analytics and A/B testing on everything. If these pop-ups did a poor job and there was a better alternative, you can be sure that everyone would have already migrated to that alternative. And this is the problem with modern corporate logos. They think if the A/B numbers are trending up, it must always be a good thing. Nobody does real UX testing like Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, etc used to do. You know where they actually track down a non-technical person, sit them down in front of a computer, open up the website/app, see what the user does, then ask about how the experience was. This is UX testing and will lead to meaningful impacts. A/B tests are inane methodologies that are formatted to confirm whatever preconceived notions upper management wanted to hear anyways. A more concrete piece of anecdata; my upper management told me they wanted us to boost the priority for sales eligible customers. I asked if this means we would prioritize people not paying for our service (since they're eligible for sales) and de-prioritize our already paying customers (who are not eligible). Upper management basically said, "yup that will happen. But it will increase our conversion rates which is what we care about". News flash, ruining your company's reputation for some shitty KPIs will damage your company in the long term. Prioritizing shitty A/B tests will eventually ruin your company. It may not be immediate, but the slow and inevitable degradation of a useful product will lead to utter contempt and disdain from your users and they will switch to an alternative that actually prioritizes UX. See: Medium -> Substack, Microsoft -> Apple, and more I can't think of off the top of my head. We forget that the reason the iPhone was so wildly successful was because Steve Jobs was obsessed with creating a meticulously crafted UX. We forget that Nintentdo shenanigans are tolerated only because the games are lovingly crafted and built by people that care about their target audience. We forget that Amazon took off because of Customer Obsession, among other admirable qualities (that unfortunately aren't followed as well anymore). Keep treating your users as dumb cattle and they'll wise up and leave. The users aren't stupid, they're just waiting for a viable alternative so they can finally dump the shitty product built by companies prioritizing all the wrong metrics.

tootie 3y ago
You're wrong though. Moderated and unmoderated user testing is more prevalent than ever.

JohnFen 3y ago

> if the pop-up appears when the user is about to close the window, it does not even stop a visitor in his tracks. He can still close the window without any extra click. That's a much better way of doing it. If sites did that, I probably wouldn't put them on my "never go back to that site" list. But most sites don't do it that way.

stronglikedan 3y ago
Part of the problem is that relatively few people have a "never go back to that site" list to begin with, so it doesn't even move their numbers.

BoxOfRain 3y ago

The problem is people take this perfectly legitimate bit of reasoning and apply it to the point the site ends up like your average British local news website; there's a good reason nobody bothers with local news in the internet era and not because it's unimportant it's partially because most of the sites are literally unusable. Not even in a 'I find the tendency of capitalism to turn everything into a glorified billboard depressing' sense that's a common opinion online, I mean that in a 'I've closed three nag boxes and I still can't see the content I came to read' sense.

Timwi 3y ago

> Despite this topic being brought up regularly, these pop-up forms do work. That's why everyone uses them. I think most people here know that. I was surprised by the author's claim that they “do a poor job of increasing conversions”. The real criticism is not that they don't work. The real criticism is that “conversions” shouldn't be the metric, and a web designer who prioritizes that metric over any semblance of a welcoming or pleasant experience, is scummy and is treating their users as disposable garbage. It's similar to how we all hate sleazy politicians. We want them to serve us, the people. Instead, they serve their own interests (at best, getting reelected; at worst, helping the massive corporations they invest in). Why do they do it? Because it “works”. Everybody knows that it “works” according to a metric that is not aligned with the common good. The criticism is that you should prioritize the common good.

rightbyte 3y ago

> "Does a poor job of increasing conversions" is the opinion of someone that has never looked at the data. The data is biased. The visitors signing up for newsletters are probably way more interested on average. Also, of there is an A\B test the ones that does not sign up are harder to track. The sign up could probably just aswell be replaced by a big "click this happy emoji if you like my site"-button and marketers would argue the button increases conversion rates.