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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 pa

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.
lolinder 3y ago
> 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. I'm curious if you have an example of what this looks like done well. I have never personally seen a pop-up that I viewed as anything other than an annoyance, but I freely admit that I'm not a typical user (to the extent such a person exists). What kinds of great opportunities do typical users find in their pop-ups?
- edanm 3y ago
  If I'm on Substack and am reading a genuinely interesting article, and half-way or something through I get a popup asking if I want to sign up for that person's newsletter, I might do it.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    That I could see, but I almost always have to close the Substack pop-up before I'm even allowed to read the first paragraph, so that's more of a hypothetical example than a real one. Also, there are better ways to handle that from the user perspective: inject the subscription form as a static element in between two paragraphs so you don't interrupt me mid-sentence. That way I get my opportunity but I also get to finish your article.
  - qwertox 3y ago
    What if half way through the article you see a sign-up field which separates the top and bottom half of the article, instead of a popup? Baked into the page, like an ad? No small "x" to click, because most of these don't care about keyboard input, no interruption? Is that not an option?
- DeusExMachina 3y ago
  Let say you are losing hair and you are researching the topic online. You will probably read everything you can find. If you then get a pop-up offering a free guide on natural remedies against hair loss, you will definitely want that. Granted, the guide needs to deliver some value and not just be a bait and switch. If it doesn't deliver any value, it's pretty much guaranteed you will lose that subscriber. To give you a real example: I offer a guide about design patterns and most of my subscribers come from that pop-up. And they are developers, showing that while pop-ups are not popular on places like HN, they are definitely not despised by all developers. I myself sing up when I find something I am interested in. For example, I got a nice free guide about photoshop blend modes which was very useful when I got it.

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.

lolinder 3y ago

> 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. I'm curious if you have an example of what this looks like done well. I have never personally seen a pop-up that I viewed as anything other than an annoyance, but I freely admit that I'm not a typical user (to the extent such a person exists). What kinds of great opportunities do typical users find in their pop-ups?

edanm 3y ago
If I'm on Substack and am reading a genuinely interesting article, and half-way or something through I get a popup asking if I want to sign up for that person's newsletter, I might do it.
- lolinder 3y ago
  That I could see, but I almost always have to close the Substack pop-up before I'm even allowed to read the first paragraph, so that's more of a hypothetical example than a real one. Also, there are better ways to handle that from the user perspective: inject the subscription form as a static element in between two paragraphs so you don't interrupt me mid-sentence. That way I get my opportunity but I also get to finish your article.
- qwertox 3y ago
  What if half way through the article you see a sign-up field which separates the top and bottom half of the article, instead of a popup? Baked into the page, like an ad? No small "x" to click, because most of these don't care about keyboard input, no interruption? Is that not an option?
DeusExMachina 3y ago
Let say you are losing hair and you are researching the topic online. You will probably read everything you can find. If you then get a pop-up offering a free guide on natural remedies against hair loss, you will definitely want that. Granted, the guide needs to deliver some value and not just be a bait and switch. If it doesn't deliver any value, it's pretty much guaranteed you will lose that subscriber. To give you a real example: I offer a guide about design patterns and most of my subscribers come from that pop-up. And they are developers, showing that while pop-ups are not popular on places like HN, they are definitely not despised by all developers. I myself sing up when I find something I am interested in. For example, I got a nice free guide about photoshop blend modes which was very useful when I got it.