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When will you bloggers learn that full page popups that ask me to join your newsletter after reading an article for 2 minutes = instant page close + never comin

by _fs 12y ago

When will you bloggers learn that full page popups that ask me to join your newsletter after reading an article for 2 minutes = instant page close + never coming back. Please, say no to full page popups.

hagbardgroup 12y ago
It's a classic form of metrics dementia. They see that putting the popup increases their signups. 'Objectively,' this was the correct decision, and may have been arrived at by testing. What they may not see is that it turns off many people who may have signed up later after getting more value out of the content. It's easy to measure e-mail signups and harder to measure sentiment.
- danudey 12y ago
  It's pretty easy to measure bounce rate though. If you see a correlation between increased signups and decreased bounce rate, that can tell you something. Also, you should be measuring newsletter signups from the pop-up and newsletter signups through other metrics. If the other metrics drop, you might not be getting users who are actually invested and will stay long-term. Hopefully they measure unsubscribes as well and will see a lack of long-term engagement. Edit: I got the pop-up when I was halfway through the article (or seemed like I was halfway through, I might have been almost done) when the pop-up covered the entire screen. It was so obnoxious that I closed it instantly. I don't even know what the end point of the article was or where they were going with it. One moment I was reading something about what data is in LinkedIn CSV files, and the next boom and the window was closed.
  - hagbardgroup 12y ago
    Unsubs, open rate, bounces, - yes. I would be more concerned by people who do not bounce, read, sub or press the 'x', lose affinity, return to the site again later, get the popup again, lose affinity even more, and then bounce, never come back, and get an unpleasant feeling whenever they see my links show up some place else. That's the pattern that I would expect. Or people who sub and then stop opening the emails. Because these popups are mostly going after a b2b type customer base I would expect them, like me, to mash the upper right corner of those boxes (which look awful on phones) before it finishes loading. Anything non-interruptive is a better experience, because the ultimate goal is not to get them to surrender their email but to get them to become a customer and recommend the products and services.
romanovcode 12y ago
Decision like this usually comes from CEO of company because he's stupid and doesn't know that this is counter-productive. As a webdev I had to do at least 3 of these things and the person ordering the site disregarded my warnings that it's very, very bad idea.
loup-vaillant 12y ago
What popups? Oh… http://noscript.net/ http://noscript.net/
ebiester 12y ago
So, here is my use case. (I'm about to start a blog.) I think I have interesting information, but it's infrequent. I would like to connect with people who also find what I'm writing about interesting, but I don't expect them to continually look. While I know that some have RSS readers, not everyone does. How would you like me to let you know that I'd like to continue this interaction in an asynchronous way? My goal is to have good information that people read without being dependent on the whims of the aggrigators, because the first five people to vote may just not be my target audience. The answers seem to be email and linkbait, and linkbait doesn't connect me to the people I want.
- mcintyre1994 12y ago
  Email seems like the right answer, but can you not put it in a sidebar, at the top of the page or probably best at the bottom of the content with a relevant CTA linking the article to your list? Unfortunately I'm guessing huge popups convert better, although I'm not convinced that's true if your audience are similar to this community.
- danudey 12y ago
  At the bottom of your posts (or whatever), have a blurb saying 'if you'd like to see more content like this, consider signing up to…' etc. If I visit your site and I only get halfway through the first paragraph before something pops up blocking my view, then best case I close the pop-up without reading it, and typical case I close the window entirely and go read something else. It's much faster for me to hit Cmd-W than it is for me to interact with your pop-up/lightbox at all.
stronglikedan 12y ago
I used to despise the full page ads that would appear before the articles contents were displayed, and would close the page and never come back. Now, I just close the ad and read the article, pretending the ad was never there. Maybe it's just a matter of forced acceptance, because I no longer find it a distraction. However, if you pop something up over the content that I am actively reading, I, like you, am sure to close the page and never come back.

by _fs 12y ago

hagbardgroup 12y ago

It's a classic form of metrics dementia. They see that putting the popup increases their signups. 'Objectively,' this was the correct decision, and may have been arrived at by testing. What they may not see is that it turns off many people who may have signed up later after getting more value out of the content. It's easy to measure e-mail signups and harder to measure sentiment.

danudey 12y ago
It's pretty easy to measure bounce rate though. If you see a correlation between increased signups and decreased bounce rate, that can tell you something. Also, you should be measuring newsletter signups from the pop-up and newsletter signups through other metrics. If the other metrics drop, you might not be getting users who are actually invested and will stay long-term. Hopefully they measure unsubscribes as well and will see a lack of long-term engagement. Edit: I got the pop-up when I was halfway through the article (or seemed like I was halfway through, I might have been almost done) when the pop-up covered the entire screen. It was so obnoxious that I closed it instantly. I don't even know what the end point of the article was or where they were going with it. One moment I was reading something about what data is in LinkedIn CSV files, and the next boom and the window was closed.
- hagbardgroup 12y ago
  Unsubs, open rate, bounces, - yes. I would be more concerned by people who do not bounce, read, sub or press the 'x', lose affinity, return to the site again later, get the popup again, lose affinity even more, and then bounce, never come back, and get an unpleasant feeling whenever they see my links show up some place else. That's the pattern that I would expect. Or people who sub and then stop opening the emails. Because these popups are mostly going after a b2b type customer base I would expect them, like me, to mash the upper right corner of those boxes (which look awful on phones) before it finishes loading. Anything non-interruptive is a better experience, because the ultimate goal is not to get them to surrender their email but to get them to become a customer and recommend the products and services.

romanovcode 12y ago

Decision like this usually comes from CEO of company because he's stupid and doesn't know that this is counter-productive. As a webdev I had to do at least 3 of these things and the person ordering the site disregarded my warnings that it's very, very bad idea.

loup-vaillant 12y ago

What popups? Oh… http://noscript.net/ http://noscript.net/

ebiester 12y ago

So, here is my use case. (I'm about to start a blog.) I think I have interesting information, but it's infrequent. I would like to connect with people who also find what I'm writing about interesting, but I don't expect them to continually look. While I know that some have RSS readers, not everyone does. How would you like me to let you know that I'd like to continue this interaction in an asynchronous way? My goal is to have good information that people read without being dependent on the whims of the aggrigators, because the first five people to vote may just not be my target audience. The answers seem to be email and linkbait, and linkbait doesn't connect me to the people I want.

mcintyre1994 12y ago
Email seems like the right answer, but can you not put it in a sidebar, at the top of the page or probably best at the bottom of the content with a relevant CTA linking the article to your list? Unfortunately I'm guessing huge popups convert better, although I'm not convinced that's true if your audience are similar to this community.
danudey 12y ago
At the bottom of your posts (or whatever), have a blurb saying 'if you'd like to see more content like this, consider signing up to…' etc. If I visit your site and I only get halfway through the first paragraph before something pops up blocking my view, then best case I close the pop-up without reading it, and typical case I close the window entirely and go read something else. It's much faster for me to hit Cmd-W than it is for me to interact with your pop-up/lightbox at all.

stronglikedan 12y ago

I used to despise the full page ads that would appear before the articles contents were displayed, and would close the page and never come back. Now, I just close the ad and read the article, pretending the ad was never there. Maybe it's just a matter of forced acceptance, because I no longer find it a distraction. However, if you pop something up over the content that I am actively reading, I, like you, am sure to close the page and never come back.