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F*** those popups – signing up those who deserve it
- unwind 11y agoThat's ... angry. I think "signing up" needs editing, it's not idiomatic English (at least to my non-native ears). Perhaps "naming and shaming", heh.
- mikeash 11y agoIt looks like they are literally signing up the offenders for their own newsletters in these popups, so the title is appropriate.
- Cthulhu_ 11y agoAre there any good pop-up blockers for ads like these? I know one of Firefox's original USP's was having a built-in popup blocker because popups were so annoying back then, so why not for these?
- Raphmedia 11y agoBecause those are not pop-ups. They are simply area of the websites positioned with CSS along with some JS for the fadeIn/fadeOut on page load and on click of the "x" button.
- sp332 11y agoI'm not sure, because some of them are actually used to log in to sites. You'd have to have an exhaustive blacklist, or some heuristics that block common copy-and-paste versions but wouldn't block all of them. If you only care about the text on a page, Readability will pull it out and show it to you in a plain style. https://www.readability.com/ https://www.readability.com/ Safari already has this built-in, and it's in Firefox Beta so it should be in the next shipping version.
- jarman 11y agoSuch popups are not distinguishable from any other part of the page, so only sure way to get rid of them is to burn everything with NoScript.
- TheLoneWolfling 11y agoYou have to do it either on a per-site blacklist or heuristically. Though I'm waiting for something like NoScript that allows JS modification to remove annoyances like this.
- _lce0 11y agoI'm ok with those as long as they react to ESC key .. otherwise it's instantly close tab What I hate the most are those install alerts, during page load, which then ends up being a phonegap/cordoba of SAME site (!) ..or to be redirected to "m.example.com" because they think that an special diminished experience best fit for my perfectly capable phone
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- thom_nic 11y agoI've definitely noticed a trend in technical blogs/ newsletters (some of which have been featured on HN) throw up a "like this article? Sign up for our newsletter" popup after you start to scroll down the page. "I don't fucking know if I like this article, you're interrupting me while I'm still in the middle of reading it!"
- caw 11y agoIs it popping up halfway through or when it thinks you're mousing over to close the tab? Sudden upward mouse movements trigger some of those javascript retention popups, even though you were just moving to the scroll bar or something. But while we're on the topic, the recent trend of "No thanks, I don't want to get all this awesome stuff" or "No, I don't want to become a master in subject X" buttons are very condescending.
- sp332 11y agoI have seen that, but some of them pop up partway down a page or even on a timer.
- pjc50 11y agoThe tragic thing is that getting that email address to spam you is the primary purpose of the page, and the actual content is just a sort of bait.
- sukilot 11y agoWhich is why the popup is actually a timesaver to tell you the content isn't worth reading.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoSadly, sometimes it IS worth reading.
- sukilot 11y agoI love when it s a persistent bar that occupies 30% of the device screen and can't be dismissed. Saves me a lot of time o would have wasted on reading the page, I just close.
- astazangasta 11y agoI've never understood this design. Someone came to your website to do something. Why is the first thing you do is give them a bad experience?
- rokhayakebe 11y agoBecause it works. I had a small deals aggregator site which got most of its traffic from Google. When users landed I knew they were interested in the content, and I showed it through a semi-transparent background and forced them to enter their emails before being able to click through. I remember conversions going from 10-20 new emails per day to over 100 emails per day.
- pjc50 11y ago.. but how many of those were valid, and how many actually made some use of the emails you sent them?
- waqf 11y agoDo you have data on whether those additional email addresses actually resulted in more sales than you lost from people who hate popups?
- ak39 11y agoOk fair enough. But, if I were you, just to be 100% excited about this strategy, I'd ask myself these questions: 1. Am I measuring the quality of the email addresses before an after the introduction of the popup? 2. Am I measuring the number of visitors who abandoned my site (closed my page) immediately after I interrupted their visit with my popup? Ultimately, the question ought to be: what am I really measuring? Is it the number of new rows in my emails table or the impact on brand perception and ultimately bottom line?
- sukilot 11y agoAs a web marketer, I am paid to generate leads, not revenue. Revenue is someone else's problem. Yay non-owner employment.
- goda90 11y agoI don't see why Dropbox is on there. That's just a sign in/register window for a service that requires an account.
- sp332 11y agoWhen you try to download the software, they try to make you sign up or log in for no reason.
- mschuster91 11y agoIIRC on the old versions the installer had your login data attached so you did not have to relogin inside the app once installed. But I believe this does not work anymore since code signing.
- sukilot 11y agoWell the software isn't going to do anything useful before you log in, so may as well log in beforehand, or skip the trip.
- mikeash 11y agoNot so. If somebody generates a link to a file on their Dropbox account, then you'll see that popup when you click that link. A Dropbox account is not necessary to view such links (thus the "No thanks" button at the bottom of that screenshot) but they use it as an opportunity to market to you anyway.
- jackgavigan 11y agoWhen I'm forced to provide an email address to access wifi but the email address doesn't have to be valid, I typically use something like pr@ or press@ the responsible organisation's mail domain.
- glaberficken 11y agoThe worst type is the: "We would love to have your feedback" popup overlay upon entering a site. I've just landed on your site! How am I supposed to have an opinion of it already? Well I do now, the first 3 seconds sucked big time!
- sp332 11y agoMicrosoft would ask if you wanted to take a survey when you were done with a site, then pop-under a window that would detect when you had closed the first one and start a survey.
- Turing_Machine 11y agoYes! The feedback/install our app/sign up for our newsletter popovers would be far less annoying (and, I suspect, considerably more effective) if they came at the end of the article rather than before. With me, at least, there'd be some chance that I'd sign up in that situation, rather than no chance whatsoever. I really wonder who these people are who will sign up before even seeing the site, and whether that group actually represents real customers. Maybe if your product is aimed at the terminally clueless?
- techtalsky 11y agoYou know, the age of ACTUAL pop-up windows really sucked, and it was amazing when browsers rendered them largely obsolete by limiting how websites could launch another window but at least all of those had the X in the SAME EXACT PLACE. The new crop of lightboxed modal popups that are now ubiquitous are 100 times worse since they: - are modal - often work poorly on mobile - have as many different dismiss mechanisms as there are popups - web marketers love them
- eli 11y agoThe crucial usability difference is that lightbox style "popups" are all gone instantly when you close the page/tab.
- callahad 11y agoI saw a particularly impressive one the other day which watched for mouse events on document.body, and when your mouse left the page in the "up" direction, it triggered a "Wait! Don't switch tabs! Check out this offer we have for you!" popup.
- gk1 11y agoThose are called "exit intent" popups. The idea is this: If the person is about to close the page anyway, why not take a shot at offering them something? There's nothing to lose.
- sukilot 11y agoExcept getting your site on a junkware blacklist.
- cyxxon 11y agoSounds nice. Just yesterday I saw another version of not too intrusive popup - it came after about 20 seconds at the bottom right, not obscuring the content, but noticable (some animation, don't remember exactly), and in the popup the headline was "Hey, at least it's not centered" or something like that. I actually smiled at that, so it got a positive initial impression. I didn't sign up because I wasn't that interested in the content of the site, but still nicely done.
- eli 11y agoSo long as they keep working, those popups aren't going anywhere.
- rfrey 11y agoI'm struggling with this now and I could use some insight. I absolutely share OP's loathing of these pop-ups. On the other hand, I'm just starting to try to drive traffic to my physical-product website (through PPC ads, facebook marketing, etc). I KNOW I need to try to collect some contact information. But I cannot find a way to do it that isn't appalling. - Collect on landing page? How do they know if they want to sign up, they just got here. - Put on Contact Us page? Nobody will see it. - Pop up a window after 30 seconds, or three pages viewed, or whatever? I end up on thosefuckingpopus.tumbler.com, and for good reason. - Don't do anything? Patrick McKenzie finds my house and draws rude things on my face while I sleep. Has anybody come up with an acceptable design solution for collecting emails from people who are interested in being on your list?
- SimeVidas 11y agoHave a “Sign up to our newsletter” section below the main content on every page. The two main mistakes that you must avoid at all cost are: 1. displaying an overlay on page load, forcing the user to make the decision before consuming any content, 2. showing the overlay while the user is reading the main content; nobody likes to be interrupted.
- mc32 11y agoI think that depends on your audience, target market. Some audiences loathe the intrusion, other audiences feel it's par for the course, so maybe try to determine who your core audience is and what methods they find acceptable?
- mplscoder 11y agoIf they scroll all the way to the bottom then have a bottom bar that appears.
- emodendroket 11y agoExcellent; now 98% of users will never see it.
- 11y ago
- ivraatiems 11y agoThe only pop up window I really hate is Quora's, because in order to remove it without signing up for an account I have to go into the developer tools and delete its enclosing div. Quora, I don't want to sign up for your site, and I don't want to "complete" an account I don't have. I just want to see the answer to the question you were somehow the top search result for.
- steveridout 11y agoor just add ?share=1 to the URL
- rspeer 11y agoAs the parent poster is complaining about "completing" an account, I think he's in the state where he once said "fine, I'll log in with Google to make this popup go away", at which point it asks for pages of additional personal information and will not let you back out. Not even if you leave the site and come back. Not even with share=1. You have to ban it from using your Google account to regain control.
- ivraatiems 11y agoYes -- this is what happened to me. I will try deauthorizing it from Google to see if that fixes my problem, actually. Edit: So I revoked access through my Google Account, and it's still doing it. Emailed privay@quora.com to see if they can help.
- teh_klev 11y agoTack on "?share=1" to the end of the url which will let you read the article without all that nonsense.
- sukilot 11y agoIf the google search result isn't readable,google intends to delist the page. File feedback.
- wesbos 11y agoAs much as I hate this tactic - and I dont use it - it's really attractive because it works _so_ well for collecting emails / signups / likes / whatever. You might piss off one person, but 10 more sign up. You decide if it's worth it or not.
- bemmu 11y agoYep. I hate these too, but I see the competition using it. Since we are bidding on the same advertising channels, if the popup means they can convert a bit more people down the line, then I don't see how I can NOT do it.
- probably_wrong 11y ago> You might piss off one person, but 10 more sign up. You decide if it's worth it or not. The current top post says he has a 1.96% success rate. So it's more like "piss off 98 people, sign up 2". I'm not convinced that's worth it.
- gk1 11y agoIn case you're wondering why anyone would use these _obviously_ annoying popups, here's why: If done right, they actually work. Here's a real example: In March I added a delayed popup to my blog to invite people to subscribe for future updates about user acquisition. It was on a delayed timer so that the reader has a chance to at least get part-way through the post. Also, if you closed it out once then you wouldn't see it again for something like 30 days. Since then, it's been seen by 11,848 people, of whom 232 (1.96%) signed up. Most blog readers come for the article, not for the blog or the company. They read the article then carry on with their lives, even if the article was very helpful or interesting to them. Here's how I see it: I now have 232 people who are actually interested in learning about user acquisition, and gave me permission to send them more helpful posts. I wouldn't have this if I never asked them to enter their email. I realize the price to pay for this is mildly annoying the other 98%. With that said, I'm trying to minimize that annoyance. I'm now experimenting with a less invasive prompt; a thin bar at the top of the screen, that also hides when you're scrolling down (presumably reading). If it still gets subscribers _and_ is less annoying to the others, then I'll keep it. tl;dr - Companies know and don't care that popups are annoying, because they're effective. Some companies care a little and try to make the popups less annoying to those who wouldn't have signed up anyway.
- remarkEon 11y agoHonestly, most of the time when I'm reading something and I get a half-way popup like that, or a popup after I click the 2nd page of a multi-page article, I just leave. I find it almost disrespectful to the user.
- notdanariely 11y agoI don't say this to criticize anything you said, but to offer the perspective of a company. If they produce content for the sake of conversions, does it really matter to them if you hit back as soon as you see the popup? You've self-selected to indicate you aren't interested in doing business with them based on their popup practices. From their perspective, this could be a bonus. Not that server resources are that scarce, but sales resources can be. Now they don't have to have someone call you, don't have you in their denominator lowering their conversion-to-sales rate, etc. Perhaps it's just a way for both reader and publisher to see if they're a match.
- userbinator 11y ago...and this is another one of the reasons why I keep JavaScript off by default.
- detaro 11y agoIdea for a browser plugin?
- thisjepisje 11y agoI get the impression some of these only pop up when I move my mouse to my tab/address bar. Am I right or is it just in my mind?
- Nadya 11y agoI was just thinking about these annoying popups - funny I ran into this thread! I manage a host file that redirects any site I run across that gives me a popup back to my home page. I refuse to visit these sites - even if the popup is a one-time-only thing (which it isn't for those of us who clear cookies)
- crazy_geek 11y agoWhen I get these, I use postmaster@domain.of.page. It seems if we can generally agree on which one we all pick (or some small number of choices), we might have a chance of making a dent when the postmaster starts getting effectively self-spammed.
- fanf2 11y agoIs there enough commonality in the way these popups work that would make it easy to kill them automatically? The problem is this is likely to cause problems for image light boxes. I hate those too (I would prefer a slideshow on a separate page) but unlike stupid popups they are necessary for the working of the site.