The use of Website Pop-Ups are a fantastic tool for enhancing your business when used appropriately. The primary purpose of using them should be to enhance your website users’ experience. If users are having a positive experience, it will encourage them to interact more on your website. As a result, more users will be encouraged to take up the offers on your website.
Unfortunately, too many organisations have not put the appropriate planning into how they should use this brilliant business growth tool. As a result, many ‘pop-ups’ are misused giving this tool such a bad rap. In many cases, some displays we see on websites are not even recognised as a pop-up when in fact they are one.
By definition,
Website Pop-up ads or
Website pop-ups are forms of
online advertising on the World Wide Web. A pop-up is a graphical user interface (GUI) display area, usually a small window, that suddenly appears (“pops up”) in the foreground of the visual interface.
There a many types of pop-ups, such as the classic one, which appears in the middle of your screen. There are even more uses for them. You just need to give some thought and planning into how best to use pop-ups to give your users a great experience.
Ways to use Website Pop-Ups
There are many ways you can use pop-ups, however, fundamentally is a right way and a wrong way to use them. If your pop-up is designed to enhance your user’s experience on that particular web-page, this would be deemed an appropriate use. You must plan ‘why’ and ‘how’ you are going to use pop-ups on your website to enhance your users experience. Here are several ways to use them appropriately on your website;
- Welcome pop-ups;
- Collecting leads;
- Converting a sale;
- Growing social media followers
- Behaviour driven experience;
- Time driven pop-ups;
- Push notifications through their browser;
- Exit-intent pop-ups;
In addition to these different types of pop-ups, you can have each of these present to the user in many different ways too. You could have it appear in the middle of the screen (classic form). Present a pop-up as a banner at the top or bottom of the page. Our favourite is to have the pop-up as a banner that slides in from the left or right of the page. These banners stay on the left or right of the page and do not intrude on the centre of the screen, invading the user’s view.
What are the correct use cases for Website Pop-ups?
Correct and well-designed implementation of these popups can skyrocket your list-building, reduce bounce rates, and drive sales. Here a few examples of Website Pop-ups below.
Email Subscriptions Pop-ups
Integrate with forms to your favourite email marketing tools and grow your subscriber list.
Login Forms Pop-ups
Add an elegant modal that helps your users log in to your site.
Promotion & Sale Banners Pop-ups
Running a sale? Get more eyes on your special offers by including them inside popups.
Lead Capture Pop-ups
Boost your conversion rate by creating smart popups that entice your visitors to opt-in.
Content Lock & Upgrades Pop-ups
Reveal your premium content to users who opted in, or agreed to your terms.
Announcements Pop-ups
Notify visitors about maintenance, news or updates you want them to notice.
Exit Intent Pop-ups
Motivate your visitors to stay or buy, just when they are about to leave your site.
Welcome Mat Website Pop-ups
Show full-screen welcome popups that your visitors see the second they land on your site.
Related Products & Upsells Website Pop-ups
Get more sales by creating popups that display related WooCommerce products.
Ways to misuse Website Pop-Ups
Basically, it’s poor marketing practice that is annoying to many users and makes browsing the web a worse experience. A typical example is when you just have got on a website page and within a few seconds, you see a ‘Buy-Now’ pop-up. This experience is happening on too many websites. The fact that pop-up blockers are built into many browsers confirms this. Other ad-block extensions are further proof that many people are driven mad by these things.
One of the biggest reservations digital marketers have about using popups on their website is that they believe a popup always causes a worse user experience for a visitor. They’re too afraid of seeing their bounce rate increase to be willing to even try a pop-up. This is happening because little or no thought has gone into how your users are going to perceive this experience.
So to stop you from misusing pop-ups on your website, we encourage you to plan ‘why’ and ‘how’ you are going to use them. If you are out to give your website users a positive experience, then you are on the right track. However, this does not necessarily mean you will achieve it.
Correct use of Pop-Ups
To correctly use pop-ups on your website, you must think through your user’s journey to get to the webpage they are on. Which page on your website are the users currently on? Is it the homepage? Is it one of the main title pages in your menu, or is it a landing page only accessible from a particular source? Have they had to view other pages to typically get here? Is this a landing page from a source outside of your website? Do they only get to that particular page from an internal link from another page on your website?
Once you have mapped out the ways your users can get to a specific page, then we need to consider what is the appropriate action? So, what is the appropriate information to provide your users when on this particular page? For example, if a user has just landed on your home page, is it appropriate to ask them to buy something now? Perhaps you might want to ‘Welcome them to your site’ or ‘Let them know about some recent news’. This would be deemed as correct uses on your homepage.
Installing a Website Pop-Up
There are many ways to install a website pop-up. If your website is a WordPress website, then most pop-ups are installed via an additional plugin. There is a great range of pop-up plugins available on WordPress. Many of these are free, most also offer a ‘Pro’ version that you will need to pay for. In our humble opinion, one of the best website pop-ups on the market is not a plugin. The Elementor theme offers a ‘Pop-up’ builder as part of there theme license. This offers a fantastic range of options and there are many different video tutorials available to set up and design the pop-ups. We recommend you check this option out. The Elementor Pop-Up builder is the tool we use on all our websites and our preferred option for all our clients too.
Want some help planning your pop-ups?
Clearly, you need to plan ‘why’ and ‘how’ you are going to use website pop-ups. To help you do that we offer you to book a complimentary ‘pop-up’ planning session with a member of our LibAbun Business Coaching and Training team. We conduct the planning session with you via a zoom video call. This is part of our commitment here at LibAbun to be ‘Liberators of Abundance’ Book your call with us now…
