Many businesses are hesitant to use pop-ups in their advertising because they have such a bad reputation with internet users. Many people will agree that pop-ups are invasive and annoying, pulling them from their browsing experience and forcing them to perform extra tasks in order to return to the site that they were trying to visit.
However, if done correctly, pop-ups can be a great way for your business to reach users and may even enhance their internet experience.
How Can Pop-up Advertising Work?
According to a study by Sumo, the average pop-up has a conversion rate of around 3.09%, whilst the most successful pop-up ads convert at 9.28%. Whilst this may not seem like a particularly high conversion rate, when you consider the number of users who will see a pop-up, this could still net you a large number of subscribers.
By these percentages, you could get between 92 and 274 new subscribers per month, based on a rate of just 100 visitors per day.
So clearly pop-ups do work, even if they aren’t well-liked. There are a number of reasons for their success, including:
They Are Attention Grabbing
Most internet users will scan a web page rather than actively reading the content, meaning that the brief and immediate nature of a pop-up ad is actually far more conducive to getting a message across than a landing page.
There Are Various Ways To Use Them
Pop-ups which jump up and block the screen, forcing a user to click away from them, can be seen as annoying. Luckily, there are many versatile ways to use pop-ups that you can adapt to suit your ads and target audience. A pop-up can be triggered at various points in the browsing experience, allowing you to reach users when the time is right, such as:
- On entry to the page
- Triggered by another action on the page
- At a certain point of scrolling through the page
- On leaving the page
These varying times allow you to offer customers a pop-up at a time which better suits their experience, and what they are looking for.
They Offer Value
Users browsing a certain product on your page are already in the market to buy, or at least have an active interest in the product. A pop-up at this point, which offers a discount or more information, adds value to the user, and thus can actually be a welcome addition.
They Keep Your Page Looking Neat
One of the things which can instantly put off a potential customer on entering a web page is the site looking cluttered or messy. pop-ups allow you to keep all of the information that you want to display on your page, but not affect the basic design that is going to appeal to your target audience.
Pop-up Advertising Best Practice
1.Make sure the pop-up fits with the design of your website. It needs to look just as stylish and well-designed as every other element of your site and stay on-brand so that users know it is relevant.
2.Keep the pop-up content short, powerful and interesting
3.Make them responsive
4.Don’t have pop-ups for the sake of pop-ups. If it doesn’t offer extra value to your users then it is nothing more than a disruption to their browsing experience.
5.Don’t be passive aggressive. So many pop-ups make customers choose a negative option if they don’t want to engage (a choice between ‘yes’ or ‘no I don’t like saving money’, for instance). This is irritating and makes your brand seem petty
6.Don’t ask too many questions. If you must ask for information just ask for their email address
How To Use Pop-ups
Hide The Form
If you are using your pop-up in order to collect data, one of the most effective ways to appeal to users and get them to convert is to hide the form on your landing page. This means that the pop-up which asks for the information is buried beneath a clickable option which offers value to the customer.
You could offer a pdf brochure, for example, which requires the user to click on a ‘Download A Brochure’ button. Once this has been clicked, the form pops up for the user to fill out. According to Sumo, click pop-ups (or click triggers) convert 12 times more than any other type of pop-up.
Remember to keep it brief, as even though the user has shown interest enough to be presented with the form, the more information you ask them for the less likely they are to convert.
Offer A Discount
Most consumers are looking for a bargain when they are browsing, and if you want to boost your conversions using pop-ups then you need to offer your users something tangible to stop them clicking the pop-up away.
In fact, a pop-up which offers a discount is one of the types of advertising which users actually welcome, seeing as they are on the page to consider buying already.
Giving an email address in exchange for money off a product they already wanted seems like a very small price to pay. Make sure that the pop-up is triggered before the user has made it to checkout for better success.
Stop Shoppers Abandoning Their Baskets
One of the best ways to use a pop-up to help convert website visitors is to have one which is triggered when a user leaves the page with a full shopping basket. A user that is adding items to their basket is already highly engaged and clearly interested in your brand, so there is less concern about grabbing the attention of an uninterested party.
Although sometimes people do just change their minds during their shopping, there are a multitude of good reasons that people have for abandoning a shopping cart. These include:
- Being asked to create an account
- Extra charges/delivery fees too high
- Delivery times too slow
- Website crashes or errors
- Complicated checkout process
- Not enough payment methods offered
If you have a pop-up trigger which addresses all of these potential issues and offers a solution (for example a contact number or link to a live chat) you may be able to keep your user within the checkout process for longer, help their experience and even convince them to go through with the purchase after all.
Conclusion
Pop-up don’t have to be an annoyance to your web sites visitors. They can add value, inform, and lower the engagement barrier to such a degree that they make a justified and valuable addition to the marketeers’ arsenal.
Here at MaxWeb we specialise in websites and we are also expert online marketeers. If you need help then why not reach out to us and give us a call on 0151 652 4777 or email info@maxwebsolutions.co.uk to find out more.
Posted on Friday, November 8th, 2019 in Web Design.
