4 Tips on Using Pop-Ups in a User-Friendly Way

Ever since their emergence, pop-ups have been seen as nothing more than a nuisance. With time, pop-ups have managed to gather enough hate in the hearts of people that various tools have surfaced in an attempt to get rid of them. This dissatisfaction linked to pop-ups might be because of the fact that they are used to bombard the visitor each time they visit a website.

Many of us fail to realize that there are specific parameters that can be set to restrict the number of pop-ups to stop them from becoming so annoying. For example, if a pop-up appears just once for each visitor through the use of cookies, it is much more likely to yield better results.

The ultimate challenge is to use pop-ups in a certain way that does not compromise the user experience or cause many complaints. While you cannot please each and everyone, there are methods in which you can use pop-ups to enhance the number of conversions without compromising your website’s user experience.

Let us review four distinct ways in which pop-ups can be used to improve conversion rates without annoying your users.

1. Say No to Entry Pop-Ups

Entry pop-ups are probably the most disturbing type of pop-ups. They appear whenever a visitor first enters a site. The significantly degrades the user experience by interrupting the reading and browsing flow. They spoil your visitors’ experience right from the moment they come to your website.

As an alternative to entry pop-ups, you should consider using exit pop-ups. These appear when your visitor is leaving the website; therefore, they do not hamper the browsing and reading flow.

When it seems that a visitor is about to leave the site, exit pop-ups can show up to encourage the visitors to stay connected with the website.

This exit pop-up appears when a user indicates the behavior of leaving the website.

2. Offer Valuable and Relevant Content

Another reason people have nurtured hate for pop-ups is that many of them do not contain any valuable or relevant content. If your pop-up contains content that is valuable for the visitor because it helps them solve their problem, find a solution, or answer their question, it would not be considered as annoying.

As a matter of fact, pop-ups with relevant and valuable information are considered helpful and are liked by visitors.

One way of using pop-ups is to use them as a supplemental navigation tool. In place of using pop-ups to promote a product/offer or a subscription, use a pop-up on your site to redirect traffic to appropriate areas. For instance, you could forward your visitors to the most sought-after content to help increase conversions altogether while enhancing user experience.

This pop-up acts as a navigation menu, directing users to relevant sections of the website.

3. Give Your Messages a Personalized Touch

Each of your visitors will come to your website from different sources and will have varying needs and goals that they want to fulfill. Some might be interested in different types of products or solutions; therefore, each person will respond in a different manner to your marketing messages.

In order to enhance user experience and make your pop-ups more ‘likeable’, you must tailor your marketing messages for different types of audiences and groups of customers.

When the message fits the needs of a specific group, you are more likely to experience better growth with regard to your conversion goals.

At the core of digital marketing, you will find that highly customized messaging has an immensely strong role to play in determining the success of your marketing campaigns and efforts. The same should be applied to your pop-up campaigns to ensure they are as relevant to your customers as possible. Digital Marketer makes excellent use of this.

The result of this personalization would be: an improved rate of conversions and enhanced user experience.

4. Perform A/B Testing

It is important to perform A/B testing to determine which pop-ups are useful for your website and which ones are harmful. The same types of improvements as those for traditional A/B testing are now available for website pop-up campaigns. You can increase your conversions with the A/B test by as much as 40 percent – that too while improving the overall user experience of the visitors.

This testing will enable you to identify the messages and design elements that work and those which don’t while telling you what should stay and what must be removed.

A/B testing can also reveal some valuable analytics, including the following:

• Conversions – The number of signups generated by pop-ups
• Impressions – The frequency at which your pop-ups appeared
• Conversion Rate – Percentage of pop-ups that lead to conversion
• Time on Popup – The duration a user spent on your pop-up before converting or closing it
• Time on Page – The duration a user stayed on a particular page

Conclusion

To sum it all up:

• Utilize exit-intent pop-ups instead of the distracting entry pop-ups
• Offer content that is valuable
• Add a personalized touch to the pop-ups
• Perform testing before getting it online

A lot of website owners find themselves struggling to reveal sufficient, valuable information without getting to the point when their attempts become distracting to the visitors. Worried about spoiling the user experience, many simply quit using pop-ups.

However, it is a proven fact that if you use your pop-ups correctly, you will be able to convert a higher number of visitors into leads, signups, and sales without compromising your website’s user experience.