A popup is a great way to convert your website visitors into subscribers and sales. A website pop-up can be both your friend and your foe. It can either take your conversion to another level or annoy your visitors and seriously hurt your website’s reputation with search engines.
When creating your first popup chances are high you’ll make a few mistakes, you can learn from these mistakes. But you can also learn from others’ mistakes and avoid making them.
Honestly, learning from others mistakes is better.
As influential leader Otto von Bismarck says, “Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience.”
To help you avoid common pitfalls we have listed few mistakes that most marketers make with popups – and tips on how you can avoid them:
Ready? Let’s dive right in.
Consider the types of pop-ups to utilize
There are various types of pop-ups that can be used to accomplish a variety of goals, ranging from informing visitors of your new offers and deals to providing them useful information. Below are examples of common types of popups.
Opt-in Popup
They appear as soon as a visitor lands on your website. Given below is an example:
Choies offers a discount in its opt-in popup, they have included a coupon and a gift in the offer to induce visitors to become subscribers.
Exit Intent Popup
As the name says they appear the moment a visitor is about to leave your site. Take a look at this one from RockMerch:
RockMerch encourage bouncing visitors to stay with them, they show the popup when visitors are about to leave to make it non-intrusive and justified.
Click Triggered Popup
These popups appear when visitors click something on your webpage. It can be an image, button, or text. Here’s an example of how this work:
If you click on the “Quick View”, a popup will appear and you can directly add the product to your cart.
Timed Pop-up
These popups appear after visitors’ spend a certain amount of time on your website. They are less intrusive than entry popups and gives visitors some time to explore your site.
Scroll Triggered Popup
These pop-ups appear after visitors’ show some level of engagement (scrolling) on your web page. The logic behind these popups is – the more engaged your visitors, the greater the chances that they will act.
10 Popup Mistakes you should avoid
Mistake #1: Not presenting a compelling offer
You have to give visitors a reason to click on your pop-ups. If you just show a popup with some random information, and no special offer, there’s no reason for them to act, and it will annoy them, even if they like your site. But, if you are offering a special gift, solid reasons’ to join your list or some other special benefit, visitors are more likely to take action.
Mistake #2: Not personalizing your pop-up copy
When it comes to popups most marketers keep the focus on the offer, and more or less ignore the copy, forgetting that in the world of hyper-personalization generic messages doesn’t work anymore. Now you must be thinking how to personalize the copy? Well, there are number of ways – to begin with you can use words like “you,” “your” in your copy.
Mistake #3: Using a generic CTA
When it comes to popup holding visitors attention is hard but getting them to take action is harder. So what to do? You can use “Action Oriented Words” in your CTA to make them more compelling.
Mistake #4: Serving everything at once
So many websites these days use a pop-up to induce visitors to sign up for newsletters, take up surveys etc. And they do it back to back. The moment visitors closes one they show another one. That’s not only interruptive but infuriating too. Don’t make this mistake.
Mistake #5: Displaying popups’ that are not relevant
Popups are annoying! Raise your hand if you agree with me. Everybody? Okay, good. I’m not alone. And neither are you. Now the question is how to make them captivating? The answer is very simple – use them to enhance your visitors’ experience.
How?
By making them relevant. For example, you can show different popups to people coming from different sources or depending on whether they are visiting your site for the first time or they are a repeat visitor or depending on their behavior on your site. Now, these things may seem obvious to some, but they’re few marketers who are doing it – be one of them.
Mistake #6: Not using frequency capping
Popups work, but nobody like seeing them again and again. So, put a frequency cap in place to make sure that they don’t appear multiple time in a session or every time the same visitors visits your website.
Now the question is how many times should a popup be displayed to a visitor in a specific period of time? What’s is the optimum frequency? There is no universal answer to this question as it depends on many variables. As a rule of thumb, don’t show them on every page of your website, or you should not show popup more than twice per visitor session. Also, ensure that you do not show an opt-in popup to people who have already converted into subscribers (this can be done by using cookies).
Mistake #7: Displaying same popup on every device
Before you create a pop-up form, consider the device. Why? Because people attention spans are becoming shorter and it is even shorter on a mobile device. But most marketers think if their popups are responsive that’s enough.
But is that the case?
Well… not quite!
You cannot expect visitors to fill four form fields on a mobile device. So, you should create a different form for desktop than mobile.
Mistake #8: Not proofreading your popup copy
Before you make the popup live on your website give your copy another read. Make sure it is crisp and has no spelling and grammar mistakes. Typos and grammatical mistakes can make your popup look unprofessional and it can undermine the effectiveness of your message.
Also, reviewing the copy will help you ensure it has the right tone and effectively conveys your intended message.
Mistake #9: Asking for too much information
No matter how well designed your popups are or how compelling your offer is – if you are trying to collect too much information, you risk hurting your conversions. So, instead of collecting every piece of information, try to collect the few most important details.
Mistake #10: Not adding a personality to your popups
When it comes to popups design matters, but most of us focus on the offer, and more or less ignore other elements, forgetting that good design can make all the difference.
When designed well popups can increase your conversions many-fold. However, if they don’t match your brand look and feel, they can hurt your conversions.
By avoiding these ten common mistakes, your popups can be more effective and sure to capture the attention of your visitors for all the right reasons.