Should Your Website Run Pop-Up Ads?
Pop-Up Ads
The goal of every online business is to turn visitors into leads or customers, and pop-up ads are effective in capturing attention and achieving conversion goals. However, many people refuse to use popups because of the complaints they receive from visitors.
The challenge is to use popups in a way that doesn’t ruin the user experience or lead to too many complaints. You can’t please everyone, but there are ways to use popups to boost your conversions without destroying the user experience of your digital site.
Types of pop-up ads
Entrance pop-ups
This type of pop-up ad appears as soon as visitors open a page. Entrance pop-ups can bring value, but choose when and how to use them carefully. Remember your users came to your page for a reason, and you don’t want to stand in their way!
Event-triggered pop-ups
A more targeted type of pop-up is the event-triggered pop-up. You can set specific user behavior parameters that, when met, launch your pop-up ads. For example, you could have a pop-up appear based on a user’s time on the marketing page or whether they’re a returning visitor.
Exit-intent pop-ups
A type of event-triggered pop-up ad, the exit-intent pop-up appears when users look like they’re about to exit the page.
Click-triggered pop-ups
Many sites will deploy pop-up ads when a user clicks on a link. With these pop-ups, you can call out your intended action with a link — such as signing up for a newsletter or finding more information on another page — and leverage a pop-up instead of sending the user to a new page to complete that action.
Ways you can use popups to increase conversions:
Forget entry popups
Perhaps the most annoying popup is the entry popup that appears when a visitor first enters your website. They’re extremely disturbing and really degrade the user experience because they interrupt the typical browsing and reading flow. Entry popups kill the visitors’ experience right when they enter your site.
Instead of using entry popups, use exit popups. Exit-intent popups appear only when a visitor is leaving your site, so they won’t interrupt their browsing and reading flow.
Display relevant and valuable content
Visitors hate popups that present irrelevant content. If the content helps the visitor solve their problem, find the right solution, or get answers to their questions, the popup won’t be perceived as annoying. Instead, it will be seen as helpful, or at least as intending to help, not disturb.
Another way to improve user experience by displaying a popup is to use it as an extra navigation tool. Instead of promoting an offer or subscription, you can use the popup to redirect traffic.
Personalize your messages
The visitors to your website arrive from different sources with different needs and goals in mind. They may be interested in different products and topics, and they may respond differently to your primary and secondary marketing messages.
To improve the user experience when you use popups on your digital site, tailor your messages for different audience segments and customer groups.
A/B test your messages
When you want to see which popups are helpful and which could be hurting your site, it’s worth taking the time to optimize your messages through A/B testing. The same improvements as traditional A/B testing are available for popup marketing campaigns, and you can boost your conversions by as much as 40% while improving the user experience for your visitors.
Using A/B testing, you’ll see firsthand which messages and design elements work and which don’t, what should be removed and what should stay.