A lot of us dislikes pop ups and find them utterly annoying. Yet, pop ups are still everywhere. In another post we consider why the marketing industry seems to have this love-hate relationship with pop ups.
Here, we are going to quickly explore some pop-up problems to help you see why you should never just put it in a pop up.
This trend is intrusive because users’ tasks are interrupted before they even land on the web page. And people have grown accustomed to these premature pop ups, chances are your users would ignore them or look for the fastest way to close them to return to their task.
Don't ask for feedback too soon, or else you risk not getting any when it matters most - Users will quickly close these pop ups, and they have little intent to seek them out again. You should be asking users to provide feedback within your page content after they complete a top task.
Another pop-up problem is interrupting users to ask for feedback during those critical tasks. Believe me, giving feedback won't often be the top reason for your users visit (except you’re purely a review site or a previous interaction has set their expectation that they need to give a review)so don't disrupt them with the top in the middle of an activity. You can always offer a tab on the side of your website, or even a link in the footer or a link in the navigation, where users can provide feedback.
When users log in, they usually have a next step in mind, because they're focused on this next step, users will pay little attention to the pop up and try to close it. Another common problem is asking for an email address before the user has even interacted with the website, not only will people be interrupted by this pop up its timing and asking for email too soon. People will just assume that the site will then send them unwanted spam or junk mail.
Another problem is showing multiple pop ups, one after another, and displaying multiple pop ups, even on top of each other. This can make your site look unprofessional and disorganised. It can also overwhelm users and force them to spend more effort to close each path.
Would you like to subscribe to our email to get updates from our Knowledge Hub?
Yes, I’m a smarta**. --or-- No, I’m a dumba**.
Well, not in these exact words but you get the gist and I’m sure you’ve seen a variant of this - site pop-up that makes you feel like a bad person for declining
Just because your users don't want to sign up for whatever you're offering does not make them a bad person. More importantly, you should not want users to associate these negative feelings with your products or services? Consider choosing text that doesn't give anyone a guilt trip.
9 out of 10 times the answer would be NO, a major reason being the smaller screen real estate. It’s no surprise that Google has said they’d be paying more attention to this from 2021.
If at all you’re going to use pop ups on mobile, keep these in mind:
The pop-up should not cover the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results, or while they are looking through the page.
Try not to display a standalone pop-up that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content.
You may be wondering when it is acceptable to use pop ups, and the answer is sparingly and with very good reasons. Resist the urge to follow the crowd and don't inundate your users with pop ups to bolster short term metrics.