If you search for the information regarding pop-up ads on Google, you will find many results like “pop-up blocker” or “how to disable pop-ups”. Many websites use this type of ads and, on the one hand, it is a very useful marketing tool because it ensures that visitors definitely see the message of the ad, but, on the other hand, pop-ups annoy people and want to block them . . In this article we will try to identify the golden mean to understand how these types of ads can be effective. You can find several recommendations below.
1. Provide pop-up ads at the right time. It is the very significant criterion that you need to analyze. Let’s go over some examples.
Visitors enter an online store and start looking for some products. Within 10 seconds a pop-up window appears and visitors are asked to share on Facebook or subscribe to a newsletter. This is a very bad approach. At this time, visitors are just starting to get acquainted with the online store and don’t know if they like it or not. This is a bad time to advertise.
When visitors are ready to complete purchases and proceed to checkout, they obviously like the online store, but this is not the right time for pop-up ads either. Advertising can distract users from shopping and this will lead to cart abandonment. At the payment stage, users must fill in important fields related to payment cards, delivery, etc. The pop-up window can interfere and cause users to make mistakes and provide invalid information.
There are different stages of interaction with the online store and it is important to identify at which stage the pop-up ad may be appropriate and not so annoying. The common recommendation is to postpone pop-ups.
2. Provide pop-up ads in the right place. The pop-up window can appear in the middle of the page and obstruct the content. But there should be a strong reason for doing this; otherwise, the advertising is annoying. Don’t think people are blind, and the popup can be placed on the left or right side of the page. In addition, the proper design of pop-up ads plays a very important role. It should attract but not irritate. The common recommendation is to make the layout calm and organically suited to the web page.
3. Give a clear opportunity to decline advertising. The button to close the ad should appear immediately, along with the ad message. It is the user’s right to reject advertising. A form of forced advertising does not work effectively and is often perceived as disrespectful to customers.
4. Never implement inappropriate pop-ups. There are two types of advertising that can be here:
- Spam ads, like: “Congratulations! You are the 100,000th user and you won …”
Even if it is the truth, people will not trust that information because these techniques have been used as SPAM for too long and have brought too much discredit.
- Irrelevant pop-ups. You can predict what kind of products may be interesting to users who stay on a certain page for a long time. The “You May Also Like” section can help you draw users’ attention to relevant items in an online store. But if you want to put more emphasis, it is possible to use pop-up windows with the appropriate information. That means if the visitor is looking for a new iPad, the pop-up with information on vacuum cleaner discounts will be irrelevant. Showing advertising whatever is necessary is a very bad practice.
5. Don’t use pop-up ads on every page. Advertising abuse will definitely not be efficient. A pop-up ad to endorse a certain marketing campaign is sufficient. Think twice if you want to add more ads to your online store.
How to test your pop-up ads
There are some recommendations on how you can check if the pop-up ads are working effectively.
- Traffic to your online store. Traffic can increase if there are some active campaigns to attract new users. It is recommended to test pop-ups before other campaigns, because this way it is easier to analyze the impact.
- Bounce rate of your online store. It is the most important indicator to give you a clear idea of how pop-ups work. If this parameter is increasing, advertising has a negative impact and must be stopped.
- Time on page / pages per visit. If visitors leave the store faster or visit fewer pages compared to previous periods, these are also good indicators to reveal the negative impact. Pay more attention to the web page where the pop-up ad is deployed.
- Conversion measurements. Even if no negative effects were identified, the conversion rate must be carefully analyzed. If this indicator does not change from previous periods, it is most likely that this announcement has neither positive nor negative influence and it is better to stop or modify it.
Pop-up ads are one of the many marketing tools that can be used to increase sales. And such a marketing campaign can be successful if you know all the features of such advertising. We hope that our tips will give you some ideas on how to increase your sales and make more profit.