Web Development
2021-11-19
strategies to make pop ups work in your site
Typically, when people think of “pop-up ads” they think of those annoying pop-up windows from the late 1990’s that assaulted a user immediately upon landing on a website. Those pop-ups of yesteryear were aggravating, ineffective, and could drive users away from a site. So why on earth would we want to use them now? Below, you will find our list of strategies to make pop ups work in your website :
1.Call to Action or Purpose
Like any website content, the goal with your pop-up ad is to deliver content clearly and concisely. Your use should then have a very clear understanding of what they are supposed to do with that content. The other use for pop-up ads – delivering time-sensitive information or alerts – should be equally clear and concise. Remember to address the 4 W’s – Who, What, When, Why, Where. Let’s say the the alert is reminder for an upcoming holiday show, remember to stay who is involved (or invited), what is happening, when it will be held, why it is occurring, and where it will be held.
2. Visually engaging
Another great feature of today’s pop-ups is that they are highly customizable. We are able to utilize brand colors, images, and text in a way that is visually appealing and aligns with the site’s design. We are no longer confined to the standard grey-bordered web browser boxes full of mismatched text! But, with great power comes great responsibility. Just because we can add all of the bells and whistles, doesn’t mean we should. Going along with the first best practice, the visual message should also be clear and concise. Stick to 1-2 high-quality photos along with your call to action text. If your pop-up is and event reminder type, think about adding elements from your event invitation to bring cohesiveness to the messaging the user may have already seen. For alerts, contrast is very important. You want to make sure the ad is seen and the message is received, so we recommend bright colors that will align with, but will also stand out against, your website in the background.
3. Correct page(s)
A lot of people automatically assume that their pop-up should go on the homepage, and while often that is true, it isn’t always the case. For example, if your pop-up is targeted towards current users, such as an event reminder, it may be wiser to feature the pop-up on pages that they frequent and are likely to have bookmarked – such as Dashboard and wishlist. For very important alerts, such as notifications, a top-bar pop up on EVERY page might be the right choice.
4. Time Pop-up displays
Firstly, you want to time pop-up ads appropriately. Timing in this sense is referring to the delay between page load and the display of the pop-up. The timing of pop-up ads can involve a little bit of guess work and a little bit of trial and error. While it may be appropriate for an alert to pop-up immediately when the homepage is opened, that may not be the case for an offer such as an enrollment special or an open house. Depending on the layout of your page and the amount of content, it might make more sense to delay the pop-up display by several seconds or even a full minute, to allow the user to become familiar with your website before making them an offer. Secondly, you should utilize cookies on your pop-ups. Website “cookies” are little bits of data that are collected when a user visits a website. There are many types of cookies, but for the purpose of a pop-up ad, we would use a cookie that tells us how often to display an ad to a particular user. There are many options for this which we would discuss on a case-by-case basis when we set up your pop-up, but the basic idea is that you don’t want to inundate a user with the same ad that they’ve already seen, whether or not they acted on it. Closing an ad without interacting is just like saying “no, thanks,” to an offer.
5. Follow SEO
Pop-ups should not cover all of your content and be difficult to close or dismiss in order for your content to be read, especially on mobile devices. In addition to timed pop-ups that only open after a delay, pop-ups can also close on a timer if the user does not interact with them.
There is more forgiveness for pop-ups on desktop display, so they could be disabled on mobile devices if needed.
