People tend to think that popups are “annoying.”
These negative assessments aren’t always unfounded because many popups are annoying. We all have experienced irrelevant popups that interrupt while browsing our favorite websites.
The good news is that popups don’t inevitably annoy anyone who sees them. In fact, popups are only annoying when they’re used in the wrong way.
It is possible to create popups that actually improve user experience by making it easier and more enjoyable for them to browse your website. And that’s the opposite of being annoying!
Let’s see the top four mistakes that make popups annoying.
1. Irrelevance
Your message can decide whether a popup is or isn’t annoying. If people don’t care about what the popup is telling them, they’re going to be annoyed.
This can happen for two reasons:
- Your popup’s value proposition is weak or
- Your visitor isn’t in the correct stage of the buying journey for your offer.
That’s why understanding the buying journey and your customers’ awareness level can help you optimize both user experience and conversions.
2. Bad timing
Usually, marketers don’t want anyone to miss their offers. So they trigger a popup to appear as soon as visitors arrive on their website.
Unfortunately, this has an adverse and negative effect on user experience and conversions. Users will be annoyed if they’re confronted with a popup before they’ve even had a chance to digest the content on the website. (After all, that’s the reason they came in the first place.)
Instead, delay your popups and trigger them at just the right moment. This will ensure they improve, rather than detract from, the user experience.
3. Targeting the wrong audience
A universal truth is that there’s no popup that’s relevant to everyone. Even if you create the best messages and the most compelling offers, they’ll still only be relevant to 10% – 20% of your visitors.
Showing your popups to a broad audience (or worse, to 100% of your visitors), means that most of your traffic will see an irrelevant message and get annoyed.
To avoid this, create more popup campaigns that are precisely targeted to well-defined customer segments.
4. Poor design
A poorly designed popup can also be annoying. Problems with design (like overcrowding) are often a symptom of not having a clear message and value proposition. Instead, one tries to cram as much content as possible into the popup (or webpage). When you know what you want to say, you also know what you can leave out.
Thus, picking your best offer, formulating a clear message, and designing the visual aspects in a compelling way will lead to the best experience.
So what’s next?
Fortunately, you have the opportunity to make your popups less annoying and more effective by avoiding the mistakes above. With minimal effort, you can ensure that your messages are relevant, well-timed, targeted to the right people, and easy to digest.
Creating awesome popups is usually not a matter of resources, but rather a matter of knowledge. (Creating a good and an annoying popup usually takes about the same amount of time and most popup tools have the necessary tools that allow you to create great popups.) Educating yourself on how your customers think is usually the best step to start with.
Once you stamp out these basic mistakes, you can create popups that your visitors actually love, and your conversion rates will skyrocket too.
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