I attended a really interesting webinar on SEO last week. I’ve been so busy recently that I haven’t done any training like this for a while, so it was a real joy to be able to focus on learning for an hour. (Note to self, look out for more webinars that might give me some new techniques and a bit of inspiration.)
I’m still mentally processing what I learnt in the webinar, but one big takeaway for me was that the advice was very much not to use popups on your website because they’re a speed bump. This really resonated with me because I’ve always been uncomfortable about using popups, but have felt like I “should” because the general consensus was that they work.
But, quite frankly, I hate them, don’t you?
If I go to an ecommerce site for the first time and I get cookie alert in my face, swiftly followed by a popup wanting me to sign up for a discount, I lose the will to live. And quite often think “nope, can’t be doing with this” and swiftly leave. That’s not really a demonstration of the popup working, is it? Unless the purpose of it is to scare prospective customers away…
What I always wonder is how do I know if I want to buy something until I’ve actually looked at the site? I’m not going to give away my data that easily. Sorry, I’m just not.
And if I get rid of the popup what happens if I decide I do want to place an order, have I missed my chance to get the discount?
My take on this is, let’s ditch popups altogether. They’re irritating, potentially scaring customers away and they present a usability issue. Instead, let’s normalise sign-up pages – that is dedicated pages with details about what you’re asking your customers to sign up to, the sign-up box and nice clear reassurance that you’re going to treat their data with respect. You can link to the sign-up page from different places on your website. And, here’s the winner for me, you can give people the link directly to the sign-up page if they express an interest in what your selling. Because you know you’re going to lose people if you just send them to your home page and expect them to find the sign up for themselves, don’t you? Nobody’s got time to go searching for it.
Look, I’m a practical person. If a client insists that a popup is exactly what they need on their website, then I will ultimately implement that for them … but in the interests of always giving the best advice, I will first explain why I think there’s a better approach.
So let’s say no to popups and yes to sign-up pages. Let’s give your website visitors some love and make their time on your website as friction-free as possible.
