How To Improve Engagement Using Website Pop Ups

Do Website Popups Still Work?

A lot of people believe that website popups are annoying and damage your user experience. However, that’s not always necessarily true. One thing that shows website popups still work is the fact that they have an average click-through rate of 2%. 

You might be surprised, but pop-ups are still quite effective and users don’t actually mind them. The trick lies in how you use these popups on your website. If you do it right, pop ups can help your website achieve a high ROI using nothing but automation.

Another plus is that pop-ups can help grow your mailing list, which of course is also important. Your mailing list can get your leads to buy from you. High engagement with your brand can also help you nurture leads by making sure they stay in your sales funnel. 

So, the short answer is yes, website popups work, but they have to be carefully designed. 

In this article, we’ll go through how to use popups on your website in order to increase engagement.

Why Should I Use Website Popups?

There are a few reasons why you should use popups on your website. We’ll explain three different reasons to start using this technique on your website today.

Get New Subscribers

Your mailing list is worth gold. After all, it’s a lot easier to nurture leads that have already heard of you rather than looking for new customers.

On another note, people that subscribed to your mailing list are interested in your product; it’s not easy to get someone’s email address unless what you are offering is worth the value. 

A way to leverage this is to get a lead magnet that makes your website visitors offer you their email address. But what are lead magnets?

Lead magnets provide something to your visitors in exchange for relevant data. Examples of things you can offer: ebooks, checklists, gated content… The list is virtually endless. Whatever you give visitors in exchange for their contact details is a lead magnet. 

Promote Your Content

When you use specific content as a lead magnet, you’re promoting that content. Choosing the right content for each page on your website helps you promote specific pieces that are relevant to your business. 

At the same time, you can promote each bit of content for different visitors. For example, you could share a discount on an exit intent pop up (which is a website popup that shows when the user is leaving the page), or if the user is on your pricing page, offer to chat with them to help your visitor decide which plan suits their needs. 

As you see, there are different types of content you should use according to where your visitors are in your sales funnel. Don’t promote content just for the sake of it; instead, promote content that matches the user intent.

Decrease Your Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a very important metric for every website. It measures the percentage of users that get to the website and leave rather than navigating to another page. 

Of course, you want this number to be as low as possible. To make sure users stay on your page, there are different ways of approaching your users, popups being one of the most effective tactics.

One example of a popup that decreases your bounce rate is the aforementioned exit intent popup. The user wants to leave but, before they can leave, they have one last chance to interact with your website.

This chance should provide him or her with a specific offer – some interesting content, a discount, some spin-the-wheel gamification with gifts, anything that you think is of value to   your users. 

When these techniques are correctly implemented, all you have to do is enjoy the results.

Common Types Of Website Popups

There are typically four types of website popups:

• time-based, 
• scroll-triggered, 
• click-activated, and
• exit intent.

Each of these types of popups are available on Convertful and serves a different purpose. Let’s go through how each of these work.

Time-based Popups

These popups show after the user has been inactive in your website for a certain period of time, let’s say, one minute. They are designed to remind users about what led them to your website, and they can take quite a few different shapes.

You can use these to show your users a coupon code, to subscribe to your newsletter… anything that you think will capture their attention. 

Scroll-triggered Popups

Scroll-triggered popups show up after the user has scrolled down to a specific area of the page. In this case, you know the user is at least interested: otherwise, they wouldn’t have scrolled further.  

These website popups are ideal to get the contacts of visitors that are already interested in your product. You can add the pop up to any page of your website, but we recommend using it on pages such as your feature list, pricing, or on some blog post that is popular on your website.

Click-activated Popups

If you’re not sure whether you should use popups on your website, this is a great way to start experimenting. These popups will only show up if the user clicks on a specific link.

The fact that these popups depend on an action from the user makes them less intrusive and will also show you how the conversion rate increases when you use the popups. 

This experience will then give you the confidence to try out different popup styles that we mention in the other categories of this section.

Exit Intent Popups

These are the last website pop ups we’re mentioning because they’re at the end of your user experience on your website. But what does this mean?

Exit intent popups show when your user is going to leave the page. They help reduce your bounce rate and increase engagement. 

By adding this kind of popup, you also get a chance of interacting with your visitors while they’re still on your page.

 

Now that you have an idea about the types of popups available on Convertful, we’ll give you a few tips on how to use pop ups correctly. Let’s start, shall we?

10 Tips About Website Popups

Solve Problems

The first thing about your popups is that they have to be there for a reason. For you, the reason is to collect your visitors’ contact details. But for your users, there should be another reason that helps them with something. Popups should solve a problem that your ideal customer is facing. 

This makes sure that, on the one hand, you’re targeting the right visitors, and on the other, you’re giving something that your users need. This is why we mentioned lead magnets: these are built by providing your users with some information, or a resource, that makes them willing to share their contact information with you. 

Pop ups should always develop a two-way relationship. 

Make Your Pop Ups Match Your Website

This refers to a mistake that is common when you first start using popups: the formatting of your popup should match your website style, fonts, color scheme… 

It’s tempting to just pick a pop up template and use it as it is straight away. However, that will not do you any favours. Your popups need to feel organic, like they’re a natural extension of your website content. 

The good news is, if you use Convertful, the templates are quite easy to edit to match the look and feel of your website. You can change everything about a template to make it similar to the existing format and style of your website.

Be Clear About What You Are Collecting

If you are using your popup to collect email addresses, that should be clear. Your users need to know why you’re collecting the data, and which data they are sharing with you. 

The reason behind this is that, if a user shares their email address with you to get a specific resource, and then you start emailing them something else, they might mark your emails as spam because you didn’t ask specifically for their permission to email them.

If your emails get marked as spam, your sender reputation is going to suffer, which will make it difficult to keep on emailing your users successfully. Therefore, all it takes is a few people marking you as a spammer to ruin your campaign. 

Have a Clear CTA

If you’re asking your visitors to perform an action, such as subscribing to your newsletter, it should be clear for them what your call to action means. 

Let’s say you have a popup that asks for their email address, and their email address is going to be added as a recipient in your mailing list. The popup should have a “submit” button that says something like “Get The Newsletter”, “Join” or something similar. It’s up to you how you word it, but it has to be clear what you want your users to do. 

At the same time, you shouldn’t have more than one call to action on each page of your website. If you saturate a page with calls to action, you’ll just confuse your visitors.

Only Ask For The Information You Really Need

This is something that is very important when requesting information from your visitors. You should never ask for every tidbit of information “just because”. If you only need your user’s name and email, just ask for those two things. 

You can always segment your users later by sending them a survey. The thing is, users are doing you a favour by offering you their email address. Don’t push your luck more than necessary, otherwise your visitors are going to give up on completing your form – no matter how good your lead magnet is.

Use Specific Triggers

You remember what we mentioned earlier regarding click-activated popups? This is about how you use those. You need to set a specific trigger to make your popup a result of an action, and not an annoying interruption.

At the same time, you can also set timings for your other popups to show: in this case, we mean using scroll boxes, as an example. If your user scrolled, it shows he or she might be interested in what you are offering. On the other hand, if your popup shows right as the visitor opens your website, you’re going to seem suspicious and unworthy of trust. And you definitely don’t want this.

Stick to what works for you. Each company has different needs, and what works for your competitors might not work for your brand. If you’re in doubt, stick to click-activated popups.

Make It Easy To Close The Popup

This seems counterintuitive. Why should you make it easy to close the popup? You want users to stay on the popup, right?

Well, let’s think about how you would react if you got to a website that showed you a popup, and there was no easy way to get rid of the popup. You’re just stuck. What would you do? 

Of course, you would leave the website. That’s the reason why you should make it easy to close any popup: you need to earn your users’ trust, rather than annoy them with a popup that does not disappear. 

Popups work when they are optional, not mandatory. If you want to get your users’ information, you need to show them that they can trust you. 

Use Segments To Create Specific Campaigns

By collecting some information such as company role, company size and such, you gather information you can use to segment your new contacts in your mailing list. This example applies mostly to B2B, but there is data you can request for your B2C campaign, such as gender, interests, location…

Once you have this data, you choose the segments you’re going to use to personalize the emails your users will receive. If you use Platformly, it’s easy to create segments and tags to split your mailing list. 

 

Never heard of Platformly? It is a marketing automation tool that offers email marketing, a full-blown CRM, link tracking, and much more. Platformly aims to offer small businesses the opportunity to use tools that were previously too expensive for them. It also offers scalable plans that grow with you as your business grows.

Make Sure It Works On Mobile

This can make or break your user experience, and therefore the chances you have to increase your ROI. After all, in 2020, 50.88% of all accesses to the internet were mobile. And mobile usage keeps on getting higher and higher. 

Therefore, it is essential for your strategy to have mobile-friendly popups. If you use Convertful, all our templates come with a mobile version that you can use straight away or edit to best match your website. Remember, when over half of your visitors might be via mobile, you can’t skip this step.

Split Test Everything

Our last tip is to make use of the A/B testing feature on Convertful to make sure your popups are performing well. 

We recommend testing the copy, the images, the call to action, even the pop up colors. Every company has a unique target audience, and until you try, you’ll never know the right way to approach them. By testing over and over again, you make sure your ROI and engagement keep on increasing. 

Even when you have a winner, that does not mean that version of your popup is going to work forever. Split testing is your friend; don’t forget about it.

Wrapping Up

Using popups does not have to be difficult and it doesn’t have to ruin your user experience. If you follow our tips, you’ll see that website popups can be highly effective to increase engagement from users with your brand. 

This engagement can come in the shape of purchases, but also mailing list subscribers and resources downloaded. All these are useful to get new prospects into your sales funnel.

If you’d like to try Convertful, just subscribe and check it out, no strings attached. In case you want to share your opinion on this article, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.