The Data
As a digital marketer in 2018, I can’t stand pop-ups. All they’re good for is increasing your bounce rates and lowering your SEO rank. Pop-ups certainly served their purpose at one time, but the tide is finally turning. Here are a few reasons your website should abandon pop-ups for a more practical, user-friendly tool in 2018:
- Consumers are smarter now. They expect you to offer a smooth, clean, and efficient experience on your site. If you don’t offer a great user-experience on your site, there are hundreds of direct competitors out there who will. Research shows roughly 50% of consumers find pop-ups to be “extremely annoying”, so it’s time to listen to them.
- Google and Facebook are teaming up against annoying, obtrusive ads. The tech giants have acknowledged that pop-ups disrupt the user experience and are fighting for new global advertising standards online. I’m inclined to take Facebook and Google’s lead on this one.
- With the prevalence of ad blockers, most of your users aren’t going to see the pop-up anyway. Major web browsers are now blocking ads automatically with Google Chrome most recently following suit. An advertising strategy that centers on ads that can be disappeared with the click of a button in a browser setting isn’t particularly useful.
Conclusion
Stop using pop-ups. Consumers don’t want them, tech giants are fighting them, and browsers are blocking them. Pop-ups no longer serve a relevant purpose and disrupt the user experience. So what can you do instead? Lately, I’ve been pushing our clients to adopt more of an opt-in structure for collecting email addresses. This means ditching the annoying pop-ups and replacing them with something like a side tab or a subscription field in the footer. If you offer a good incentive and keep your users engaged, they’ll seek out your email list organically.
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