Why you should harness the power of pop-ups on your website (+ how to get started)

Popups

Are you getting lots of traffic to your website? Don’t start celebrating yet. Research shows 9 out of 10 visitors leave your site without taking action.

What’s more, over 67% of online customers abandon their shopping cart before the checkout.

If your company hasn’t learned to harness the power of pop-ups, that’s only the first of many reasons why you should.

Pop-ups are a tool in what’s known as “disruption marketing”. They are windows that literally pop up on a web page with the mission to draw the visitor’s attention to an offer or action.

While pop-ups have a reputation as the annoying villain of digital marketing, it’s near impossible to find a website that doesn’t use them in some way. The reason is simple: pop-ups present a huge opportunity to generate new leads and skyrocket your conversions.

Here are 6 reasons to use pop-ups on your website:

1. Get more subscribers

With 91% of people checking their email every day, you need to make sure your brand is in their inbox, ready to surprise them with unique offers and content. Use a pop-up to grow your email subscriber list and stay in touch with customers and prospects. Just look at the stats: some websites have experienced as much as a 1,375% increase in subscribers simply by using a pop-up.

2. Generate more leads

Collect more leads through your website using a pop-up. That doesn’t always mean driving people to an immediate purchase – it could be signing up for an email newsletter, downloading a free e-book, creating an account, or something else.

3. Get more social followers

Add ‘Follow Us’ popups to your website to increase your social followers and build an online community. By growing your social media community, you can better engage with your target audience, establish a stronger brand, receive valuable feedback and, ultimately, boost sales. Pop-ups also make it easy for visitors to share your content and spread the word to their networks.

4. Turbocharge your conversions

Done well, pop-ups can help you boost conversion rates. It’s all about delivering relevant marketing messages in the right place at the right time. You can use pop-ups to tell website visitors which page to visit next – this draws their attention to the most important information, promotions, new products and updates. Remember, even if the visitor doesn’t take action immediately, the pop-up has done the job of giving them something to think about.

You can also use “exit intent” pop-ups to draw a visitor’s attention to a special offer when it’s clear they intend to leave your site. According to marketing guru Neil Patel, an exit intent popup increased his online conversions by 46%.

5. Deliver better customer service

Use a pop-up contact form to offer your visitors an easy way to contact you with questions, problems and feedback. This not only enhances the customer experience but also increases trust, which means they are more likely to return.

6. Gather customer feedback

Conducting an online customer survey is an easy way to learn how you can improve. Use a pop-up to invite your website visitors to take a minute to share feedback and suggestions. The more you know, the better you can make informed decisions about your website, products and brand.

What’s stopping you from using pop-ups?

If you’re not already taking advantage of disruptive marketing to improve conversions and create a better customer experience, you’re not alone. Some marketers view pop-ups as too intrusive and are frightened they will push customers away. Others simply underestimate the sheer power of this tool or think it will be too much work to implement.

But the rate at which disruptive marketing converts far outweighs the number of visitors who find them annoying enough to click away from your website.

It all comes down to how you use them. As with any marketing, you need to use pop-ups at the right time, in the right place, and with the right message. You need to strike the right balance between being disruptive and compelling, without being obtrusive and annoying.

Here are our top hacks for pop-up success:

• Use pop-ups to offer your visitors something of value, such as a special discount or free content.
• Make it easy to click away from the pop-up and return to the site. Never force users to click through to something they’re not interested in.
• Ensure your pop-ups are unobtrusive, while still being eye-catching (it’s a delicate balancing act – we can help).
• Tailor your pop-ups to match user behaviour. This could mean waiting until they have been on the page for a few minutes, rather than disrupting them immediately.
• When it comes to pop-up forms, the fewer fields the better. Start by asking for their email address and go from there.
• Never stop testing. There’s no one rule for pop-ups. For example, some studies show that pop-ups that are displayed after five seconds result in the highest sign-ups, while others disagree. Take the time to find out what works for you.
• Know the rules. In 2016, Google announced it is penalising websites that disrupt a mobile user’s experience. This doesn’t refer to all pop-ups, so it pays to know the rules (better yet, work with someone who does).

Get started

Interested in using pop-ups to ignite conversions for your business? Informatix can work with you to customise pop-ups to meet your goals, whether that’s to increase email subscribers, build a social following or boost sales. Find out how Informatix can help you harness the power of pop-ups for your business – contact us today!