4 Effective Ways to Use Pop-Ups on Your Website (Without Ruining the User Experience)

By Arielle Hurst

Pop-ups. Despite their track record as an effective tool (10 to 15 percent of visitors can be “saved” by exit-intent pop-ups) for growing email lists, many businesses have avoided using these animated lead capture forms. Why? Because they can be painfully annoying.

With all the different kinds of pop-up forms (push downs, light boxes, hello bars, exit boxes, scroll boxes, etc.), it’s a challenge to use them in a way that doesn’t irritate customers. That’s why we’ve cleared out the clutter and honed in on the four most effective ways to use pop-ups without ruining the user experience:

1. Recover Abandoned Carts

Since about 70 percent of online shopping carts get abandoned (yes, really!), exit-intent pop-ups on checkout pages can potentially save a lot of lost revenue. To make these go the extra mile, take advantage of the image to offer shoppers an incentive to finish their order on the spot, like a discount or free shipping.

To get even more specific about the type of results you can expect, OptiMonk data shows that this type of pop-up converts at around 10 percent, and you can increase that number to 15 percent if you turn off the email capture. Just know only about 5 to 15 percent of shoppers will use their coupons immediately, so it may take a few days to see the full benefits.

Takeaway: If visitors are abandoning their carts, make them offers they can’t refuse.

2. Redirect Traffic

This kind of pop-up responds to your visitors' attempts to leave with, “Did you find this content boring or irrelevant? No problem. Check this out instead.” This approach is best used on landing pages to give yourself a second chance to hook visitors who are not converting.

Forwarding visitors to your best-performing content can really help boost your conversions and provide a better user experience at the same time.

Takeaway: Redirect landing page visitors to different content if they’re not converting.

3. Boost Email Subscriptions

If the primary goal of your pop-up is to build your email list, you can take two different approaches to the content:

• Just ask the user to subscribe with a clear call to action. A simple pop-up like this may not give you dramatic results, but you will be able to consistently grow your list with conversion rates between three and five percent. These numbers are for an average content or e-commerce site.

• Rather than hounding your website visitors with pushy messages, use lead lures to draw them in with informational resources like e-books, infographics, and other robust, value-packed assets that can turn up to 10 percent of those who would abandon your site into leads. If you’re wondering what kind of leads lures you should create, start with one resource for each category on your blog so you have several relevant options to test.

Takeaway: An informational offer is a website visitor's weakness.

4. Generate Leads

Although most pop-ups are focused on helping businesses capture leads with a simple form, you can also use a pop-up chat box to connect with prospects on a more personal level. Live chat allows you to answer questions immediately so you can keep leads flowing through the funnel. Research shows that 35 to 50 percent of sales go to the vendor that responds first, so this instant connection gives your team the ability to provide real value, establish trust, then go for the sale.

No matter how you plan to use them, the great thing about website pop-ups is that there are a bunch of free services that allow you to implement them for free. All you need to do is connect with your web developer to have them install a small snippet of code on your website or use a plugin from a website builder like WordPress or Weebly.

Takeaway: Live chat pop-ups help you make a personal connection and close deals.