Believe it or not, the holiday shopping season is right around the corner, and what better way to kick off shopping season than with a good ole website promotion using a pop-up! Everybody loves a good website pop-up…right? You know, the kind that interrupts your brain about 7 seconds into reading a good homepage? Hello? Is this thing on? Anybody? Ok sure, we all love to hate pop-ups on websites for slowing us down and…ugh making us click a box to close it. I like to think my reaction time from pop-up appearance to “buh-bye” is less than a second. And it feels wasteful, doesn’t it? Like an ambush of sorts. And let’s be honest – the pop-ups we really hate are the ads. Oh, the ads! The ones I couldn’t care less about. The “why in the world would I care about signing up for THAT!?!” ads. Those are the major offenders.
But they aren’t all bad, really. Tastefully executed and polite ads that offer us nice discount or a free gift are appreciated by most users. In this post, we are going to cover when, why, and best practices for using a website pop-up effectively and politely. Let’s begin.
When should I use a pop-up?
Think seasonally. Ask yourself, “What season are we in?” Or “What season are we about to move into?” And figure out what goodies you can offer your customer around that season. Examples might be Back to School, End Of Summer, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Valentine’s Day. But by all means, do not use it all the time. There is literally a national day of something every single day. But give your customers a break every now and then. Unless you’re a donut shop, you don’t need to run a National Donut Day promotion. Although, who doesn’t love a donut?
Why should I use a pop-up?
Pop-ups are attention grabbers. They are meant to disrupt the normal flow of the user and send a jolt to your brain. “Look at me!” You should use a pop-up on your website when you really have something special to offer. Don’t use it to promote your latest blog post or your newest Instagram follower milestone. Use it to earn a new customer or give back to existing ones. Make it a moment of delight instead of a moment of annoyance.
Another reason why you may want to use a website pop-up, is to improve the user experience. For example, while we have a Contact page on our website, we use a pop-up to display a contact form or a quote request form whenever certain buttons are clicked. The thinking behind that is “why take users to another page when we can give them the form to complete almost instantly?” In the big scheme of things, it’s a small detail. But the small details are what can make all the difference.
What is the best way to execute a pop-up in WordPress?
WordPress has many ways to create pop-ups, as you might imagine. Two great tools for creating nice pop-ups are Pop Up Maker and Ninja Pop-Ups. Our favorite is Pop Up Maker. There is a free version that gives you all the tools you need to create, style, and execute a pop-up on your website. It has great features like choosing which pages the pop-up should be active on. You can choose to set the pop-up on a timer or have it appear instantly, or you can set triggers for certain CSS classes or ids that you apply to links or button elements. It also allows you to make changes to the layout and user experience once the pop-up is activated. There is also an extended version of the plugin that you can purchase here, however, everything you need is available in the free version.
Lastly, be sure to keep your customers in mind when choosing whether or not you are going to use a pop-up on your WordPress website. Make them fun! Use them as a way to say ‘thanks’ to your customers. But most of all, use them wisely.
