The Power of Popups
Many people find them very annoying. I even receive a number of emails each week about how much people hate our popups. They even tell us where we can put them. And if you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s not a very nice place.
With so many people writing in providing their opinions of “where we can place our popups” why does X10 continue to do it?
Chris Beasley of the The Website Publisher, an online guide for the independent Internet publisher, released a great article in June 20, of 2003 entitled Unleash the Power of Popups.
Beasley goes on to mention that popups are wonderful tools because they draw eyeballs better than just about anything else. So, if somebody is already at your site, why would you need to place a popup? Beasley mentions that the purpose of the popup is not to advertise your whole site but to draw your readers to a specific portion of your site.
As an example, he supports his argument with the following statement: “Suppose you run an informative website that has an accompanying newsletter. You put the newsletter subscription box on every page of your site, but even if it is up at the top not every person is going to focus their attention on it. In contrast if you promote your newsletter through a popup your site visitors will be forced to focus attention on it and your subscription rates will greatly increase. If you do run a newsletter I suggest trying this for a week or a month and seeing the results for yourself” (2003).
X10.com has been using popup technology for several years. We even provide popup links for affiliates to include within their own websites should they choose to use them. We use popups not because we are trying to annoy our customers, but we do it because it sells product. If we were to generate no sales as a result of everyone of our readers hating our popups, we wouldn’t do it. However, the fact of the matter is that it works.
Yourself being a website operator, using popups is a matter of choice or opinion. You may feel that you don’t want to “alienate” your readers. Then again you may decide you want to use it to your advantage to generate more sales.
One thing that may help you decide is knowing that in terms of percentages, the numbers of complaints we receive about our popups, although may seem like a lot, only amount to a very tiny percentage of the viewers of our site. Popups, although may seem annoying to viewers, actually help bring in a strong percentage of sales… Something to consider for your website.
Comments
Thank You
Posted by: Mark | April 17, 2007 09:16 AM