My design team and I have been experimenting with an in-window subscription pop-up for ScottHYoung.com.
This is where an in-window display (like the image above) asks if you’d like to join a free newsletter. They have been increasingly popular on the blogosphere, arguably because they work well–they turn casual visitors into subscribers.
I was reluctant to try one out, since I find them mildly irritating when done inappropriately, and I know plenty of readers have strong opinions about them. However, I’ve also spoken to several bloggers who have successful businesses that say the tool can double or triple the subscription rate (which in turn, can lead to double or triple their income).
My guess is that most of the regulars here already get updates via RSS or email, so they probably wouldn’t even notice. For the rest, the popup is set to only appear once, after you’ve finished reading the article, so I’m experimenting with the least aggressive version first.
What are your thoughts on the popup and subscription popups in general?
Hate them? Couldn’t care less? I’d like to get some of your thoughts in the comments.
I'm a speed-reading, vegetarian, holistic learning, productivity hacking recent university graduate. And, for the last five years I've been experimenting to find out how to get more from life.
I think they are truly annoying – they might up numbers but anyone who is truly interested would seek out a signup in a sidebar
en fin – they suck
I completely understand your point, but the question of whether they are annoying is separate to whether they work. I can’t say for this experiment, but I have good friends who can say without a doubt that they convert casual readers into subscribers.
The question is whether they are worth the costs–thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Ich truly despise them – they just make me feel “forced to buy something”. They make a blog really unsympathetic to me. (Plus, you already have a sidebar with loads of advertisement for yourself, which seems a bit too much, if you ask me.)
Really hate it.
I think if I have seen this first time when I visit the blog I will just close the window and look at something else.
It’s kinda like harassing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
You might get a bigger egg but you’re going to have to put up with an annoyed goose!
May I suggest softening the blow a bit by using jquery to fade in the prompt rather than have it just suddenly appear? (Send me an email if you need a hand)
Cheers,
Gwaine
I just read on the RSS feed so I won’t notice the popup, but I think it is quite off-putting if you’re new to the site. Also, the text is a bit misleading – it says the popup will only appear once, but it actually appears at the end of every article. This would be incredibly frustrating when doing any significant reading on your site.
I do think you could improve your existing sign up area (in the top right corner of the screen). I would put the word “newsletter” somewhere in the header in order to make it immediately clear what that email entry box is for (instead of “Learn faster, achieve more”), and maybe put some info about how often one can expect to get the newsletter. I would never sign up for it based on that box because I’m not exactly sure what’ I’d be receiving.
You could also add another newsletter sign up area to a ribbon at the bottom of every article, right before the comments. Then you are presenting the info at the end of every article but in a less obtrusive way.
I think it’s fine. If it comes up just once (i.e. it’s implemented in the least annoying fashion) and it means more money for you? It’s a no brainer. As someone who appreciates your content, I’m all for making sure you’re still around to provide it! I already am an RSS subscriber, but I really don’t see how something like this will hurt.
Despite the fact that I’m subscribed via RSS, I still prefer to read articles on its original site for whatever reason. As I was scrolling down to comment, your subscription pop-up, well, popped up. I find them very annoying.
I also tend to distrust blogs that have them more. I understand this is your source of income, and I will continue to read your articles and perhaps purchase one of your products despite the pop-up. Just keep in mind that the more you remind me you have more value to offer (in this case e-books and rapid learning programs), the more I feel as though you’re withholding value; I then, in turn, tend to value freemium articles less and perhaps even distrust the author.
I can only speak for myself, but the recent tactics and gimmicks used in the blogosphere to get people to subscribe to blogs have taken away from my blog reading experience.
Karen,
That’s a glitch in IE6/Chrome we’re trying to fix. If you have cookies enabled it only appears once.
Good suggestion about the newsletter idea, I’ll have to consider that.
Gwaine,
Agreed, there definitely is a tradeoff.
But at the end of the day, you have to ask people for things (sales, subscriptions, etc.). People who say otherwise have either been obscenely lucky or they have never tried to build a business before.
Ellen,
Yes, cleaning up the sidebar is another task on my to-do list, since it gives too many options and not enough focus.
That said, if you’re hoping I’ll remove any commercial implications from my blog, you’d best go elsewhere. I make my living from this, so that comes first.
—
Keep the comments coming! I’m still experimenting with the design, so I really appreciate everyone telling me their thoughts!
I’ve noticed the majority of the comments are negative, but I have a feeling that any readers who don’t care about the popup won’t bother responding, so I’m not sure if the census you gain from the comments section will be very accurate.
I don’t like the popups but at the same time I don’t overly care. If it makes you a bit more money for the excellent services you provide I’m happy to put up with it.
Jason.
Pop-ups..either love ‘em or hate ‘em. Personally I find them annoying, especially if I’m reading something..and ‘pop’ destroyed my train of thought. If someone is really interested in your site, they will sign up or bookmark it anyway.
Pop-ups are annoying. I have, on several occasions, immediately Xed out of websites/blogs with subscription pop-ups without reading whatever I had originally wanted to read. They harshly interrupt your reading and that’s a huge put-off to me. At least you’re being considerate and waiting until the reader has actually read your content before assaulting him or her.
If you’re dead-set on using a pop-up, I would recommend toning it down a bit. Blacking out the background and blocking out your content is a bad idea. I would suggest something more subtle like a smaller pop-up on the side that fades in (with jQuery perhaps?), but does NOT obscure your main content or the comments. It may not be as effective, but you’re less likely to annoy current readers or scare away new readers.
Hi Scott,
I am not a fan of the popups at all, but I understand subscriptions = money for you. As long as it only pops up once, I don’t mind it.
Cheers
I just experienced your pop up for the first time. It wasnt so bad.
I hate them as much as everyone else- but if they increase your readership, I say do it. Please, though, try hard to keep it at “You’ll only see this once”. I’ve spent hours browsing your site, and having a pop at the end of every article would kill me.
couldn’t care less lol
I’m sure they work but they are super annoying. And they don’t pop-up only once – they pop-up once per page…
Your pop-up seemed fine. I fully understand that you need to make income somehow, and a small, once-per-visit pop-up is a small price to pay.
Casual suggestion: There will be a good number of people who have seen the pop-up before, know what it says, and just want it to go away.
Perhaps making the closing ‘X’ larger would help with that. I also feel that, for newcomers, it would convey the sense that this is just a polite offer that can be easily ignored if wished.
Brad,
That’s a glitch we’re trying to fix. It doesn’t occur on most browsers, but I completely agree–popping up constantly is rude and unnecessary.
Aaron,
I’ll definitely be tweaking the design, this is just 1.0. However, you can click anywhere (not just the X) outside the box to make it go away.
Jon,
I also agree–I usually don’t close websites with popups, but if they appear before I read anything, I think they are poorly timed.
My goal is to have it trigger at the most opportune moment, after you’ve read an article and (presumably) would like to read more. Before that is tacky.
PaulB,
I don’t know a single person on earth, as a user, who likes popups. The problem is, that doesn’t mean they don’t work.
—
Thanks everyone for the enlightening feedback, as always. I’ll see how the experiment goes to see if the popup is worth it and try to implement as many of your suggestions as possible.
I really, really hate them on Ramit’s site. They probably do work for getting subscribers. But they do decrease my desire to visit the site. Certainly, if you use them, put them at the bottom rather than the top. I often stop by your site to see if there’s a new post, and I’d be really annoyed at dealing with a pop-up for nothing.
(I don’t read most of my blogs on RSS because I like to pretend to myself that I read them less regularly than I do, or more charitably, because sometimes I stop reading them for a while and don’t want to be reminded that they exist.)
I don’t mind the popups. Whether it’s a favorite site or new to me, all I need do is click the X and continue. I’ve actually subscribed to a few newsletters from some of my favorites, something I usually don’t think about doing when I arrive to read the latest post.
I think setting pop-up in the middle is annoying than putting it somewhere in the blank spaces. move it aside. and don’t black out the rest.That feels harmful.
As a subscriber, I liked your new pop-up window. if i saw that pop-up at the first time i arrive, i would’ve rated this blog less impressive than it actually is. you can’t say, all the post do not share the same rating all the time. but your posts are good. and don’t make me feel like unsubscribing. so i assume this idea is good for you.
The popup isn’t even anything like regular popups – are some people confusing those horrible ads that popup in a window with this? I like the design of it, and it’s not so bad.
Perhaps you want to try something like this:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/hybrid-fruits-vegetables/
It is less invasive.
They are anoying, whenever one comes up I always close it right away without reading it. Sometimes when it’s my first time at a site it’s a reason to close the whole site.
What bothers me especialy is sites about minimalism with popups, not really minimalistis is it?
Your method with it coming up only once is better then it coming up all the time.
Hi Scott,
First, if you want to keep the pop-up, add a “No, thanks” button. Because if not, you force the user to look where to close the popup. It makes the user waste time.
Second, why don’t you try the less-annoying method of putting a floating box on the sidebar, that appears some time after you’ve been on the site, and lasts xx seconds, (you can also show the countdown timer, It will get better results) then collapses and goes to the top of the sidebar.
Also, to save a cookie for every visitor, if he had seen the floating bar x times (3 is a good number of times), not to show it again floating, just collapsed.
Pop-ups, specially the ego-centric ones, (which simply say: “you cannot do anything on this blog, you must before read this pop-up and answer”) make the reader feel a bad sensation, a manipulation… Try it, make a role playing, think you’re a first comer, and are interested in a particular subject, start reading, and after a while a pop-up appears, and you start thinking, “Shut up, I’m interested on this, and you pop-up are disturbing”.
I think also a better approach will be something like marks daily (from Robert)… But appearing when you have scrolled down to the end of the article, just like magic, you’ll captivate the reader attention but letting him continue reading.
I know you already know my position on this, but I wanted to help you to reach similar results with different approaches.
(If you want to track pop-up results, you need to track: page views, times the pop-up showed, amount of subscriptions)
Bye.
I think these popups are highly annoying, yes they double subscription rate, but those extra subscribers are those who were initially just ‘on the fence’ and either:
a) didn’t know that one could, or even how to, subscribe,
b) were too lazy to move the mouse over to the subscribe section on the top-right of your site, or,
c) they didn’t care but now that the popup is right there they want to get rid of it so they give their ‘spam’ email in the box to make it go away (you know, we all have these email IDs, one for random newsletters and other stuff that gets spammed often as well interestingly, and another personal email we give to people we actually care about).
Honestly, if someone falls under these categories (b and c probably being most common and the people who fall under a need not a subscription, they need education), so while it may seem to ‘work’, I think it is a bad idea and annoys those who really do matter and who you really do want subscribing.
That’s my 2 cents worth
what is the reason behind “popup” & “increased subscription completion rate” ??
why keeping non-popup, more people will not finish subscription??
I use RSS so I have no need of this, but I always click through to the page rather than reading it within my RSS reader.
In my opinion, there is nothing more annoying than really enjoying a nice article then seeing this obnoxious “Subscribe!” popup pop up.
1. I am already subscribed. Just in a different way. Being asked to subscribe again is irritating.
2. There are several sites I visit with these “one-time” popups, and they have never been one time. On every site that uses these they always, always appear more than once. Usually every month or so, sometimes even more, they pop up again. And the more they do, the more irritated I become with the site in question.
This is my personal experience with them
Oh and Scott -
I have cookies enabled. These types of thing always appear many times for me regardless.
I find pop-ups extremely annoying. Anyway, I appreciate when they give useful information. I wouldn’t like to receive pop-ups messages every time I finish to read a post on your site – but I think it could be good if it just appeared the first time I visit the blog and then I could select an option like “don’t show again in the future” once I’ve decided whether subscribe or not. My verdict: some pop-ups are ok, but don’t make it a regular feature every time one visits the blog. Bye!
Ehi, well, the pop-up window appeared a minute ago – it would be nice if it could be moved on a side, to continue reading and to be read itself later.
Nothing unbearable, anyhow – go on with the experiment, good luck.
Eilidh,
Yes, I just noticed that glitch and I’m fixing it. The popup should only come up once, not every article, but it doesn’t seem to be. As for popping up, they will come up every once in awhile, but that’s due to the maximum length for cookies, so there isn’t too much I can do about that.
Alfred,
The reason is that many visitors are first-time visitors who will never come across the site again in their life. If they don’t think about subscribing after that first glimpse, they will never subscribe.
Admittedly though, it’s a cost to the loyal readers–which is why I’m asking your opinions!
Iair,
Appreciate the design suggestions. This is just a first test, so if it works I can test out better designs.
Tracking for me will mostly be the tradeoff between subscriptions and increased bounce rate. That and, of course, what people actually think of it.
—
Thanks again for the comments everyone.
I am a web designer and I install these.
And my client who asked me to install it says they really dramatically improve his sign-ups.
As a visitor, if I’m really keen on the site, and a popup happens, I may opt in. But this puts the obligation on the site owner to make sure the content and ethical integrity is obvious, fast,
So often, they make a site feel so spammy to me I click away never to return.
It depends on whether you are happy with the quantity and quality of the subscribers and sales you get with the pop-up in place.
Because I was curious about the same question, I did a little research and wrote an article about just this topic. It is interesting what Jakob Nielsen has to say about them. The ezine article is here — no obligation of course:
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Build-a-Great-Email-List-Without-Doing-What-People-Hate-Most&id=5281836
It’s a paradox — it’s effective, despite being irksome to many.
I find them annoying, but not enough to make me stop visiting your site. If you are going to have one, please don’t have one of those that pop up after 5 minutes or halfway done the page or whatever, I just find them even more annoying.
Joanne,
Exactly. Too often business pundits (and design pundits) talk about user preference and profit as if they were identical. They are certainly linked, but I can say from both experience and my colleagues that many things that are deemed tacky or distasteful do, in fact, work extremely well.
The point isn’t to always go with what makes more money, but to recognize that tradeoffs exist.
-Scott
Those things are a little ridiculous.
Personally, I’ve closed them every single time.
Why?
I come to a site for a reason. You probably don’t know what it is. So why guess. If a pop-up gets too annoying I’ll just leave the site.
It’s irrelevant information. Why not just put it on the side. If it’s noticed the person will go for it.
Now if there’s a specific call to action it could be a little different. In both cases, I’d put it on the side and make it clear.
Most people know you can simply subscribe to a newsletter. Give a specific free gift and put it on the side.
I was reading your article trying to decide when the pop-up surfaced interrupting my reading. Result…annoying.
They are incredibly annoying, but at the same time very effective. I wouldn’t blame you for using them.
Personally, I cannot stand pop-ups of any kind – they only serve to make the website over which they ‘pop’ appear desperate for an audience. If a visitor wishes to subscribe I am sure they will not mind scrolling to a sidebar form. Yes, subscribers equal income, yet there are other less-intrusive ways to go about collecting them.
Scott,
It is so nice of you to ask your readers first before putting any popup. I personally do not like them, they are annoying.
I guess it works in one way, as you may get more subscribers as they may just sign up to avoid that pop up, but would they be targeted readers? I am not sure.
This is your blog after all, and you can choose to do what works for you. This is my humble opinion.
Preeti
Don’t really care when it’s the content I’m after. I’ve been to sites i visit less and still wade through the “x’s” to get what I’m after. Frankly, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more on here. It’s part and parcel to getting good content. Don’t like it? Perhaps a good Anthony Robbins tape cassette is more your speed.
Keep up the stellar work!
Möikkä From Finlandia…
I think it sort of reduces the overall credibility of the site (“is this site being honest if they are trying so desperately to get me to sign up?”), even though it might increase the # of subscribers in the short term.
Scott, I think you say it well in your opening: “mildly irritating when done inappropriately.” It can be frustrating when the language is “sell, sell, sell,” or when the popup is always appearing or difficult to close. BUT what I think a lot of readers overlook is how important a popup can be to the content creator (blogger).
Too many readers are too easily irritated by bloggers trying to increase their mailing lists or make some money – almost as though unconsciously they think the blogger should share all their work for free because that is what shows true commitment. I think it’s only a fair trade off that you can read someone else’s thoughtful content in return for a couple ads or a pop-up.
Kent,
I agree. If I did everything readers wanted, I would write a new post every day, have only free ebooks and never have any ads on the site.
Unfortunately, doing everything the readers want would mean I’d be looking for a job instead of actually writing great content.
For me, the purpose of having a popup (if I continue with it) is to ensure that (a) the costs of annoyed readers don’t outweigh increased subscriptions and (b) even if the benefits are high, that it’s done in the most tasteful and least annoying way possible.
That said, I’ve found this conversation very interesting. Particularly because many readers have made the mistake of assuming that because they dislike popups (everyone does) that they don’t work. It’s still too early to tell, but in the last few days my subscription rate has more than quadrupled.
-Scott
Like the rest of the readers, I strongly dislike this offensive practice. Thank God, I read the articles in Google Reader, so I didn’t notice.
Here’s my advice: To keep your blog clean and decent, yet achieving your goals, you can include the advertisements inside your articles. This is practiced a lot on TV shows when the TV hosts interrupts his speech to thank Colgate for sponsoring the show, and then resumes his speech. Similarly, you could write your article, then at some point you write that if the reader likes the material so far, he would probably like to subscribe to your newsletter to receive exclusive material. And then you resume your article. For instance:
“I believe there are six major keys to improving your reading skill. Like all skills, success only comes through practice, so just reading this article won’t be enough, and also, don’t forget to [sign up] to my free newsletter to receive exclusive content on speed reading and much more. Now, if you are interested in how you might be able to make dramatic improvements in both speed and comprehension, I’ve found these six points to be the best start”.
You can be sure that:
– 100% of readers will be aware of your “ad”
– The annoyance will be limited
– More people will take the desired action (to sign up)
How does this sound?
I personally find them annoying – especially if I’m new and want to read the content/find out more or if I love a site and so go on it a lot.. just my opinion
Perhaps a shiny form or button on the side-bar would do the trick as if people are interested, they will probably be looking for a way to get more.
Rose
Annoying and a bit dishonest to offer something they can get anyway browsing the blog.
They must be small, or not fixed. It happened that websites had this bigger popups, and being on a 800×500 netbook, I couldn’t reach the close button nor the subscribe one. Next step was closing the tab.
Hi Scott.
The popup is obviously one of the most intrusive techniques, and will upset some of you readers. (probably the more tech savvy ones, that ready many blogs)
That said, if you double or triple your readership thanks to it, there is no real debate.
Have you thought of trying Neil Patel’s technique ? He has a very visible subscription prompt appear at the end of every post, fading in when you scroll to the comments. I think it’s great, but have no data to back it up. (he uses a popup aswell, offering a free ebook)
http://www.quicksprout.com/2010/11/18/how-i-grew-my-rss-subscription-count-by-243/
Tristan
Hello, how about this page, containing WordPress “Greet Box Plugin”: http://lebuoneabitudini.com/2010/04/comunicazione-efficace/
1) The box is half sized if compared to the most common pop-up;
2) it appears short time after the page opening and it doesn’t cover the text: the box expands itself in a space created between the header and the text.
3) It can be closed; it can also be mainteined open, it’s not annoying; it can be kept in mind or read after.
Just a suggestion, bye!