
When to propose a relationship to your Anonymous Visitor - alagu
http://www.cucumbertown.com/craft/when-to-propose-a-relationship-to-your-anonymous-visitor/
======
TeMPOraL
Looking at all the hate toward sing-up overlays one can wonder why websites
still do this. The answer is simple, an unfortunately very sad.

Users value content. That's what they visit the webpage for. However,
businesses like this (i.e. the ones inventing ideas like sign-up overlays) _do
not care_ about the content. They might say they do, but that is a lie.
Website content is only a means to an end - extracting money from users. It's
a bait for the fish.

This fundamental mismatch of values is - I think - the main reason why people
still can't get why websites implement annoying sign-up pop-ups and stuff.
Such companies don't really want to provide value to their users, they only
pretend they want, to the extent that maximizes profit.

I'm fine with people earning money and charging for their work. But I believe
that this relationship should be up-front. Running heavy maths to figure out
the optimal amount of pretending-we-care to maximize profits is not only
annoying, but dishonest.

I wish there was a way to reward businesses that actually focus on benefit to
their customers, while punishing the ones who only pretend. Right now the only
thing I can do, whenever I see annoying sign-up box or other signs of someone
doing "clever things" to extract money from me, is to say "fuck you, I'm not
coming back".

As for the usability part, [0] summed it up perfectly:

"(...) you have no fucking idea what a website is. All you have ever seen are
shitty skeuomorphic bastardizations of what should be text communicating a
fucking message."

[0] - [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

~~~
cdr
They obviously want signups at all costs, but I can't see where they monetize
these signups that makes it worth degrading the user experience. Signup
numbers for VC investment, then eventual advertising?

~~~
eloisant
That, plus sign-up is usually the top of a funnel to ask you for money later
on.

So they want to have as many signup as possible, and they also want as many
conversion from free users to pay users or whatever. The reasoning is that if
they double the number of signup, they'll double everything down the line
(forgetting that the "quality" of signups matters and making a user create a
phony account just to access one page one time is useless).

------
corobo
Anecdotal data of course but If I'm still reading and something pops up over
the content I either switch to iReader view (If it's good content) or close
the tab faster than I can read the first sentence.

If I've not even had the chance to read anything when it pops up chances are
anything on your domain is never being clicked again. If I came in via Google
I click the little "Block <domain>" link on the way back for good measure

~~~
logicallee
It's all fair though, because most content online has as much attention put
into writing it as you are willing to put into accessing it. Your attitude is
no different from an online "writer's": if it doesn't fall into their lap
ready to be reposted with 1 single click, fuck it.

Seriously, I cannot fathom what content online is worth reading, but for which
the 5 seconds you are cost to click an x is not worth investing. The level of
entitlement you show here is bewildering. It is like you are fighting tooth
and nail for junk content that is not worth anyone's time to any extent
whatsoever. What a reader.

I, too, am annoyed by having to click an X. At the same time, it makes me
smile: the content underneath is actually worth something, and took work on
someone's part, to the extent that it's being monetized while remaining
accessible for me. It's not going to be some two-sentence blogspam.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Seriously, I cannot fathom what content online is worth reading, but for
> which the 5 seconds you save by clicking an x is not worth investing._

It's not about content, it's about the company actively showing that they
don't really care about providing any value, but only about monetizing you.

~~~
drcongo
This. I wrote this piece [1] on Medium, previously submitted here [2] about
this exact issue. I also made Tab Closed; Didn't Read [3].

[1] [https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/a30bbe8b54a5](https://medium.com/i-m-
h-o/a30bbe8b54a5)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6819358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6819358)

[3] [http://tabcloseddidntread.com](http://tabcloseddidntread.com)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thanks for the links. Bookmarked TC;DR immediately.

------
codegeek
"When to propose a relationship to your Anonymous Visitor"

How about Never. Let the user decide if they want to have a relationship with
you. Getting less conversions with a boring "sign up" form ? The solution is
not an overlay. Solution is to make your product better or relevant for _that_
user. If you can show the relevance or benefit, user will sign up _on their
own_. If the user did not sign up, it is either because they are not the right
target OR you suck at explaining how your product can give them what they
_want /need_

And not to be a jerk but instead of spending all that time "analyzing" the
numbers with overlay, why not make your product better by talking to customers
if you can.

~~~
seiji
Examples:

I started reading reddit the first day it showed up on paulgraham.com. I never
made an account. (I stopped visiting reddit years ago. not worth using brain
cells on that stuff anymore.)

I started reading HN the first day it showed up on reddit. I made an account
as fast as my fingers could type out credentials.

People will do what they want. Twitter went from 100% open to hiding
everything except timelines behind login blocks (you can't view
followers/following without logging in). Facebook went from 80% open to 99%
blocked. expert sexchange went from 90% closed to 100% irrelevant.

 _why not make your product better by talking to customers if you can._

Because the CEOs view website visitors as cattle who must be pounded into
shape. Haven't there been some studies showing most people, when presented
with a "Enter your email address to continue" modal, just fill out the form
and click okay?

It's all about propping up your asshole vanity metrics. You aren't going to
get any actual permission marketing cohesion out of blanket view-and-bounce
visitors whose email you "stole."

~~~
codegeek
"Haven't there been some studies showing most people, when presented with a
"Enter your email address to continue" modal, just fill out the form and click
okay?"

Perhaps. I do it too if I really want the content BUT like many of us, my
email address is "wont@tellu.com". Heck, if they make me enter my first/last
name (some even do that), then my first name = wont, last name = tellu. So the
point is, most of those are garbage bogus data anyway. Why bother collecting ?
Now if the study shows that the % of garbage data entered is much lower than
correct, then we are on to something

~~~
TeMPOraL
Relevant xkcd: [http://xkcd.com/1303/](http://xkcd.com/1303/).

------
AlexanderDhoore
If you show me an overlay like that, I hate you.

~~~
aj_ycombinator
The post is all about how to reduce that same feeling. Convert hate to love,
if possible. ;)

~~~
yaddayadda
The sentiment from me is that _any_ registration pop-up converts good feelings
(good feelings that might have turned into love organically) into _repulsive
hate_ faster than I can close the tab or window.

The way to win me over is purely with content. I read HN for _years_ without
getting an account. Guess what, I came back day after day because of the
content. Eventually I wanted to participate more actively, so I intentionally
and with absolutely _no_ prompting, registered.

------
jedbrown
Population bias? It sounds like you currently have a sizeable population of
anonymous users that evidently have found value in the site because they keep
coming back. They are easy to convert now, but may have written the site off
had you shown them the overlay on their first visit. Once you exhaust that
population, you may get fwer conversions than before and fewer people using
the site. How are you distinguishing the anonymous users that leave in disgust
and vow never to come back? Are you sure you want to alienate such users up-
front? I strongly prefer StackExchange's approach to Quora's.

------
onion2k
Why not show the overlay when the user performs an action rather than after a
delay? For example, displaying it when the user scrolls to the bottom of the
page content. Or half way through but display it in a way that doesn't
interrupt reading (as a fly-out from the right hand side perhaps)?

The optimal time to display something like that is when the user is engaged,
interested and open to receiving more content from the site - not "after an
arbitrary period of time".

~~~
aj_ycombinator
That is a good point. We tried that but were not convinced about whether we
are able to capture's user intention only via scroll tracking since our pages
have images and users tend to quickly scroll through to get a "feel" of the
content.

The post details how to show overlay at a more effective time. Intent is to
use time spent on page as a proxy for user engagement since scroller tracking
was not so effective.

------
gumby
I think you have a fundamental bug in your model of the funnel. The wide end
of the funnel is the people who hear about the site and arrive there no matter
what the means. Those who sign up are the ones advancing to the next stage
(your clip art only has one stage, which may reflect your misunderstanding).
So putting up an immediate sign up doesn't cut the number of people who come
in through the top (as the article says) instead it just makes the first stage
of your funnel shorter.

Now the aim of each funnel stages is to discard as many unqualified buyers as
possible as soon as possible to avoid wasting your (and their) time. But how
soon is "possible"? You have to qualify them (give them some content in your
case, and see if they engage) to see if you are a good match. If you push the
sign up right up front yes, more people may advance to the next stage, but you
have no idea as to the quality of the leads (%false positive and %false
negative).

Consider the rediculous extrema: you could assign everyone a user id when they
first arrive (basically: a cookie!) which would give you a 100% conversion
rate. Or you could disallow any sign up at all: a 0% conversion rate. It's
easy to see that these boundary cases are useless.

But how do you know that your new approach isn't equally as useless? All that
mathematics is exciting but doesn't address the two core questions: _how many
of these sign ups became revenue generators_ and _how much revenue was
abandoned to people who wouldn 't sign up?_.

TL;DR: You've analysed how quickly you get out of the driveway without looking
at how that relates to getting to your destination (say, if you're even
turning in the right direction).

------
billpg
If there's no obvious "dismiss" button, I found you can sometimes right-click,
select "Inspect Element" and when you think you've found the DIV, select the
"Delete Node" option. (Firefox)

Requires some HTML knowledge to pull off, alas.

~~~
Cherian
The point is to show the banner/overlay precisely at the point when the system
detects you like it.

------
paulgb
Too bad all the fancy math can't account for people who don't share or upvote
the content because their reading was rudely interrupted.

~~~
TeMPOraL
They don't care. They are optimizing for maximum signups, presumably because
signups = growth = VC money.

~~~
paulgb
Yes, but conversion rate is only a part of that. If nobody shares your
article, it doesn't matter how good your conversion rate is. Optimizing
conversion rates while ignoring the viral coefficient is like the drunk
looking for his keys under the streetlight because that's where the light is
best.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, I guess the "viral coefficient" is something inherently unpredictable,
so it's probably hard to include it in calculations.

~~~
paulgb
Yes, but that's my point. Using only what's easy to include in calculations
biases the outcome to what improves (easily measurable) conversion rate and
not what improves the (difficult to measure) viral coefficient. This would be
fine if the viral coefficient were independent of the variables they are
adjusting to improve conversion, but I'm saying that they're not.

------
pubby
That gif advertisement in the corner is really annoying. It's even blocking
some of the text on my screen.

------
wandernotlost
Please devote all this mathematical brilliance to measuring the folks like me
who NEVER RETURN TO YOUR SITE because proposing a relationship on my first
anonymous visit means you're creepy and I will never invite you back into my
life. I suspect that's more difficult to measure.

------
bsirkia
So, was the overlay more effective at conversions than no overlay at all?

I think this is a great article about how to measure overlay timing
effectiveness, but didn't convince me that overlays work at all in general.

~~~
aj_ycombinator
Yes, the overlay became more effective. Saw 4-5x increase in sign up rate in
some cohorts. It certainly gave a much higher sign-up rate than without any
overlay. In fact, just trying a dismissable overhead banner was also not
working as great as an overlay.

~~~
bsirkia
Ahh that's interesting. Was the overlay un-dismissible?

~~~
aj_ycombinator
It was dismissible. The whole idea was not to take an approach where the
content is locked down.

------
kordless
My proposal? Get rid of the signup form altogether. Make it so they can give
you money and take what they want in return.

