

Hey devs/publishers, cut the shit with your 'subscribe to my' pop-up bullshit - andrewhillman

You all know what I am talking about. The page loads and boom... right smack in the middle your webpage a pop-up&#x2F;over is displayed offering shitty freebies or periodic spam. Even worse is when the pop-up&#x2F;over timer is set to show after a certain number of page views. You are not clever, you are most likely killing page views, time on site and jacking up your bounce rates. For what? Fake email addressees?<p>I understand having people give you their email address is a great feeling but the whole pop-up&#x2F;over thing is a poor user experience. Have you not learned anything from the past? Browser pop-ups sucked and pop-up&#x2F;over plugins are even more annoying. If you need to have one, move it and don&#x27;t obstruct my view. Any developer who feels the need to show a pop-up&#x2F;over is almost as bad as the publishers who require users to &#x27;like&#x27; to view a video.<p>There are two ways to do something. The first one is with taste. The second one is a pop-up&#x2F;over.<p>You decide.
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notduncansmith
We[1] always encourage our clients to go for the tasteful option. Trying to
force opt-ins for anything other than mass-market consumer crap has led to
universally negative results for our clients.

[1] [http://fullcourseemails.com](http://fullcourseemails.com)

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nathancahill
It's been widely blogged about as the most effective way to capture email
addresses. It'll probably be around for a while.

(flashing "YOU WON" banner ads were also effective, back in the day)

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unsquare
Not only are they effective, but they do not increase the bounce rate (in most
cases), unlike popular belief.

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_RPM
I find it annoying. I had an aggressive solicitation occur on twitter
recently. The person had exploited a new feature of twitter advertisements
where you can "click to subscribe". I wasn't aware that they would give my
email out via a click, but apparently so. The person would not stop trying to
follow up with it. I ended up muting the entity (or person)

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thwarted
It's even worse on mobile, where the popup/overlay is difficult to close
because it's larger than the viewport. If it takes me longer than 3 seconds to
figure out how to close the popup, I end up just closing the tab.

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andrewhillman
Don't even get me started with mobile ;) Complete nightmare.

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garysvpa1
I find them annoying too. They can just put their freebie message somewhere on
the page, not to obstruct view. If the reader wants the content, he will
subscribe.

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jordsmi
Welcome to the world of internet marketing/advertising where
annoying/obtrusive/ugly wins out over being user friendly.

