
F*** those popups – signing up those who deserve it - anc84
http://thosefuckingpopups.tumblr.com/
======
gk1
In case you're wondering why anyone would use these _obviously_ annoying
popups, here's why: If done right, they actually work.

Here's a real example:

In March I added a delayed popup to my blog to invite people to subscribe for
future updates about user acquisition. It was on a delayed timer so that the
reader has a chance to at least get part-way through the post. Also, if you
closed it out once then you wouldn't see it again for something like 30 days.

Since then, it's been seen by 11,848 people, of whom 232 (1.96%) signed up.

Most blog readers come for the article, not for the blog or the company. They
read the article then carry on with their lives, even if the article was very
helpful or interesting to them.

Here's how I see it: I now have 232 people who are actually interested in
learning about user acquisition, and gave me permission to send them more
helpful posts. I wouldn't have this if I never asked them to enter their
email. I realize the price to pay for this is mildly annoying the other 98%.

With that said, I'm trying to minimize that annoyance. I'm now experimenting
with a less invasive prompt; a thin bar at the top of the screen, that also
hides when you're scrolling down (presumably reading). If it still gets
subscribers _and_ is less annoying to the others, then I'll keep it.

tl;dr - Companies know and don't care that popups are annoying, because
they're effective. Some companies care a little and try to make the popups
less annoying to those who wouldn't have signed up anyway.

~~~
alyx
"I realize the price to pay for this is mildly annoying the other 98%."

To me this does not make sense, and is exactly the reason I avoid annoying
users in my applications (advertising or otherwise). Because you definitely
have numbers to back up the effectiveness of the popup (although I would argue
it is not effective). What you don't have is of the 98% you annoyed, how many
will not return because of the annoyance (by choice anyway).

Or to put in another way,

Would you implement a feature in your software that only benefitted 2% and
annoyed the 98%?

Seems like this kind of approach hints at a deeper issue here and that's
effective targeting.

~~~
notdanariely
My other comment in this thread addressed this, but basically, I think it's a
filter for removing those site visitors unlikely to become customers, allowing
a company to focus on people who are receptive to the medium (popup) as well
as the message. These people are going to be easier to advertise to, because
they don't get pissed off when you put an ad in front of them.

The software analogy is invalid, because those people are already your users
or customers. In the case of reading the article, think of a popup as a
criterion filter in much the same way as 419 scammers use poor english.

------
glaberficken
The worst type is the: "We would love to have your feedback" popup overlay
upon entering a site. I've just landed on your site! How am I supposed to have
an opinion of it already? Well I do now, the first 3 seconds sucked big time!

~~~
sp332
Microsoft would ask if you wanted to take a survey when you were done with a
site, then pop-under a window that would detect when you had closed the first
one and start a survey.

------
rfrey
I'm struggling with this now and I could use some insight.

I absolutely share OP's loathing of these pop-ups. On the other hand, I'm just
starting to try to drive traffic to my physical-product website (through PPC
ads, facebook marketing, etc).

I KNOW I need to try to collect some contact information. But I _cannot_ find
a way to do it that isn't appalling.

\- Collect on landing page? How do they know if they want to sign up, they
just got here.

\- Put on Contact Us page? Nobody will see it.

\- Pop up a window after 30 seconds, or three pages viewed, or whatever? I end
up on thosefuckingpopus.tumbler.com, and for good reason.

\- Don't do anything? Patrick McKenzie finds my house and draws rude things on
my face while I sleep.

Has anybody come up with an _acceptable_ design solution for collecting emails
from people who are interested in being on your list?

~~~
Alupis
_You_ find them annoying, but your customers probably wont.

Remember you are not the best case when deciding what is effective at
capturing your audience. You are more "internet savvy" or whatever...

Popups, email marketing, retargeted ads, et al are very, very effective means
of capturing an audience online.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Don't fool yourself. Everybody finds them annoying. Like the frog in the
frying pan who sits as the heat is turned up, folks have begun to believe its
the price of visiting the internet.

~~~
Alupis
> Don't fool yourself. Everybody finds them annoying

I don't believe that's true. What we see here is an exhibit of the False-
Consensus Effect[1]. You believe they are annoying, and many on HN believe
they are annoying, therefore they (popups) must be annoying to everyone. This
logic ignores the fact that 99% of web users are not technical, and view the
web in an entirely different light.

On ecommerce websites, popup forms are incredibly effective at capturing
customer email addresses later used in direct email marketing. So effective,
there is an entire industry built around providing the technology and controls
to target certain customers with the popups (viewed 6 pages but did not add
anything to cart yet, sat on a product page for 2 minutes, etc...).

For a lot of popups, an incentive is offered to the potential customer. Give
us your email address and we'll give you 5% off your next purchase. We're
basically buying the right to email market to you... understanding full well
that some customers will be annoyed with the popup, and some might even
provide fake details. But for the majority of customers, we just bought their
loyalty. They will make a purchase with their new 5% off coupon, and will
likely shop the site again when we email them promo offers later on.

If you visited one of my sites, and got annoyed by the popup, then I'd be OK
with that... you were not my target. But if your parents or grandparents
visited my site... chances are they'd fill out the popup. They are my target.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False-
consensus_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False-consensus_effect)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I think somebody is fooling themselves, and I think it isn't me. Its self-
serving to stick a dialog box in somebody's face, then spend 100's of words
defending that choice by denying the obvious.

All the arguments above are about the site, not about the visitor. "capturing
customer email", "Buying the right to email market" are not about the visitor
gaining value by reading a blog entry. And those who object to the process are
"not my target". Very convenient. Perhaps I was a whale with a blank check,
reading the blog entry to find out more. One popup and now I'm gone. You'll
never know, since you've already convinced yourself this is all ok.

~~~
Alupis
> Perhaps I was a whale with a blank check, reading the blog entry to find out
> more. One popup and now I'm gone.

You don't run websites (especially ecommerce websites) hoping and praying for
a "whale" to come along and bless you with their deep pockets... just like you
don't play baseball hedging on hitting only home runs. That's a recipe for
failure.

> Its self-serving to stick a dialog box in somebody's face

Yes, that's the point. I want their email addresses.

> then spend 100's of words defending that choice by denying the obvious.

Frankly, you cannot argue with the effectiveness of popup email collection.
Every time we blast our 150,000+ email marketing list (mostly gathered via the
popup as well as other means), the websites are almost crushed under the
traffic load. 1 email can generate $10's of thousands in revenue... so yes,
collecting emails is of very high importance for us, and many similar
ecommerce companies.

> are not about the visitor gaining value by reading a blog entry

You are certainly right -- it's more about the company gaining value, however,
a great many of our customers gain value by seeing deals on products they are
interested in. That is a win-win for everyone.

> And those who object to the process are "not my target".

If you aren't buying something from my site, or clicking an ad, then you are
not my target. Instead you are just consuming my company's resources and
ultimately won't convert into a sale. To be frank, we don't want those types
of visitors on the website, although it's unavoidable (ecommerce generally
considers an average 3-5% conversion rate to be good).

The point is, you are annoyed by popups, and choose to punish sites that
employ them. Just like some choose to punish sites that provide free content
but pay the bills with ads. It's a strong bias to impose on the rest of the
internet users... especially when you are in the minority percentile.

------
techtalsky
You know, the age of ACTUAL pop-up windows really sucked, and it was amazing
when browsers rendered them largely obsolete by limiting how websites could
launch another window but at least all of those had the X in the SAME EXACT
PLACE.

The new crop of lightboxed modal popups that are now ubiquitous are 100 times
worse since they:

\- are modal

\- often work poorly on mobile

\- have as many different dismiss mechanisms as there are popups

\- web marketers love them

~~~
amyjess
I really wish there was a way to globally disable all lightboxes without
having to disable JavaScript entirely.

Maybe a Machine Learning model to prevent scripts from executing if the
classifier indicates it will spawn a lightbox...

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
Something as simple as checking that nothing dynamic blocks too much text
would detect most of them currently.

But it quickly turns into a cat-and-mouse game.

~~~
markh1967
That would stop any drop-down menu navigation bars from working though.

------
thom_nic
I've definitely noticed a trend in technical blogs/ newsletters (some of which
have been featured on HN) throw up a "like this article? Sign up for our
newsletter" popup after you start to scroll down the page.

"I don't fucking know if I like this article, you're interrupting me while I'm
still in the middle of reading it!"

~~~
caw
Is it popping up halfway through or when it thinks you're mousing over to
close the tab? Sudden upward mouse movements trigger some of those javascript
retention popups, even though you were just moving to the scroll bar or
something.

But while we're on the topic, the recent trend of "No thanks, I don't want to
get all this awesome stuff" or "No, I don't want to become a master in subject
X" buttons are very condescending.

~~~
sp332
I have seen that, but some of them pop up partway down a page or even on a
timer.

------
jackgavigan
When I'm forced to provide an email address to access wifi but the email
address doesn't have to be valid, I typically use something like pr@ or press@
the responsible organisation's mail domain.

------
astazangasta
I've never understood this design. Someone came to your website to do
something. Why is the first thing you do is give them a bad experience?

~~~
rokhayakebe
Because it works.

I had a small deals aggregator site which got most of its traffic from Google.
When users landed I knew they were interested in the content, and I showed it
through a semi-transparent background and forced them to enter their emails
before being able to click through. I remember conversions going from 10-20
new emails per day to over 100 emails per day.

~~~
ak39
Ok fair enough. But, if I were you, just to be 100% excited about this
strategy, I'd ask myself these questions:

1\. Am I measuring the quality of the email addresses before an after the
introduction of the popup?

2\. Am I measuring the number of visitors who abandoned my site (closed my
page) immediately after I interrupted their visit with my popup?

Ultimately, the question ought to be: what am I really measuring? Is it the
number of new rows in my emails table or the impact on brand perception and
ultimately bottom line?

~~~
sukilot
As a web marketer, I am paid to generate leads, not revenue. Revenue is
someone else's problem. Yay non-owner employment.

------
eridal
I'm ok with those as long as they react to ESC key .. otherwise it's instantly
close tab

What I hate the most are those install alerts, during page load, which then
ends up being a phonegap/cordoba of SAME site (!)

..or to be redirected to "m.example.com" because they think that an special
diminished experience best fit for my perfectly capable phone

------
wesbos
As much as I hate this tactic - and I dont use it - it's really attractive
because it works _so_ well for collecting emails / signups / likes / whatever.

You might piss off one person, but 10 more sign up. You decide if it's worth
it or not.

~~~
probably_wrong
> You might piss off one person, but 10 more sign up. You decide if it's worth
> it or not.

The current top post says he has a 1.96% success rate.

So it's more like "piss off 98 people, sign up 2". I'm not convinced that's
worth it.

------
Cthulhu_
Are there any good pop-up blockers for ads like these? I know one of Firefox's
original USP's was having a built-in popup blocker because popups were so
annoying back then, so why not for these?

~~~
sp332
I'm not sure, because some of them are actually used to log in to sites. You'd
have to have an exhaustive blacklist, or some heuristics that block common
copy-and-paste versions but wouldn't block all of them.

If you only care about the text on a page, Readability will pull it out and
show it to you in a plain style.
[https://www.readability.com/](https://www.readability.com/) Safari already
has this built-in, and it's in Firefox Beta so it should be in the next
shipping version.

------
ivraatiems
The only pop up window I really hate is Quora's, because in order to remove it
without signing up for an account I have to go into the developer tools and
delete its enclosing div. Quora, I don't want to sign up for your site, and I
don't want to "complete" an account I don't have. I just want to see the
answer to the question you were somehow the top search result for.

~~~
steveridout
or just add ?share=1 to the URL

~~~
rspeer
As the parent poster is complaining about "completing" an account, I think
he's in the state where he once said "fine, I'll log in with Google to make
this popup go away", at which point it asks for pages of additional personal
information and _will not let you back out_.

Not even if you leave the site and come back. Not even with share=1. You have
to ban it from using your Google account to regain control.

~~~
ivraatiems
Yes -- this is what happened to me. I will try deauthorizing it from Google to
see if that fixes my problem, actually.

Edit: So I revoked access through my Google Account, and it's still doing it.
Emailed privay@quora.com to see if they can help.

------
thisjepisje
I get the impression some of these only pop up when I move my mouse to my
tab/address bar. Am I right or is it just in my mind?

------
fanf2
Is there enough commonality in the way these popups work that would make it
easy to kill them automatically?

The problem is this is likely to cause problems for image light boxes. I hate
those too (I would prefer a slideshow on a separate page) but unlike stupid
popups they are necessary for the working of the site.

------
Nadya
I was just thinking about these annoying popups - funny I ran into this
thread!

I manage a host file that redirects any site I run across that gives me a
popup back to my home page. I refuse to visit these sites - even if the popup
is a one-time-only thing (which it isn't for those of us who clear cookies)

------
crazy_geek
When I get these, I use postmaster@domain.of.page. It seems if we can
generally agree on which one we all pick (or some small number of choices), we
might have a chance of making a dent when the postmaster starts getting
effectively self-spammed.

------
userbinator
...and this is another one of the reasons why I keep JavaScript off by
default.

------
eli
So long as they keep working, those popups aren't going anywhere.

------
detaro
Idea for a browser plugin?

------
unwind
That's ... angry.

I think "signing up" needs editing, it's not idiomatic English (at least to my
non-native ears).

Perhaps "naming and shaming", heh.

~~~
mikeash
It looks like they are literally signing up the offenders for their own
newsletters in these popups, so the title is appropriate.

------
goda90
I don't see why Dropbox is on there. That's just a sign in/register window for
a service that requires an account.

~~~
sp332
When you try to _download_ the software, they try to make you sign up or log
in for no reason.

~~~
mschuster91
IIRC on the old versions the installer had your login data attached so you did
not have to relogin inside the app once installed. But I believe this does not
work anymore since code signing.

