It may be true in the normal people market segment that it will increase sign-ups, but it's absolutely not true for me.
Admittedly I'm not normal, but it might be considering the market at which the site is aimed, and the type of people you're trying to get signed up. I have significant disposable income, and actively look for ways of trading that money for either time or knowledge. Having that modal pretty much guarantees I won't be back.
So ask, it might increase number of emails in your list, but will it increase your income?
It's a wonderful way to get people to leave your site immediately. It showed up before I was even a paragraph into the article. First off, I have no idea if I even care to get updates from you guys at that point, because I haven't read anything yet. Secondly, I ended up not reading anything, because as soon as it pops up, I left, as I'm sure the majority of other readers did as well.
I only came to the comments to make sure someone pointed out how awful that dialog is.
It's a wonderful way to get people to leave your site immediately
So true. As soon as I saw it I backed out, and it leaves a really bad impression. Let me reveal something important: I just want to read the post. That's it. Simple, right? You'd think bloggers would be able to figure this out.
For everyone downvoting Jamie, there are so many bloggers who have released their data on interstitials. In many cases, the trade-off is worth it: annoy a small percentage of users, but enjoy higher overall conversion rates.
I agree that there could be better ways to serve the popup (time-delay, wait until 2nd article viewed, etc) but if your argument is simply "turn it off because I dont like it, and it will never work" -- go look it up. One such example:
So is someone loudly hawking their wares to everyone on the street. However, Louis Vuitton's hands off approach gets much higher LTV from its clientele.
I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that I could monetize LV's website much better than its currently monetized today (FWIW I doubt that is the goal of their website) with techniques not too dissimilar from something like this.
