11 Best Practices to Increase Conversions with Popups

While surfing a website, more than once you have encountered unexpected and often unwelcome popups, asking you to subscribe to something, download a white paper, or whatever, interrupting your interesting reading. Possibly, they have annoyed you in such a way that you have preferred to switch to another site.

Knowing that popups can be annoying and even make you lose readers, as a website owner you may keep asking yourself if it pays to show them or if they are counterproductive to increase conversion.

The only way to know is to try it out. But before you start creating popups, here are some tips that will help your popups add value to your visitors.

#1 Identify Your Goals

Before creating any popup, ask yourself the following question: what result do you want to achieve with the popup? Perhaps you’re interested in growing your subscriber list, or raising awareness of a new product, or promoting sales, or reducing cart abandonment.

The design and behavior of the popup will be different depending on its purpose. For example, you will invite your visitors to subscribe to the newsletter when they are reading a post, or you will show a popup to reduce shopping cart abandonment when the potential buyer is about to leave the shopping cart page, etc. Remember that the behavior of any popup has to be fully aligned with the objectives that you have defined.

#2 Use the Right Format

When we talk about a popup we mean any floating window that appears and is displayed to grab the attention of your visitors. The format of the popups can be quite varied:

• Classic popups, in the middle of the screen, lightbox type.
• Popups that move from one side.
• Full screen popups.
• Top and bottom bars.

They all have different advantages and disadvantages, levels of intrusion, and are suitable for different use cases.

In terms of format, smaller popup types are more appropriate for small screens and larger ones are more suitable for advertising promotions. Those that block an entire screen are more suitable when you only want the user to perform that action before continuing to browse the site.

Even though it is best to test what works in each scenario, it is important to keep in mind that you have several alternatives to consider.

#3 Keep Your Popup Short and Simple: Use Only One Value Proposition

Using the minimum information in your popup will improve your results. Less is more.

Since you only have a few seconds to impress your visitor, brevity is essential to a successful popup design. That means getting straight to the point and being clear on your value proposition: what benefit can your customers expect when they click that call-to-action button?

Be persuasive with your text. Focus on the advantages of your product or service and use powerful words to capture attention. Be direct with your offer, but don’t be pushy. People appreciate a simple, clear and honest offer, but not being overwhelmed with unsolicited things.

With a well-crafted popup design you can convince people to take action and improve your conversion rate.

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WordPress.org

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#4 Ask Only For Essential Information

Even if we want to participate, collaborate or subscribe, we don’t like to fill in too many form fields. Fewer fields equals a higher conversion rate, so request only the information that is essential.

Furthermore, many visitors are also concerned about their privacy and do not want to provide too much information on an e-commerce website. Ask yourself how much information you really need from the user and how long it will take them to fill in the information you are requesting. If all you need is their email, why bother them with more fields?

# 5 Apply Color Contrast

One of the best practices to make sure a popup design works is to apply color contrast. For visitors to see a popup without displaying it in the middle of the page it is important to use opposing colors in your color scheme so that the most important element of the popup stands out.

For example, you can display a popup like the floating popup bar at the bottom of the Ultra Beauty page.

As you can see, the pink color of this popup contrasts with the cream-colored background of the site, but it is in harmony with the style of the site.

In general, using an eye-catching design is a good idea to capture the attention of visitors and, as you can see, in this case it is much less intrusive than showing a popup in the middle of the page.

#6 Use Creative and Quality Images

Make the most of the space you have by adding relevant images and different shapes to your popup layouts.

In fact, the more unique a popup is, the more likely the message will have an impact on the visitor.

Using related images and graphics is a good way to attract attention and is generally effective in getting people to act on your popup.

Some good ideas for using images in your popup layouts are:

• Images related to the message you want to send.
• Images of your products.
• People who represent your target audience or ideal client.
• Showing your products in use.

#7 Integrate Popups Well with the Rest of Your Website

In this post we started by saying that popups can be annoying. If you don’t want your visitors to abandon you as soon as they see a popup, make the user experience with popups as pleasant as possible.

How to do it?

Make sure popups integrate well with the rest of the site. You can do this by including branding elements such as your site or company logo, colors, fonts, and tone. This way the popup will look less like an unrelated ad and more like an organic part of the site.

#8 Highlight the Call to Action

Speaking of clarity, the sole purpose of any popup is to get users to take action. It is not a place to start a conversation, introduce yourself or do anything else. You have to get to the point quickly.

For this reason, the call to action must also be very clear and, more importantly, unique. Users should only perform a single task and not have to think about different options. Otherwise, you can create confusion and a confused visitor will not perform the action.

#9 Offer Value

Offer the user something useful and relevant to the context of the page they are browsing. If you ask for information, you must provide something valuable in return. After all, things are rarely free.

#10 Allow Easy Closing of Popups

An popup used incorrectly can be quite annoying. But do you know what is even worse? Popups that are hard to close.

Don’t make the mistake of using small unnoticeable and hard to close “X” that will only frustrate your visitors and make them leave your site. Or worse, don’t even think of creating a popup that doesn’t allow you to close it unless it is an essential requirement to continue browsing (such as GDPR windows or websites where you must previously confirm your age).

Making it easy for visitors to close your popups keeps them stay engaged with your site and perceive popups as part of the information displayed on your website. Don’t risk your bounce rate this way!

#11 Use the Right Tool

Finally, to implement all the above recommendations easily and without writing a single line of code create your popups with a plugin that adapts perfectly with the theme of your website. If you use the WordPress block editor on your site, the Nelio Popups plugin allows you to design your popups directly with blocks.

Content editing is done with the same native or third-party blocks you have (forms, block patterns, etc.) without having to program a single line of code. In addition, you have a set of additional features and functionalities that allow you to display popups with the desired behavior.

The free version of Nelio Popups allows you to:

• Create and manage as many popup windows as you want.
• Increase your brand awareness by customizing the design and look of your WordPress popup.
• Choose the appropriate and desired WordPress popup opening and closing animations.
• Create fullscreen popups that are great for getting new subscribers and marketing new products.
• Set up intelligent conditions to target visitors such as specific pages and posts, browser cookies or referrals.
• Show the popup when the user hovers a text or clicks somewhere on the web page to make your popup interactive and more desirable.
• Show the popup when the user scrolls down the page or after a set time delay to satisfy your visitors.
• Integrate with any third-party block-based plugin to include any block into your popups.

And if you want more features, subscribe to the Premium version of Nelio Popups.

Now, you are ready to start using popups on your own site. Fortunately, with a plugin like Nelio Popups this has never been easier.

Featured image by Arno Senoner on Unsplash.