Engaging your site visitors with Pop-ups

5 ways to extend the use of popup technology on your site

Using the latest technology to engage visitors to your site is a must. In a recent post on using popups to grow email subscribers, Kath Pay discussed some best practices for capturing email addresses using popup technology.

In this post I’m looking at some of the ways you can extend popup technology to do more for your site. You’d be surprised how much that popups can do. Popups can be used to:

• 1. Ask for feedback

The latest popup technology allows you to fine tune who you show your message to. For instance, let’s say you only want your message to appear to people who leave your site without browsing for more than a minute.

When these short-term visitors go to leave your site, you can ask them, 'Was there another product or topic you would find interesting?'. Using popup technology this way helps you learn what articles and topics have an immediate impact on your readers or what products or categories appeal to your shoppers. Then, you can feature these articles or products and have a greater chance of engaging readers and buyers on their first visit.

• 2. Build your email subscriber list

In Kath's post, she spoke about how to make use of popups to build your email list. There’s a good reason why popups work so well to build your email subscriber list. A visitor to your blog may not have time to read every article on your site. When they sign up for your email list, they have a chance to read more articles and topics that might connect with them later. And, you get another chance to market to these visitors.

A popup usually gets at least 3 times more subscribers than a sidebar or top widget.

Here's an example from Smart Insights discussed in Kath's post.

Asking a visitor to signup for your list before they are about to leave your site is highly effective.

You can achieve signup rates between 3% and 5% using popups that show up when your visitors try to leave your site. These are called exit-intent popups

• 3, Promote a free giveaway

Everyone loves FREE. Offering a free giveaway as an incentive is a great way to use popup technology to engage your visitors.

An ebook is one of the best free giveaways.

Take a few hours and write an ebook about one of the more popular topics or products on your site. You can also take one of your popular blog posts and expand it by adding content or interviews. Your visitors will appreciate the effort — offering a free ebook will increase engagement— and, an ebook helps establish you as a trusted voice in your industry.

• 4. Promote one of your featured products or articles

When you have a product or an article that you think every visitor on your site should see, use popup technology. The featured product or article can be one that’s popular with a wide-range of your audience, or something new that you want people to see.

“Oh, I see you are about to leave,” your popup can say. “a lot of our visitors have been talking about ...” Then you can redirect the visitor to one of your featured products or articles. This is a great way to keep visitors on your site and make sure that everyone who visits your site sees one of your featured products or articles.

• 5. Test your products and articles

Popup technology can also be used as a testing tool. You can use popup technology to learn which products and articles interest your visitors the most. Like asking for feedback, running A/B tests using popups is a quick and effective way to find new ways of connecting with your audience.

Traditional methods of A/B testing are time-consuming and expensive. It’s takes quite a bit of effort  to build different landing pages and drive traffic to those pages. A/B testing with popup technology lets you discover which of your products and articles are most interesting, with very little effort.

Popup technology can help you learn what engages your visitors. By asking for feedback, or A/B testing different products and articles, you can connect with your audience and keep visitors on your site.

Most importantly, using the latest popup technology allows you to fine tune your popups so they don’t bother your visitors. You get a chance to learn about your audience or promote an ebook, and you never have to worry about annoying your visitors. It’s a win-win.