Personally, I feel there is nothing more annoying than visiting a site and my task bar being hijacked by 20 instances of internet explorer pop ups. This is a mild exaggeration, but in all seriousness, not only am I not going to look at these pop ups, but I am probably going to immediately leave the site that initially caused the pop ups.
With the advent of tool bars like those belonging to Google, Yahoo, and Norton, pop ups are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Even your best cheap web hosting site has done away with pop ups for more effective sales text and concise information. The problem this “pop up blocker” presents for the online entrepreneur is that it is common knowledge that the average user spends 0-10 seconds on a web site. That is a very short amount of time to convey a sales pitch.
Many more typical salesmen run into grand problems when transitioning from phone or in person sales to the web. It is a completely different type of environment. Reference every e-book sales site you have ever seen. Though these sites often times pack in a great sales pitch, the long, scrolling monotony leaves us visually bored and is so uninteresting that we cannot hit the Back button quick enough.
DHTML seems to the way to go if you would like to make a pop up that is not blocked. Typically, these pop ups appear almost embedded within the page and do not spawn a separate browser window, which is what gets them past most pop up blockers. However, before implementing one of these scripting tools, I would strongly advise that you evaluate the strength of your sales text. Is it concise? To the point? Or do you drone on to excessive lengths about the benefits of purchasing your product?
A popup can be used to grab the attention of your visitor for additional services. If you have a newsletter that also helps you build a customer base, then a popup might be the best way to get sign ups for that newsletter. Highlight in your pop up that the newsletter is free.
Do not just reiterate your sales page in your popup. This is irritating and very ineffective. Try to offer a better deal or something that appears dynamic to your customers. For example, an effective pop up would be “Thank you for stopping by! Today, we are having a special and our prices are cut in half! Would you like to take advantage of this offer?” Something like this adds incentive to your pop up and definitely makes it interesting. These types of pop ups are often called squeeze pages or optin-overs.
If you are unfamiliar with scripting or DHTML, there are some fantastic pop up generators and DHTML guides available.
- w3schools.com – If you are looking to teach yourself DHTML or just want to learn the basics before you implement this code, start with W3Schools. They are very comprehensive and offer all sorts of educational materials on every browser scripting language you can think of!
- dynamicdrive.com (more specifically: http://dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex8/index.html ) – This site offers free scripts and you do not even have to register. They offer a slew of pop up window scripts that can get past pop up blockers, but you do need to know a little bit of code in order to implement them.
- tamingthebeast.net/generators/popup-hover-ad.htm – This site offers a really good pop up generator that to the best of my knowledge cannot be blocked with today’s technologies. It is free and one does not have to register to use it. Once you generate the pop up, you will have to paste the code into your current site. However, they offer very clear instructions on how to do this.
- htmlbasix.com/popup.shtml – Though HTMLbasix is a FANTASTIC resource site, their pop ups can easily be blocked. However, this is the recommended option to go with if your pop up will be showing content from a third party site.
If you do not feel comfortable implementing a located script or learning a web language (or are just not interested), feel free to contact your cheap hosting company. Though they will not do the work for you without a fee, they may be able to recommend vendors or web designers they work with on a regular basis. Your hosting company will probably have a list of companies that other clients have used and walked away satisfied.
