How To Convert Web Visitors Using Website PopUps

Did you know that nearly 70% of your first-time website visitors will leave your site, never to return? One of the biggest causes of this rapid exit is a lack of connection with your audience.

Many of your website visitors don’t land on your home page. In fact, they usually land on one of your landing pages. Once they do, you have one chance to convert them into a lead or capture their email so you can add them to your audience.

If you don’t connect with them immediately, you risk losing them forever. But, wait, let’s bring the website popup into the conversation.

Website popups allow you to grab your website visitor’s attention at just the right time. You are grabbing them and sticking a call to action right in front of them with your website popup.

The goal of your company’s website is to turn visitors into leads, and popups are quite effective at capturing attention so you can achieve your conversion rate optimization goals.

In this article, we look at how to convert web visitors using website popups.

Leverage the Exit Popup

You can grab your website visitors right at the moment they are getting ready to exit your website with an exit popup.

This has the potential to be a huge lead generator for your website.

When you use the exit popup, you display a message to your website visitor just as they begin to navigate away. Most commonly, these messages tell the visitor why they shouldn’t leave your site.

They might contain a video, a special offer or promotion. The exit popup can also include a form for them to submit their email to receive the promotion, sign up for your email list or download a whitepaper.

This is your absolute last chance to catch their attention, so you’ll want to include a very strong call to action.

A unique popup that has been gaining ground in popularity is the negative-ask-option. For example, when a visitor tries to leave your page, they may be met with messages like this:

• “Yes! I’d like to take advantage of 20% off!” or “No! I definitely don’t want a coupon!”
• “Yes! I’d like to see how to pay less taxes!” or “No! I’d rather not learn how to save money on my taxes.”

This type of negative-ask-option literally has the power to make your website visitor feel guilty for not accepting the coupon or the free guide, while encouraging your visitor to take the affirmative action.

Online businesses that use exit popups convert web visitors at a consistent rate, often doubling their conversion rates using them.

Create the Perfect Popup

There are a few tricks to creating the perfect popup so you can convert web visitors. We’ll list them here for you. Keep this checklist handy when you go to creating your website popups.

• Set popups to show at just the right time. Note: showing a popup the minute a visitor lands on your site isn’t the best use of the popup. You want to set your popups for just the right time. If it’s an exit popup, as the visitor moves their mouse to leave is a good time. You can also set cookie-based triggers to hit visitors with the right popup at the right time.

• Make your popup match your website design and branding. Don’t use the standard template with your popup plugin. You do want your popup to stand out, so consider reversing your colors. Make sure your call to action is strong and highly visible. Consider A/B testing popups to see what works best for you.

• Speaking of your call to action – it’s crucial to your success. Don’t let this get lost on the page. Be strong, creative and enticing.

• Use the fewest number of form fields you possibly can. Many business owners want to “qualify” their leads immediately, so they ask for too much information. This can be a popup pitfall. You only want your website visitor to spend a few seconds providing their information. Don’t make them think too hard about whether or not they want to fill out your form.

• One study found that decreasing the number of form fields from four to three results in an improvement of nearly half.

• Don’t get too personal. You can always get more information from your website visitor on your first follow-up. Also, consider allowing the social media sign up.

• Acknowledge the sign up. Make sure you set your form to provide a thank you and a short note that you’ll be in touch. You can also provide them with their next steps on this page. Or, conversely, you can provide their white paper or coupon code.

• Don’t hide your close button. You don’t want to trap your website visitor on your popup form with no easy way out. Even if they don’t fill out your form this time, you don’t want to limit your chances that they’ll come back and fill it out next time.

Final Thoughts

Now that we’ve discussed how to convert web visitors using popups, it’s time to put them to good use on your own website.

Make sure that you use them in the proper manner and at the proper time to avoid annoying your website visitors.

It’s good to remember that popups can drive your conversions, but only if they are used right. Use them to provide something of value to your customer, something that catches their attention. In turn, they’ll provide you something infinitely more valuable – their email address.

Why do you need to provide value with your website popup? When you provide value, your customers don’t see your popup as an interruption to their daily Internet browsing. They see you as providing something worthwhile, and this goes a long way towards building your credibility and enhancing their trust in your business.

Lastly, remember to test your website popups. Consider text and button changes as well as formatting and design changes. This helps you choose which popup works best so you can increase your conversion rate.

Are you ready to squeeze more profit out of your website and convert web visitors using website popups? Great! We’re here to help you optimize your landing pages to increase conversions. In fact, we promise you we’ll do just that.

With our guarantee, you can rest assured we will increase your profits through landing page optimization.

If you’re ready to work with the leader in landing pages and conversion rate optimization, contact us today. We’ll provide you with our FREE site performance analysis so we can work on your landing page conversion rates.

Image: Jens Kreuter