How to Implement Popups Without Irritating Your Audience

As effective as popups are, they can also be a major turn off for your readers. Most marketers and bloggers love them because they convert really well, but at the same, time readers tend to find them annoying and choose to never return to your website when they’re met with a popup form.

As a business owner, you want to ensure your optin forms are converting rather than turning away visitors and potential subscribers. So, how do you go about implementing popups without irritating your audience? Is it even possible to implement them without annoying your readers?

The answer is: yes, you can. It’s all about ensuring that your popups do not look like an obstacle to your content.

Here are some ways to implement your popup forms without irritating your readers.

5 Ways to Make Popup Forms Less Irritating

1. Use an exit-intent popup

Showing a popup form right when someone is about to leave your page is known as exit-intent popups. The technology behind it determines when a user is about to leave your site and then serves a popup. It breaks the flow and users tend to stop and see what just popped up. They are known to be quite effective, especially if you use an appealing reason to subscribe to your email list. They are also less annoying because they user has already spent some time engaging with your site and if they leave anyway, chances are they wouldn’t be a hot lead. You really have nothing to lose with this method, so why not give it a try?

2. Present a Pop-up at the End of Your Content

Waiting to trigger a popup until after the reader has finished reading your article is another way of capturing email addresses without being annoying. Most visitors base their decision to subscribe on how good your content is and by triggering it right when they are done, you’re capitalizing on the moment while your content is still fresh in their mind. It converts well and you’re not disrupting their attention while they are still reading or exploring your site.

3. Use a two-step optin

You might be wondering what is the difference between a regular optin and a two-step optin. A regular optin is what you see on most websites nowadays. It literally pops out of nowhere and asks for your email address in exchange for a lead magnet.

A two-step optin is slightly more refined and like the name suggests, requires two steps that a user needs to complete in order to gain access to your offer. Here’s how it works. Using an email capture plugin, you can insert a link for your lead magnet anywhere in your content. Once a visitor clicks on it, only then a popup form is triggered asking for their email address.

In this case, you would be offering a content upgrade – a form of lead magnet that’s very closely related to the article they are reading, like a PDF of the article they can read later at their own convenience.

The reason this method is not irritating is because it operates under a very simple psychological principle: we humans are compelled to finish what we started. By clicking on a link, we initiated an action and we feel obligated to complete it. And since it’s already related to the topic we were interested in, chances are we will want to get our hands on even more content about it.

4. Make it a game

We all love games and quizzes. But what’s even more fun than filling out the quiz? The results of course! Think of a way you can turn your content into an interactive quiz and ask your visitors to submit their email to get their result. The quiz doesn’t have to be long nor complicated – the key is to make it as simple as it can be and fun for your visitors.

5. Use visuals

Unless you’re offering an actual physical product, your readers will have a hard time visualising what it is they are signing up for. You can remedy this by including an image of your content upgrade, even it’s just a sheet of paper that represents your PDF or a checklist. By seeing the image, your readers will be able to visualize what they’re getting and imagine themselves reading through it or checking the items off on your list. This in turn increases conversions and doesn’t irritate your readers since now they have a clear picture in their mind.

Final Thoughts

The methods for implementing popups above are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more creative ways to implement popups without irritating your audience. What other ways to implement appealing popups can you think of? Let us know in the comments below!