User Experience Protector
Use a smart cap on how many campaigns your visitors see without compromising on conversions.
User Experience Protector is an account-level setting in OptiMonk that acts as a smart cap on the total number of campaigns shown to any individual visitor — preventing the experience of being hit by multiple popups in quick succession, even when many campaigns are simultaneously active and technically eligible for the same visitor. As your campaign library grows, so does the risk of overlap: a visitor qualifying for an exit-intent offer, a free shipping bar, a newsletter popup, and a product recommendation simultaneously would see all of them within a single session if left unchecked. User Experience Protector prevents this by applying an intelligent limit based on your chosen protection level, then displaying eligible campaigns in priority order — highest-priority campaigns are shown first, lower-priority ones are held back or skipped if the cap has been reached. Three settings are available: Safe (optimized for user experience, restricting campaign frequency more conservatively, which may reduce impressions), Normal (the recommended balance of conversions and user experience), and Off (no intelligent protection — every eligible campaign fires exactly as configured). The setting is configured in Settings → User Experience Protector and applies globally across all campaigns on your account.
Key benefits
- Grow your campaign library without worrying about overwhelming visitors. The natural instinct when scaling OptiMonk is to create more campaigns for more goals — exit intent, cart recovery, newsletter capture, upsells, seasonal promotions. Without User Experience Protector, running ten campaigns simultaneously means some visitors may be interrupted multiple times in a single session. With User Experience Protector active, you can create as many campaigns as your strategy requires and trust that the system will ensure no visitor is shown more than an appropriate number of them.
- Intelligent filtering that respects campaign priority. When the User Experience Protector cap is reached for a visitor in a session, it does not suppress campaigns randomly — it uses Campaign Priority to determine which campaigns display. High-priority campaigns (marked with the red up arrow in the campaign list) are shown first. Normal-priority campaigns are shown next. Low-priority campaigns are displayed last, or withheld entirely if the cap is reached before them. This means your most commercially important campaigns always reach visitors even when the total campaign count is capped.
- A single account-level setting protects the entire visitor experience. Unlike frequency limits, which must be configured individually per campaign, User Experience Protector is configured once and applies automatically to all campaigns across your account. This means adding a new campaign never requires reviewing whether it will over-expose visitors alongside existing ones — the protector evaluates all active campaigns together and enforces the cap globally, without any per-campaign maintenance required.
How it works
Click on your account info in the navigation bar and select Settings. Find the User Experience Protector section and choose one of the three available settings: Safe, Normal, or Off.
Select Safe if your priority is protecting the visitor experience above all else — this setting applies a more conservative cap on campaign impressions per session, which may reduce total impressions but minimizes the risk of any visitor feeling overwhelmed. Select Normal for the recommended balance between conversions and user experience — this setting applies an intelligent cap that limits excessive popup exposure without significantly reducing conversion opportunities. Select Off to disable the protector entirely — all campaigns will fire exactly as their individual trigger and targeting settings dictate.
When User Experience Protector is active and the display cap is reached for a visitor, OptiMonk uses each campaign's Priority setting to determine which campaigns are displayed. Open any campaign, find the Priority control in the Status and Schedule bar, and set it to High, Normal, or Low. Campaigns marked High Priority are always shown first; those marked Low Priority are shown last or withheld if the cap is met. Campaign priority can be adjusted at any time without pausing or republishing the campaign.
Frequently asked questions
What is User Experience Protector in OptiMonk?+
User Experience Protector is an account-level setting that places a smart cap on the total number of campaigns shown to any individual visitor per session. When multiple campaigns are simultaneously active and eligible for the same visitor, User Experience Protector ensures only the most relevant — and highest-priority — campaigns are displayed, preventing visitors from being overwhelmed by successive popups. Three settings are available: Safe (most conservative), Normal (balanced), and Off (no cap). It is configured in Settings → User Experience Protector.
What is the difference between User Experience Protector and campaign-level Frequency Limits?+
Frequency Limits are configured per campaign and control how many times that specific campaign can appear to a visitor within a defined time window. User Experience Protector is an account-level setting that controls how many campaigns in total a visitor can see across all active campaigns per session — regardless of each individual campaign's frequency setting. They operate at different levels and work together: Frequency Limits prevent a single campaign from being overused; User Experience Protector prevents the total campaign set from being overexposed.
What does "Safe" versus "Normal" actually limit?+
Both Safe and Normal apply a cap on the number of campaigns shown per visitor per session — Safe applies a more conservative cap (fewer total campaigns shown), while Normal applies a more permissive one that balances impression volume with user experience protection. The exact numeric thresholds are managed by OptiMonk's intelligent system rather than being user-configurable, and they adapt based on the number and nature of active campaigns in your account.
How does User Experience Protector decide which campaigns to show when the cap is reached?+
When the cap is reached and one or more campaigns must be withheld, OptiMonk uses Campaign Priority to determine which campaigns display. High-priority campaigns are shown first, Normal-priority campaigns second, and Low-priority campaigns last. If the cap is reached before a low-priority campaign can be shown, it is suppressed for that visitor in that session. Campaign priority is set per campaign using the three-option switch (High, Normal, Low) on the campaign page.
Should I turn User Experience Protector off if I want maximum impressions?+
Turning User Experience Protector off is appropriate in specific cases — for example, if you have carefully designed campaigns with non-overlapping targeting rules that prevent any visitor from qualifying for more than one campaign at a time. In most cases where multiple campaigns run simultaneously with overlapping audiences, leaving User Experience Protector on Normal produces better long-term results: visitors who are not overwhelmed by popups have lower bounce rates, higher trust, and better lifetime conversion rates than visitors who are shown every qualifying campaign in a single session.
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