Popups are one of the best tools to build your list and boost your instant conversion rates. But of course, they’re only successful if they’re in working order. And also—only if your visitors aren’t seeing them as annoying interruptions while they’re trying to browse your site.
So here’s the million-dollar question: why don’t some popups convert—and what can you do about it?
I’ve got viable solutions for you, but first, you need to understand the underlying issues that are making your popups less effective than they could be.
The simple truth is that your popups are not converting because your visitors are not connecting to your message. While this answers the main question, it’s worth investing some attention into decoding why your messages are falling short.
Let’s see the 5 main reasons!
1. Your message might be irrelevant
You may remember the famous episode from Wolf of Wall Street, “Sell me this pen.”
You can only sell a pen to someone who needs it to write. The same is true for popups: if you want to “sell” a message that isn’t relevant to the user who’s reading it, they won’t care.
Your message is usually irrelevant when your visitors are in a different phase of their customer journey. That’s why understanding customer awareness levels and then creating popups for each visitor segment is crucial for improving your conversion rates.
2. Your message might be unclear
Another possible reason popups don’t convert is simply because they’re too confusing for visitors. Many marketers tend to forget to focus on just one message, and they end up putting multiple offers and calls-to-action on their popup. (This makes it hard for visitors to understand your message and they close the popup instead.)
While having multiple goals is understandable, you’ll want to prioritize them. If you have a larger idea to deliver, you can use a multi-page popup sequence. Each page of your popup should have a super simple message with a single call-to-action.
3. Your popups aren’t visually enticing
Grabbing someone’s attention and cutting through the “noise” is not as simple in today’s fast-paced world. Marketers know it when they create Facebook ads or other interruption-based display ads. And it’s important to keep that in mind when crafting your popups.
You’ll need to package your message in a visually enticing way. This will get your visitors’ attention and allow them to comprehend your message.
4. Your popup is timed badly
Timing is very important when it comes to popups.
Many online stores display their popups right when their visitors land on the website to maximize their popups’ visibility. Although this is a valid reason, this strategy usually works against itself because most visitors will just close your popup without actually reading your message.
Instead—you should let your customers digest the main content of your website, and trigger your popup with some delay. The best is to use exit intent to minimize interruption. And if you’d like to notify offer-ready users sooner, you can display a teaser. This will significantly increase your conversion rate.
5. Your popup may display to the wrong visitors
Some popups are compelling, beautiful, and triggered at the right moment. And yet they don’t convert. Why? They’re simply targeting the wrong segment.
Usually, the target audience is too broad (in the worst-case scenario: all of your visitors). Your customers can each be in a very different phase of their buying process. Even if you create the best offer possible, it will be relevant to only 10-20% of your visitors—leaving the remaining 80-90% uninterested at best, irritated at worst.
Summing up
The difference between a great and a poorly converting popup can be tremendous. Often the champion-performing popup converts more than ten times better than those that aren’t optimized.
The issues we’ve covered in this post are easy to solve. By investing some time into correcting your popups, you will start to see higher conversion rates, less annoyance for visitors, and you can create a remarkable user experience.
If you’d like to learn how to run more effective popups that your customers will love to see and will increase your revenue up to 10 times, read our Ultimate Guide to Popups here.
Share this
Written by
