5 Tips to Design Popups Your Customers Will Love
Popups are an incredibly effective way to boost conversion and customer retention on your eCommerce website. According to Conversific.com 30% of the Top 1000 US ecommerce sites use popups – 22% are using entry popups, 14% are using exit popups, and 6% are using both!
If you aren’t using popups on your ecommerce site, you’re missing an opportunity. For ecommerce sites that use popups, designing popups your customers will love can help you increase your conversion rate.
These 5 tips will help you design popups that convert more visitors without annoying repeat buyers and new customers.
1. A popup is a special landing page
A popup is really a special type of landing page on your site. A good approach to designing popups is to use your experience designing landing pages. Many of the same principles apply. Most importantly, make a clear, direct offer to your customers.
Good landing pages don’t have a lot of graphics and text. They help the visitor quickly digest the content and understand the call to action. A good popup should be designed the same way.
Make your popup feel like a mini landing page. You only have a few moments to convince your visitor that your offer is worth their time. Give your visitors a compelling reason to take your call to action, such as a free ebook.
When designing your popup, take a few moments away from your computer. Then, return and look at the popup, and ask yourself: How easy is it to understand this offer? Would I sign up for this list?
This exercise will help you design popups that convince people to take action in a moment’s notice.
2. Be simple
The most important rule for designing effective popups that your customers will love is keeping them simple. Focus on one message or value proposition and remove anything that gets in the way.
Don’t use complex infographics, use one simple image that clearly reinforces the offer you are making. Or, don’t use any images at all! Some of the most effective popups are simple offers in heading text, with a brief explanation in body text.
There’s two important statements you need to make: ’This is the offer’, and, ’This is why you should choose the offer’. When you design your popup, consider how you can express your message in two simple statements.
3. Match the style of the site
It helps to make a few small changes to the color scheme of your popups to match your site. You can switch your primary and secondary colors to achieve a nice contrast while keeping in tune with the site. Your popup will be less alarming to visitors when the font types and colors match your site.
We designed the popup technology on our platform, OptiMonk, to allow easy customization of popups. Being able to easily edit the content and design to match your site is important. A little effort to match the style of your site will go a long way to making your customers feel at home with your popups!
4. Don’t interrupt visitors
Don’t interrupt the visitors on your site, and they won’t be annoyed by your popups. One easy solution for this problem is to show your popups only when your customers are leaving your site – use exit intent popups, like OptiMonk! Exit intent popups are an innovative tool that allow you to target customers right as they are leaving your site.
When your visitors try to back out of your site or close the window, a popup shows at just the right moment. Timing your popups to only show when your visitors are leaving your site gives your visitors a chance to view your content without distractions, and gives you one more chance to express your message.
5. Make them fast
When you design your popups you want them to load quickly. You have only a moment to present your message to a visitor, don’t make her read too much information or wait for a hi res photo to load.
Use as few pictures as possible so your popups load quickly. Keeping your message simple and using one good picture will make the most immediate impact.
Here’s a few more technical tips to keep your popups lean: Don’t use special fonts that need embedded fonts. Design popups that use simple HTML and CSS, this will make your popups load in an instant and will keep them compatible across browsers.
It really is easy to design popups your customers will love when you follow these 5 tips. Most importantly, keep things simple. Use some basic style guidelines and match your site and your brand colors.
Show your customers you care by offering them a discount or incentive to take your call to action. And, show your customers you care about their time by keeping your messages simple, clear, and direct. Your customers will appreciate your efforts and you’ll have the results to show for it.
