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Hey devs/publishers, cut the shit with your 'subscribe to my' pop-up bullshit

16 points by andrewhillman ↗ HN
You all know what I am talking about. The page loads and boom... right smack in the middle your webpage a pop-up/over is displayed offering shitty freebies or periodic spam. Even worse is when the pop-up/over timer is set to show after a certain number of page views. You are not clever, you are most likely killing page views, time on site and jacking up your bounce rates. For what? Fake email addressees?

I understand having people give you their email address is a great feeling but the whole pop-up/over thing is a poor user experience. Have you not learned anything from the past? Browser pop-ups sucked and pop-up/over plugins are even more annoying. If you need to have one, move it and don't obstruct my view. Any developer who feels the need to show a pop-up/over is almost as bad as the publishers who require users to 'like' to view a video.

There are two ways to do something. The first one is with taste. The second one is a pop-up/over.

You decide.

9 comments

[ 59.8 ms ] story [ 1055 ms ] thread
nathancahill
It's been widely blogged about as the most effective way to capture email addresses. It'll probably be around for a while.

(flashing "YOU WON" banner ads were also effective, back in the day)

unsquare
Not only are they effective, but they do not increase the bounce rate (in most cases), unlike popular belief.
jordsmi
Welcome to the world of internet marketing/advertising where annoying/obtrusive/ugly wins out over being user friendly.
thwarted
It's even worse on mobile, where the popup/overlay is difficult to close because it's larger than the viewport. If it takes me longer than 3 seconds to figure out how to close the popup, I end up just closing the tab.
andrewhillman
Don't even get me started with mobile ;) Complete nightmare.
garysvpa1
I find them annoying too. They can just put their freebie message somewhere on the page, not to obstruct view. If the reader wants the content, he will subscribe.
_RPM
I find it annoying. I had an aggressive solicitation occur on twitter recently. The person had exploited a new feature of twitter advertisements where you can "click to subscribe". I wasn't aware that they would give my email out via a click, but apparently so. The person would not stop trying to follow up with it. I ended up muting the entity (or person)
notduncansmith
We[1] always encourage our clients to go for the tasteful option. Trying to force opt-ins for anything other than mass-market consumer crap has led to universally negative results for our clients.

[1] http://fullcourseemails.com