Don’t Enrage, Engage: 11 Best Practices for Using Exit-Intent Popups

It’s a simple, yet oft-forgotten premise: a pleasant customer experience is more likely to convert a passive browser into a sale.

Professionals who can read body language and offer just the right amount of assistance at the right time tend to be the most successful salespeople. It seems pretty obvious, right? Yet, the stereotypical pushy salesperson – you know, the one who means well but can't take a hint – is still out there driving customers away.

Website visitors aren’t too different. Many people want to quietly browse the website, research, and/or shop without having to suffer through annoying interruptions or distractions. This leaves website marketers walking a fine line in order to boost website traffic and convert visitors into leads with a less obtrusive strategy. How is this possible when email marketing – usually synonymous with intrusiveness – is one of the most effective marketing strategies for targeted campaigns?

Collecting Personal Data

There is little doubt that prospects that willingly provide contact information and give business permission to contact them are valuable. Think about it. You, the business can get in touch with a qualified prospect – someone already interested in what you have to offer – and you also have their permission to send them product or service information over a period of time.

One of the less intrusive ways to successfully capture this information is with a technology called exit intent popup. Exit popups are designed to boost site traffic and increase lead generation by offering a user something of value, which then motivates the visitor to remain on the website longer.

How Do Exit Intent Popups Work?

Exit intent technology tracks a website visitor’s mouse movements and speed to detect the exact moment that the user is about to abandon a website. As a user is about to exit the site, an exit popup prompts the user to linger with a targeted campaign that matches the user’s interest and reason for being on your website.

Was the visitor reading past newsletters to learn about a product? Was she interested in prices, but didn’t make a purchase? An exit intent popup can be deployed to offer a free newsletter subscription or discount coupon, thus giving the visitor something of value and converting him/her from a visitor to a fresh lead. This approach is far less invasive than the annoying blocking popup windows of the past.

Exit intent popups can be used to offer e-books, white papers, discount coupons, links to promotional videos or movies, or a free trial – just about anything that a prospective customer would appreciate. And while this is, indeed, an important website marketing tool, it’s also critically important to identify best practices, or smart rules, for targeted campaigns so that customers remain engaged and the website’s reputation and integrity are not compromised by appearing spammy. The bottom line: don’t scare away potential customers by following them around just like that annoying salesperson we talked about earlier.

Let’s take a look at 11 best practices designed for popup use.

• 1. Relevance

  Create popups that are well matched to a site visitor’s viewing behavior. If a prospective customer spends time on a website’s product pricing page, an exit popup offering a white paper probably won’t be effective. Instead, deploy a relevant popup – for example, a limited-offer coupon or special discount offer. If the site visitor missed your product’s description, use a popup to suggest that the customer learn more before finally leaving the site.

• 2. Keep it simple. 
  Don’t bombard site visitors with more than one exit popup on the same page, because that tactic screams “spam.” If a visitor sees a popup, lingers on the site, closes out, and then returns, do not risk the integrity of your website by showing yet another popup – because that makes for a frustrating customer experience.
• 3. Don’t spam.
  Website visitors should not have to wrestle with an exit intent popup every time that they visit your site. Ensure that popups – such as invitations to like a site’s Facebook page – do not appear more than three times per week. In some cases, proposing that visitors like your Facebook page should be limited to once a week in order to avoid a negative impression, or having visitors feel pressured to take any action that they do not feel ready to do.
• 4. Location-based marketing. 
  International websites should take advantage of location information and create popups in different languages that are based on geographic location, language, or local events. Advanced exit intent technology provides tools that support such targeted campaigns, so go for it.
• 5. Keep it fresh.
  When recommending content, do not show a popup to visitors who have already viewed that content. If every visit to a website begins with the same repetitive popup that a visitor must click past in order to access content, there is a good chance that the user will unsubscribe and/or click away to a different source of information, such as your competitor. And who wants that?
• 6. Targeting.
  In each popup campaign, ensure that viewers will not see the popup once they have achieved the goal of that targeted campaign – in other words, they have done whatever it is that you wanted them to do. For example, if a user used a popup to subscribe to a newsletter – or even if she subscribed by using a registration page within the site – seeing the exit intent popup asking the user to subscribe again will be annoying.
• 7. Customize.
  Create popups that are consistent with the look and feel of your website to maintain a consistent and professional image or popups that borrow design elements from the website itself. The use of coordinating colors and fonts, sufficient white space and a clear offer of enticement is more appealing. Popups that look like they were created from free clip-art and do not contain relevant content can appear to be visually jarring and are more likely to damage credibility than convert.
• 8. Design contrast.
  It’s important to have contrast between a website and a popup’s overlay in order to grab a user’s attention. At its most simple, contrast is the difference between two or more elements. It creates visual interest and makes content easier to digest.
• 9. Provide a choice. 
  Instead of showing an “X” close button on the popup, simply use a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ button instead. Visitors will be more inclined to stop and read the popup’s content in order to close it, even if they are abandoning the site. Providing users with two buttons (or more)  to click also gives them a choice, and choices feel empowering, which is positive.
• 10. Subtle copy. 
  In most cases copy that is “less aggressive” or less “pushy” will be more effective since some users already view the popup as intrusive and aggressive.
• 11. Clear benefits.
  Users are more likely to convert (clicking on a button, link or submitting a form) when there is a clear and distinct benefit for doing so. For example, if a user is researching a product, she is more likely to be enticed by a 10 percent discount, a free E-book, or a free trial to a service rather than a newsletter subscription.