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Popups are everywhere, and they are so prevalent among small business websites. The overwhelming success rates of email list-making popups, plainly because of the sheer quantity of email-based conversation is one example.
Email marketing is projected to grow even further. Another example is exit intent popups that act as a last resort user catching technique by popping up when the user shows intent to leave your site.
Are you looking to make creative popups for your websites to grow your business? If yes, read on, if no, read this blog to get a better idea of the importance of popups to build eCommerce traffic.
Did you end up here after racking your brain for engaging popup ideas to no avail? Or have you just heard popups can have a positive impact on your business that brought you here? Irrespective of your reason, we have you covered.
Most eCommerce website owners use WordPress and Shopify and luckily, there is a wide range of popup maker plugins like Optinly available in them.
So you can’t give the excuse of lacking designing or coding skills to make popups because these plugins offer you readymade templates for a wide range to choose and edit, to suit your goals.
All you have to do is understand the purpose of existing templates and adapt them to your needs. Or browse through your favorite online stores for inspiration.
The first thing to know is there are certain “types” of pop-ups, and there is also a classification of these pop-ups based on how they are used.
Different types of popups can be used to achieve similar ends. Popup creation is limited only by imagination.
Keeping this in mind, let’s start with the different types of creative and optimized popups you can use to boost key website statistics like customer retention, newsletter sign-up, and the sort now.
Welcome messages:
This is self-explanatory, the added advantage you can get from welcome messages is setting up a string of popups following it to give the newly onboarded user a tour of your site, ask for additional information to identify their needs, and make the user experience better and so forth.
This is an example of such a popup where the approach is in offering new boarders a welcome offer. The thinking here is to encourage new users into taking action right away and thus improve the chances of them returning to the site when they look for similar products at a later time.
Straightforward approach with your popups:
Simplicity is often the key, and popups are no exception. Having a straightforward popup displaying offers and discounts, or announcements when the visitor has opened your site works.
Yeah, not exactly. There is a small catch here, use these popups with caution, like an ad or offer popping up immediately when the user opens your website can put them off. Think about using them in a time-delayed manner or using big promotions or offers attractive enough to reduce the annoying factor characteristic to such popups.
This is an example of a full-screen popup, it is quite minimalistic and to the point. But this approach achieves a few things, it has an offer for new visitors, and it converts them to customers when they sign up, and by asking for email alone, it reduces onboarding time. Here’s another example:
A spring sale banner, announcing a whopping 50% discount on purchases above a certain amount while the stocks last. It has value, and it is to the point like the previous example as well. It shows all the traits of highly converting popups.
The “to the point” approach in marketing isn’t limited to visuals and email signups. Take a look at this example;
QR code pop-ups are an easy way to reduce information exposure while promoting your product or service.
They are effective converters and you can use them for a wide range of purposes from redeemable coupon codes, sharing your brand’s social media, finishing payments, or even for file downloads.
Seasonal + Timer and FOMO + Exit intent + Abandoned cart warning
Now let’s see an exciting section of popups, where the point is to excite the user by promoting seasonal offers to grow sales or retain leaving users by giving them enticing deals.
The hype around holiday shopping has steadily gone up, no matter the product, every business owner has started providing holiday season offers.
This is particularly true in eCommerce as it takes a lion’s share in shopping, in general. Popups are great tools to boost your website’s seasonal sales, as we’ll see from these examples.
Retail giants start promoting holiday shopping weeks if not months earlier and how often have you seen riots like scenes on Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays?
This popup might not cause an invasion of shoppers to your warehouse but it certainly will show a spike in sales when used in this way. Once again, minimalism is employed and the intention is to convert curious visitors into buyers.
This is another example of direct approach holiday offer pop-up and it is needless to say the scale of Christmas season shopping.
Special days aren’t limited to public holidays, see how a brand offers discounts for its anniversary. These kinds of popups resonate best with returning customers who value the brand and increase brand loyalty.
Timer and FOMO:
Countdown timers offering deals on limited products for a limited time create a sense of not wanting to miss out among visitors, in the marketing jargon, this is called FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) These kinds of popups overlap with the seasonal offers kind so creativity is the limit when it comes to using this type of popups.
Adding countdown timers or announcing the limited nature of the offer are proven ways to increase user engagement.
Even if the user was not intending to buy, the sense of urgency will make such users complete the purchase.
Amazon popularly employs this technique in their cart items, offering low prices on products as lightning deals with a 15-minute timer from the moment the user adds them to the cart. They have the same effect when used as popups.
These are some examples of such popular countdown popups.
Here is a limited-time popup with a twist of not including the time, intended to increase the sales numbers.
You can also follow this example for timed popups, this is a lot similar to the strategy of Amazon, it is done by asking the user to complete a purchase in that session.
Abandoned cart warning:
This can be both exit intent or used in an email to remind a user to complete the purchase before leaving the website or to encourage them to return for the same, respectively.
In the case of exit intent popups, they can offer an appealing and creative image to increase the rate of customer engagement.
This is a creative popup that has a forlorn-looking puppy with the caption urging the user to not abandon the cart.
Exit Intent:
Exit intent popups also need to be employed correctly. If the user shows signs of leaving your website or switching tabs, this pop-up can be used as a last resort to keep them engaged.
The catch here is to understand that the user could have decided to exit for a lot of reasons.
Unless you have tactics to reengage them despite this, an exit intent popup can annoy the visitor and they will leave it with a bad opinion of your brand.
Here are some self-explanatory examples of popups to get inspiration to make such pop-ups.
Friendly or cheeky, up to you:
Have you ever seen an advertisement that made you crack a smile or at least the inclination to do so?
That is an approach to building brand loyalty and trust between the user and the company. Being informal and friendly in how you come across to the user in your popups can go a long way in long-term brand building. Examples time:
This could have been a plain pop-up conveying the very message but by putting product-relevant, it humanizes the brand.
This pop-up goes a step further and invites you to be friends with them, have to give it to them for finding a cool way to build their email list.
Technical and quirky:
Wholesome isn’t the only way to bring character to your popups, being snarky like this popup Prepostseo has is another way to playfully engage your visitor, and it leaves an impression of the brand in your head, definitely did in ours.
Nonintrusive sidebars:
Sidebars are useful because of their versatility. They can be used for almost any message or theme to suit your campaign.
A tactic is to set them so that they appear after the user has gone through a certain amount of your website, or has spent a certain time on the site.
Though this is not necessary, it makes it is good in terms of user experience to integrate the pop-up with your website. Here are a few good sidebar popups for you to draw inspiration from.
Alerts + Cookies and other notices:
These can be nonmarketing related, add functionality to popups beyond their traditional reputation as ads and marketing tools.
Updated terms and conditions, user-relevant alerts, etc. Adds range to your website.
These sample popup templates show error alerts and update availability notices respectively.
Cookies and other notices:
These popups can be floating bars, full-screen banners, or sidebars.
They may contain cookie notices concerning GDPR and similar, or show notices as to the number of free articles the user has to, as some news websites do, and urge them to sign up for uninterrupted access to the website content.
Exclusive offers and gift vouchers:
Email newsletters and other capture ideas with keywords like exclusive community, to bring out the user’s want of belonging in them.
These can also be exclusive discounts and deals for members of the communities. Users should be made aware of the community is of limited time and/or quantity. Let’s see some pop-ups like these now.
The idea here is to have a VIP or elite member list, adding to the exclusivity concept. It’s hard to pass such deals, we must say.
Next up is an idea for customers who just finished a purchase, here the exclusivity is to grow brand loyalty and potentially, retain such customers.
This pop-up offers customized deals for users based on their browsing behavior and interests.
Now some sidebars announcing exclusive and customized offers, remember the versatility of sidebars?
Exclusive gift vouchers:
Vouchers include the elements of exclusive captures while combining them with limited-time deals. This either accomplishes user signup or completes a purchase.
Email newsletters for updates, feedback, guides:
Another lead capture technique is where users are encouraged to join newsletters for news and updates related to the products they are interested in, for example. It can also be used to conduct surveys, receive feedback or provide support. We’ll see examples for all three purposes now.
Feedback:
These pop-ups can help you identify customers’ opinions of your products, or conduct surveys to understand what parts of your campaigns are making the user experience easy and which are setbacks, both to the customer and you.
This helps you identify the chinks your campaign armor and improve upon it, thereby a mutually beneficial situation.
You can also use this popup to help customers who are onboarding or have done it, have doubts about it to talk to your support team.
Support:
These can be used to aid the user in the onboarding process or post it, and the ready availability of support for customers always pays in terms of brand reputation in the long run.
Guides:
This can make for great email list-building tools. By giving free samples of recipes, tips and tricks, and the sort, users are engaged and increase the chances of the user returning and retention.
What you offer the user in exchange for their signups or providing emails is where innovation is required on the marketer’s end.
We’ve gathered a collection of such pop-ups offering a variety of freebies to grow an email list and in turn, build an audience.
Product launches, promotion, and features:
Description and features are commonly used to promote new products. Or you can show a bestselling product and highlight its features and explain how it might suit the user’s needs.
In exit intent, they can be used to show items related to the user’s browsing history to increase chances of purchase completion and retention. Here’s an example of new product promotion.
Features:
This is another case of pop-ups being not just about marketing advertising.
Pop-ups can be used to schedule meetings, book appointments, and similar services not just to new visitors, but to existing customers.
You can also announce new features you are providing to pre-existing users based on their usage behavior.
Below examples are shown to regular users or users with high chances of making a move from a free trial to a paid version of your product.
Winding up:
This should give you an idea of the diverse approaches to pop-ups as a marketing tool for your website. With the right popup-building strategies and tools, you can grow your email list, customer range, and revenue in no time.
