How To Create A Website Pop-Up That Converts (4 Key Elements)
As annoying as they are, there’s a reason why so many marketers use them.
?If done right, adding pop-ups on your site can be an extremely effective way to capture leads, motivate your visitors to take action, and increase conversions. However, creating a pop-up isn’t as simple as most people think. In fact, it’s the complete opposite.
Creating an effective pop-up is a step-by-step process that needs to be carefully thought out. It requires a combination of good copywriting and design, and a deep understanding of the target audience.
In this article, I’m going to share with you the four key elements needed to create a pop-up that not only maximizes conversions, but adds real value for your visitors.
By the end of it, you’ll have a clear understanding of what makes a pop-up great, the tried and tested methods you need to be aware of, and how you can start building your own high converting pop-up right away.
Now let's get right into it...
1.) Choosing The Right Timing
We’ve all seen them before. You land on a site’s homepage or blog and before you have the chance to do anything, a pop-up jumps out at you, usually asking you to enter your email in return for a free offer (guide, report, discount, etc.). These types of pop-ups are usually great at only two things, ruining the visitors' experience and increasing your bounce rate.
One of the first things you’ll want to figure out when creating your pop-up is the timing. More specifically, when it makes the most sense to present it without annoying your site visitors. The last thing you’ll want to have happen is that your visitors leave your page immediately after they see your pop-up.
Thankfully, most pop-up builders allow you to easily customize when you want your pop-up to show based on specific triggers that a visitor meets, such as their time on the page, scroll depth, or page interactions.
So what type of trigger should you use?
I personally have had the most success with using exit pop-ups that are triggered when a visitor performs an action that signals they are leaving the page, such as clicking a back button or scrolling to the corners of the page.
The great thing about this trigger is that you aren’t disrupting the user's experience when they are engaged on your site, and only when they do decide to try and leave, will the pop-up come up. Oftentimes, the pop-up will help push the abandoning visitor to at least share their email with you, which you can then use to retarget them in the future through an email campaign.?
Here's an example of what your exit intent pop-up could look like:
Again, this is just one of the many ways you can set up your pop-up trigger to be based off of. Feel free to test different options and find what works best for your business.?The key here is to keep in mind your customer's experience and ensure you’re not ruining it.
2.) Make Your Offer Relevant
Most people (whether they know it or not) browse the web for the following key reasons:
It’s important to understand that when someone lands on your site or blog, it usually isn’t by mere luck. Chances are, they’ve landed on your site because it came across as a potential solution to their pain point.
Therefore, if your pop-up is an offer that isn’t relevant to the problem they’re trying to solve, why would they give you their email for that? Website visitors are much smarter than we think and the days are long gone where they'll share their email to get anything labeled as “free”.
A pop-up will only work if what your offering provides actual value and is relevant to the user.
It’s that simple.?
For example, if you have a blog that covers SEO topics, a relevant offer for your pop-up might be a free SEO checklist or the top 10 tools that might be useful for someone getting into content marketing.
Or…?
If you have a blog that covers weight loss topics, you might want to offer a free meal plan or grocery list pop-up that helps people lose weight.
If you need some inspiration to craft your offer, here are some common ones that tend to work very well:
Try to be as creative as possible while staying relevant. The more creative, unique, and relevant your offer is, the greater the chance you’ll have your visitor take action. Also keep in mind that if your site or blog covers multiple different topics, you might want to create separate offers for each page depending on how much traffic they generate.
Putting this all together, let’s take a look at an example from Active Campaign
Active Campaign is an email marketing CRM that helps businesses automate their marketing and email lists. If I were a visitor on their blog, chances are I would be looking for a way to optimize my email marketing and lists. Therefore, I would find value in being given 6 emails for my welcome series and be compelled to provide my email.
3.) Master Your Design
Only once you’ve determined the right timing and relevant offer for your pop-up, should you then move on to the actual design of it. The way I like to think of pop-up design is by looking at it as a “mini” above-the-fold on a landing page.?
That said, there are 3 key design components that you’ll want to make sure that your pop-up includes in order to maximize conversions.
1.) Image
If there’s one design aspect that your pop-up must have, it’s an image. An analysis by Drip? done on over 1 billion pop-ups found that pop-ups with images converted 83.57% better than pop-ups without images.
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In short, choose an image that’s relevant to the offer you’re providing and chances are, you’ll see a nice bump in your conversions.?
Take a look at the example below from AppSumo. The image in their pop-up provides a good preview of what you'll receive from opting-in, as well as adds a nice visual appeal.
2.) Clear Compelling Headline
Just like on a landing page, an effective headline is crucial for providing context and motivating a user to take action. It’s one of the first things a visitor on your page (or pop-up) will see and therefore has a direct impact on whether or not they’ll convert on your call-to-action. In fact, an effective headline can make the difference between having 100 or 1000 conversions on your page.
When writing your headline, be as specific and concise as possible. Hone in on the specific audience you’re trying to target and avoid any unnecessary jargon.
Your headline should not only clearly identify how your offer (checklist, template, etc.) can help them solve their pain point, but also motivate them to take action. If needed, you can also add a sub-header to further elevate your positioning and persuade the visitor to take action.
If you’re having trouble coming up with your own headline, there are many frameworks out there that can help guide you.?
Here are some of the most popular:?
Here's the “How to [Achieve A Desired Outcome] Without [Pain Point]” framework shown in action on one of Neil Patel’s blog posts covering customer acquisition.?
3.) Limit Your Form Fields
As tempting as it may be to capture as much data as possible from your visitors through your form, it’s generally best to keep them limited. This is because the more friction there is for the visitor, the less likely they are to take action.?
As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to stick to no more than 1-2 fields on your pop-up to maximize conversions. In fact, Drip's analysis on over a billion pop-ups found that forms that had over 3 fields converted significantly less than those with just 1-2 fields.
The good news is that in most cases, all you really need from a visitor is their email to be able to add them onto your list. So try your best to stick with that.
*Note that I’m not saying that you should never include 2+ fields on your form, it just depends on the goal of your form. For example, if you're using your form to qualify leads, chances are you’ll likely want to add in more fields to ensure you’re filtering for the right candidates.
4.) (BONUS) Make It Secure
Nobody likes spam emails and the last thing you want your pop-up to do is give off any impression that it might be.?
Although this isn’t a make or break element to have on your pop-up, adding a sentence that acknowledges this pain point can help increase trust and conversions.
Best of all, it’s extremely easy to do.
All you really need is one sentence that reassures the visitor that they in fact won’t be receiving spam by opting-in to your offer.?
Take a look at the example below that has included this under their call-to-action.
P.S. There's an extremely important element missing from the pop-up shown above, leave a comment below if you know what it is!
4.) Optimize For Mobile
Yes, optimizing pop-ups for mobile deserves a section on its own.
It is one of the most overlooked, yet important aspects of creating an effective pop-up (and in fact website in general). The days have far passed where you could simply create a pop-up for desktop and have it work across all devices. In fact, as of 2021, the majority of website visitors now come from mobile, accounting for over 50% of all online traffic.
Again, most pop-up builders, such as Sleeknote, Opt-In Monster, Klaviyo, have an option for you to easily design on mobile as well. I’d even recommend starting with building your pop-up design on mobile first, as optimizing for mobile often requires you to be more thoughtful and concise about your content and placement. Then when you move over to a bigger screen (desktop), you’ll reap the benefits of starting with a condensed layout.
Conclusion
If done right, pop-ups can be an extremely effective way to optimize conversions and motivate your visitors to take action. If not, they can be annoying, negatively affect the user experience, and increase bounce rate.?
Follow the four steps outlined above when creating your pop-up and I can guarantee that you'll experience a nice boost in your conversions. From there, you can take things to the next level by a/b testing different variations to figure out what additional tweaks work best for your business.
What was the biggest takeaway from this blog post? Leave a comment below.
As always, if you have any questions related to this post or growth marketing in general, feel free to shoot me a message and I’ll be more than happy to help!