The Magento Marketplace offers a plethora of popup managers and extensions for both Magento 1 and Magento 2. It seems that every self-respecting Magento solution partner has at least one extension of this kind offered to eCommerce merchants big and small.
Some of these extensions are free and designed for smaller stores and some are created specifically for the enterprise version and are meant to be used primarily in super campaigns. Popups are like coins – there are two sides to them. One side is useful and beneficial and the other one is, well, a tad annoying. Useful as they are, they can also be a royal pain, especially for the end user.
The truth is that a wisely chosen and, more importantly, wisely used popup extension can take you a long way. Let’s see what some of the pros and cons of using popup manager extensions for Magento are, and take a look at some tips for making the best of them.
What is an eCommerce Popup?
First of all, let’s see what exactly counts as “popup” in an eCommerce environment. A popup can be defined as an open box that displays content within the page, and not in a separate page or window. A popup usually includes a call-to-action or a tool to grab the customer’s attention and direct it towards what the merchant believes will lead to conversion. Therefore, popups can be primarily classified as conversion tools.
Popup Pros
The ability of popups to contribute to your store’s conversion rates is their primary benefit and the main reason merchants even use them. Experience and practice have shown that popups can actually improve your traffic in a considerable manner. Furthermore, popups gain your visitors’ attention when they don’t expect it, which increases the chance they will do what the popup asks them to do. Although many visitors will ignore the popup, a small percentage will complete the action, and that small percentage counts, and counts a lot, too.
Popups also provide you with more flexibility in content and targets. You can create different popups for different purposes and direct them to your targeted users and towards particular targeted actions.
While we’re talking about customization, popup managers generally allow you to apply highly differentiated display rules based on whatever factor you need to base them on. It’s up to you, and so is the way the popup will display on your page. Most popup managers have great graphic and animation customization options and many come with preset themes you can choose from.
Another great thing about popup managers for Magento is that basically anyone can use them, regardless of their technical expertise.
Popup Cons
While popups can be a great CRO (conversion rate optimization) tool, it’s important to remember what we said above – it’s a coin with two sides, and unfortunately there are some quite significant downsides to implementing popups on your Magento site.
First of all, we can probably all agree that popups can be really annoying. You focus on something on the page, and all of a sudden a pesky little window appears and doesn’t go away unless you react to it. In many (if not most) cases, the visitor will simply click the tiny “X” in the corner and ignore the message you tried to convey with the popup.
Some popups don’t even have an exit button, and those are bound to set your visitors in a flaming rage from your site, never to return again. While popup advertisements are definitely much more likely to be noticed by people than banners, at the same time, they are also way more likely to be found intrusive, aggressive and off-putting.
Also, remember that a lot of people use ad blockers and popup blockers and that your popup might go unnoticed by them. This kind of specialized software makes the message you put in popups useless, meaning you shouldn’t rely too much on the action you want them to perform.
Finally, some popup extensions, especially those containing scripts, may slow down your website, resulting in a high bounce rate.
Making the Most Out of Magento Popups
As you can see, there are plenty of reasons both for using and not using Magento popup extensions. If you decide to add such an extension to your eCommerce store, here are a couple of things to keep in mind.
First of all, place your popups intelligently. Consider the message you want to send, or, even better, create a popup manager strategy with clear goals and statements. Make sure that every element of the popup content fits your brand and needs. Don’t shower your visitors with popups. Make sure that a single visitor doesn’t get to see more than one popup per session.
All this may seem like a lot of work but with the right strategy and our help it doesn’t have to be.
The reason our company recommend using Pop Ups is because we have an extensive knowledge in not only implementing but fine-tuning the Pop ups into what we like to call Lead Capture System. Over 5 years of experience led into developing a highly effective system that significantly out performs it’s precedes.
It’s about fixing the message, the offer, the technology to track every popup, lead and the first-time sale. Without exception, every Magento website we work on is self-funded from the extra sales we generate our customers just through first-time visitors.
