The right popup at the right time
A long time ago I formulated a somewhat naïve postulate for myself:
“If designers, manufacturers (and lawmakers) would be obliged to test their creations in real life, we would be living in a perfect world.”
Okay, I am not writing here about any mission-critical tasks or really bad design examples. And the world — from a designer’s point of view — is actually getting better. However, still in many cases, it is undeniable: creators of our experience — whether digital or analogue — obviously never tried to put themselves in the shoes of their prospective users.
Let’s take an example of typical popup windows that frequently appear on the first visits of websites, like this one:
Note: this is my first visit to this site; I still don’t know much about its content and have no idea how useful it is for me. What are the chances that I will subscribe for the newsletter at this moment? Zero, perhaps — no matter how well the signup window is designed.
A similar story happens often when visitors are asked to fill a survey just after entering a website. Even when it is not the first visit, such behaviour distracts users from their immediate task: nobody visits a website in order to answer a questionnaire. Perhaps only regular and devoted users will agree to fill such a survey accurately. As a consequence, even if one completes the survey right upon entering the site, the feeling of dissatisfaction (the task is not completed and the user’s goal is not met) will most likely bias the answers or many of them will just be skipped.
The right moment for displaying a subscription or a survey window would be a bit later — after the user spends some time on the web site or when he or she is leaving. One of the best alternative solutions that I have seen — unfortunately, not very often — is an option to postpone the filling of a survey or a subscription field: a button “Later” that minimizes the window for a certain amount of time. The timeout can be adjusted based on the analytics data about how much time a typical user spends on the web site. Such a button gives the user control over the system — an essential component of good user experience.
The subject of this short article is not new: one can easily find a number of resources with guidelines on how and when to show the right pop-up on a web site. And one of them just blocked my screen with a popup — only a few seconds after I arrived.
