Pop-ups in WordPress have got a bad rep – but they’re a very useful tool if you know how to use them effectively.
At one time, the term ‘pop-up’ was loaded with negative associations. Users across the web had bad experiences – loading websites only to be bombarded with unrelated nuisance pop-ups, some even with malicious intentions. Pop-ups got such a bad rep that the person who created them went as far as to apologise for his invention.
The good news for business owners and marketers alike is that pop-ups have seen a renaissance, making an impressive comeback on eCommerce websites.Much less intrusive than before, they are even considered a must-have feature to increase your online sales.
Business 2 Community states that using pop-ups can increase conversion rates by up to 33%, so they’re a tool you can’t afford to overlook if you’re making sales through your WordPress website.
In this blog we’ll talk about how you can get started with adding pop-ups to your WordPress website, and suggest six valuable ways you can use them to engage your audience and increase sales.
Getting Started: Uses for Pop-Ups in WordPress
In order to make the most of the pop-ups on your WordPress site, you’ll need the best available tool for the job. The Pop-Up Banners WordPress Plugin from CreativeMinds provides you with just that.
The plugin enables you to add responsive, highly customizable pop-up banners to your WordPress webstore. You can include images, videos, and rich text to create the perfect pop-up to match the style and theme of your site with ease.
The custom popup plugin easily creates and publishes specific events and products for wordPress. Users can add a particular popup banner fixed on the middle or bottom of any page or post on a Wordpress site.
The key is to create something that isn’t intrusive or bothersome for your users and provides real value. So, with that being said, here are just some ways to effectively use pop-ups on your WordPress website:
Ways to Use Pop-ups on Your WordPress Site
1. Grow Your Mailing List
One of the most common and effective ways to use pop-ups in WordPress is to encourage visitors to join a mailing list.
Whether you provide a regular newsletter or just use your mailing list to notify customers of sales and discounts, using a pop-up is a great and simple way to encourage customers to add their email address to your list.
2. Announce a Sale Event
Pop-ups are effective because they grab your visitor’s attention, and when you’re promoting a sale event this is exactly what you need to do.
While you never want to use a pop-up to repeat your website content, utilizing pop-ups is a great way to draw attention and signpost visitors toward what’s currently online in your WordPress store.
3. Provide Discount Codes
If you want to offer your customers a treat, then pop-ups in WordPress are a great way to advertise promotional discount codes.
You can either display your promotional code in the pop-up or provide the discount as an added incentive for joining your mailing list by prompting visitors to enter their email address.
Just ensure that you let visitors know exactly what they’re signing up for, and highlight that they can opt-out whenever they choose.
4. Offer Exclusive Content
Got an eBook on your expertise? A podcast that showcases your knowledge? An informative quiz your users can take? A pop-up is the perfect way to showcase exclusive content to visitors.
They key here is to make sure the pop-up content is relevant and valuable according to what your customers are currently doing on your site – there’s no use advertising your eBook as customers are browsing products, it’ll only annoy and get in the way. Make sure the pop-up offers value according to the page it appears on.
5. Provide Video Tutorials
If you sell a product that needs some technical know-how to use, a video tutorial is a proven way to engage your customers as well as help them out.
While typically videos are embedded into your site, including them in pop-ups can be a unique way to display them. One of the many advantages of the CreativeMinds Pop-up Banner Plugin is that it allows you to make video pop-ups with no trouble at all.
6. Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment
There’s no getting around it, shopping cart abandonment is a huge issue for online retailers. While there’s no cure for all cases of shopping cart abandonment, pop-ups can aid in reducing the rate of abandonment in your online store.
Whether you use an exit pop-up reminding customers they still have things in their cart, or use them to highlight how long they have left to receive a discount on next day delivery, pop-ups should be in your arsenal for combating the ever present threat of cart abandonment.
Pop-Up Best Practice
If you opt to use pop-ups on your WordPress site, there are some best practice golden rules that you should always keep in mind.
Inform, Don’t Intrude
Perhaps the most important rule when it comes to using pop-ups is not to negatively impact your visitor’s experience on your website.
Pop-ups should never feel intrusive, instead they should feel like a natural extension of the customer’s browsing experience. In every pop-up you use, you should aim to inform and add positive value to your site.
Make Sure Customers Can Find the Exit
One of the reasons why pop-ups got such a bad rep is because makers would engineer them to be difficult to close, with exit buttons hard to find or entirely unclickable.
It’s important, when designing your own pop-ups in WordPress, to avoid this pitfall. Make sure your customers can easily click out of the pop-up if they’re not interested in what you have to offer.
Don’t Overdo It
When it comes to adding pop-ups to your WordPress site, it’s a case of quality over quantity. No-one wants to visit a website with a pop-up on every page, so make sure you’re selective about where you include pop-ups for maximum effectiveness.
As mentioned earlier, make sure that the pop-up not only adds value but feels natural according to what your visitors are browsing or reading at the moment the pop-up occurs on your site.
Conclusion: Uses for Pop-Ups in WordPress
Hopefully this blog helps you achieve great things with pop-ups!
If everything else fails, you can always remember: pop-ups are powerful, but only when used correctly. So spending time researching them before implementing is a must.
