Should You Use Pop-ups in Your Blog? - The Psychology

Photo: Toilet Spy by Dark Mephi

This is a highly debatable topic. Some people swear how effective pop-ups work, while some others hate them from the bottom of their hearts. Daily Blog Tips have an interesting post on this issue, where their poll showed that 36% of the people would stop visiting a website if they start using pop-up.

But before I go into how I feel about pop-ups and should you actually use them, I just have to say that, as a copywriter, I think that the poll’s result is probably not even kinda close to being the truth.

Here’s why: People almost never know what they really want. Come on. Repeat that with me.

People almost never know what they really want.

Using surveys to ask people for their opinions, is in my opinion, a very bad way to get into their heads

You would know why if you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s outstanding book, Blink.

Here’s an example. If you were to ask anyone if their behavior is affected by what other people do, just about 99% of them say no. They believe that they are logical independent person with their own mind. You and I both know that that’s not true.

Study after study showed an undeniable association between what other people do and what an individual do. And this is just one example. Then there’s racism. If you think you’re totally 100% NOT racist, then you should take the Implicit Association Test.

You would be surprised that most most people showed more than just a hint of racism… and that includes me.

Then there’s the new coke. Coca Cola introduced the new “revised” coke in the 1980s. According to sip tests and surveys, customers appeared to prefer New coke rather than classic coke… just as they appear to prefer Pepsi over classic coke.

But when they rolled out, new coke was a disaster. It’s so bad that the new coke had to be removed from the market just after a few months after its introduction due to protests around the country. And even today, Pepsi never seem to take over Coca Cola.

To explain the phenomenon, Carol Dollard, a researcher did another test. This time, they let testers to bring the whole case of drink home and try them out. Would that change the results?

Well, turns out now people prefer classic coke over pepsi.

Then there’s the margarine’s history. Then the scotch story. And on and on and on.

So why is this happening? Why did people say one thing but prefer another? Well, because most of the thinking that you do is taking place in your subconscious.

What has these got to do with pop-ups?

Amazingly, a number of the top bloggers in the blogosphere use pop-ups, and report good results.

Michel Fortin, a top copywriter, uses pop-ups in his blog and quadrapled his sign-ups.

John Chow was getting 20-30 sign-ups before pop-ups and now he gets about a hundred.

Darren Rowse from Problogger, was getting about 40 new sign-ups a day and now is getting about 350!

And ShoeMoney is also using it.

These guys are not small time bloggers who’s trying to make a buck. Some of them (or all?) make 5 figures from their blog each and every month. If they are using these pop-ups, should that tell you something about the tactic?

Does that survey sound awfully like a new coke’s disastrous sip test now? Who to trust? The users who said no, or the rich bloggers who made more money as a result? How do you let your readers “take a case of the drink home”?

How to know, beyond a shadow of doubt, whether to use pop-ups in your blog or not

The easiest way to a successful sales copy, many top copywriters said, is to study sales copies already making money and do exactly what they are doing.

And many successful entrepruneurs advises their students to copy what successful people are already doing.

“Don’t reinvent the wheel“, they always say.

So am I saying you should use pop-ups? No, that’s not what I’m saying. That’s just stupid.

Here’s what I’m saying: Copy these top blogger’s true strategy - TEST! The only surefire way to improve your blog, your sales copy or your website is to test. If you don’t test, you never truly know what will happen.

If it works out, great! You just found a way to quadraple subscriptions. If it does not, remove it and find new things to test. Plain and simple.

Don’t let your beliefs and emotions get in the way though…

But if you take a look at the comments from users, you’ll see that most of them refuse to use pop-ups just because they personally hate them.

See the difference between pros and amateurs? Remember that your blog is not about you. It’s about your readers. If they like what you don’t like, you still have to give it to them if you want to make some moola.

If you run a blog about dog breeding and your readers like topics about cross-breeding, it’ll be wise to write about them, even if you’re a purist.

Most people think they’re doing their readers a favor by removing pop-ups because they personally hate them. I think they are just too lazy, or too afraid of failure.

Remember: Time is precious. Fail fast so you can succeed fast. The faster you speed of implementation is, the higher chances you’ve got to actually achieve something.

P.S. As for me, I’m currently testing slide-ups, a less intrusive kind of pop-ups. If this is the first time you reach my blog, you’d see a slide up at the bottom of the screen. I’m also testing a new layout of the blog. There’s a lot going on right now but when the time comes, pop-ups would be next in the list.

Tagged as: pop-ups