Promoting products and services is the main goal for most businesses with an online presence. Drawing in leads with a sale or giveaway is a great way to influence action and convert leads into customers. You can do this by using tools such as pop-ups to showcase something that you want people to do.

From encouraging people to fill out a form to inviting people to watch a video, to giving them a coupon, pop-ups are a great tool to incentivize website visitors to take action.

In this blog post, we’ll talk about how to set up pop-ups and how to make them trigger on specific pages of your website, so you can use them effectively in your marketing campaigns.

In our article, 3 Ways To Use Pop-Ups and Sticky Banners Effectively we talked about how using pop-ups can notify leads and customers of important information. You can use pop-ups to present a sale or promotion based on their activity on specific pages of your website including how long they stay on specific pages.

Pop-ups are also a great way to highlight a video. For instance, you can use a video to showcase a new product or highlight reasons why to hire your services with a before and after reel. These video pop-ups can trigger as soon as a customer lands on a page or after a certain amount of time.

Using pop-ups effectively can be tremendously successful, but you have to know their limitations and how they can also be seen as annoying.

Should you try to give every person who appears on your website the same promotion? For example, if someone is looking at purchasing handbags and you show them a promo offer for apparel, do you think that is a valuable offer to them? Sumo, a company that makes website automation tools, analyzed 2 billion pop-ups and identified better results (more of the desired actions taken) when the pop-ups took context into account. Context is what gives the best pop-ups conversion rates of more than 40%.

A pop-up doesn’t have to appear on every page (and shouldn’t) but when you make a pop-up relevant to the visitor’s experience and you’ll see better results. Going back to our example, that means you should show the person looking at handbags a coupon for handbags, not apparel. 

To design a successful pop-up banner, consider simplicity and getting straight to the point. A clear message goes a long way and converts better. 

Here is an example of what not to do:

Pop-up message:

“Want to save 50%?

Click here to find out!”

This can leave a customer thinking, “save 50% on what?”

It can confuse potential customers because they may want to save 50% on a specific product or service, but they may be wary of clicking to learn more because they don’t know where they are headed.

Here is an example of what to do: 

Pop-up message:

“Want to save 50% on your first repair service?

Sign up to get a promo code you can use at check out.”

Absolutely, I definitely want to save 50% on that. Providing context and clarity can make it much easier for people to make a decision.

It is also important to remember that not everyone is going to take action on a pop-up. Many people may dismiss pop-ups right away. Historically, pop-ups were considered annoying. So don’t add fuel to that perception. Don’t follow a customer from page to page with a promotion that keeps popping up over and over again. That can quickly lead them to leave the site.

You’ll drive more customers away by pestering them to do something. Be okay with letting them only see the pop-up once.  

Now that we’ve covered some pop-up etiquette, let’s build one in the Zibster platform.

After logging into your account, click the Marketing tab in the left side menu. Then in the top menu, click on the pop-up builder. Here you can create a new promo for pop-ups or sticky banners. We have many layouts to choose from. After you select one, you’ll be brought to the pop-up editing canvas.

Here you can edit the text, images, or videos, such as if there is a form and the settings on how it looks and displays.

After you edit the message and what you would like the form to do, click publish above the pop-up builder canvas preview.

Here, you can name the pop-up and set up how it will trigger on your site.

The Display in Builder setting refers to the Website Builder, and which pages you would like to display it on.

The When to Show function allows you to set when you want the pop-up to appear. You can select a time and frequency. Studies have shown conversion rates are much higher when a banner doesn't pop up right away. Consider how often you want someone to see this pop-up when they visit your website.  

Set a publish date and expiration date for the pop-up to display (this is helpful so you don’t have to remember to take a pop-up down when a promo expires).

Now your pop-up will display on your site! You can set multiple pop-ups to display on different pages of your website, we just don’t recommend having more than one pop-up per page. Your customers would not appreciate that.

Creating a pop-up for a promotion or lead generation is simple, once you have yours in place just beware of the timing and your message. It’s one thing to be hungry for leads, but you also need to have a clear motive and provide value to engage customers. Put yourself in your customer's shoes and think about if you were to visit your own site, what would you want?

Interested in setting up a marketing campaign? Check out this Facebook Live showing you how to do it. Want assistance from our support team? Give us a call at 844.353.3412 or log into your account and start a chat. We’ll be happy to help you.