Now maybe I’m a cad for thinking this way, but I’m guessing that folks with accessibility issues probably aren’t the ideal prospects for a site like this and more than likely wouldn’t come across it in their casual web browsing.
To some extent, EVERYONE is disabled (I made a post about this in another thread so I won’t get all repetitive but here’s a snipped quote from it.
Saying you don’t think they would be browsing there is obviously an assumption as to what constitutes disability and who is likely to be affected by it
A popup of anykind is just a slight hiccup in the user experience to me, no different really than the cashier at McDonalds asking me “would you like fries with that” after I’ve placed my order. It takes two seconds of my time to say yes or no to the offer made be done with it, yet the business owner makes a much larger profit because a percentage of those asked say yes, and they get to grow their business and keep serving customers.
If it bothers me more than I enjoy their food, then I don’t come back, and then I wasn’t really the best prospect for them anyway.
One could say that advertisements are terrible for the newspaper readers user experience because it forces them to waste time and flip extra pages, but how many newspapers would there be without paying advertisers to fund their printing?
I’m all for a painless online user experience, but you also need to consider the business owners user experience too.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but that seems a rather egotistical perspective to have (no offence intended), since when would the business owners “experience” be of any relevance or importance to the visitor it’s aimed at. User-experience is entirely dedicated to what is in the best interests of the people who will actually be using the website on a daily basis… the end user, any dilution of that perspective by stating that the person building the website should design it for themselves is a total disregard and perversion of the meaning behind usability and user-experience. Saying you should consider the business owners “ideal experience” because YOU think it’s a good idea is on the exact same rails as a business owner telling the web designer that their wife thinks the design should have lots more animated GIF’s, use neon pink and be less “stuffy” because she thinks people will like that. Subjectivity is almost always the complete opposite of good usability practices. Good marketing is subtle, efficient and does the job without forcing itself to be blunt and “in your face”, in fact good marketing usually makes people want to view the advert or sign up on their own accord. What might be a slight irritation for you would be intensified by the thousand (percent) in regards to someone who has a disability and suffers increasing frustration, stress, and anger at such techniques. Don’t fool yourself into thinking such actions can be in any way justified in terms of the user-experience.
A popup of anykind is just a slight hiccup in the user experience to me
Take this for example (your own words Ravedesigns)… sure it’s a slight hiccup for YOU, a web professional who knows (in detail) how to operate a computer and (likely) has no comparable issues which would prevent you accessing information. Try being someone with a mental health or cognitive impairment or someone who has problems navigating around a website due to physical impairments… then shove that sign in their face, and see with wonder how they get irritated, fumble about and end up never visiting that website again because they can’t seem to work past something which shouldn’t be there in the first place… sure it takes two minutes for you, it could (literally) take them an hour to work around it - and I’m talking from a position of seeing this kind of crappy marketing damaging peoples ability to escape from a website… I’ve worked with the people who have problems navigating websites at the best of times, so I’m happy to defend those who aren’t in a position to get their voices heard if it means there’s one less web designer running around with a “It’s all good!” jaded perspective. To copy a famous quote “Whan you make an assumption, you make an ASS out of U and MPTION.”. It drives me crazy when people view the disabled as some “small” part of their audience, it’s discriminatory.
You can use a product called click bank product called existsplashed it will displayed your other page when people click the little ‘X’ on the top on their browsers.
You’re actually asking me to not use a technique that could make my client thousands of extra pounds in case I ‘irrate’ someone who can’t even use the product in the first place or cause them to ‘fumble’ to close a pop-up on their way to leaving and never coming back anyway?
Clearly, however you can relax on this one Alex. I’m quite certain that anyone so disabled that they struggle to close a pop-up is NOT part of my target demographic. You might as well have a go at Ferrari because they designed a car that’s really hard to get in and out of for a wheel chair user and have no boot space. Not all cars have to be usable by everybody and neither do websites, they just have to do the job they were designed for and the job of this site is to capture sign-ups from physically and mentally able people, did you actually look at the site?
this is going a little off topic now but I have to agree with JJ (oooh controversial!)
Does every site on the internet regardless of content HAVE to be accessible?
IMO no it doesnt. I am developing a site that targets a specific niche within the medical sector and I would panic madly if a visually impaired neuro surgeon started splicing and dicing my brain.
Surely the content should determine the target audience and therefore if there should be an accessibility option?
JJMcClure, perhaps you misunderstood me, most of the comments in that previous post were directed at Ravedesigns in response to what he said, not towards you (I probably should have stated it better). While I respectfully disagree that invasive marketing (however effective) is a good idea based on the financial reward - I’m a bit of a purist, especially when it comes to maximum accessibility. I can totally understand why you want to achieve it, especially as the design in question has a specific niche. What irritated me in the previous posting was Ravedesigns obscure and rather blatant redefinition of “user-experience” which has no factual grounding whatsoever. Anyone who compares invasive scripting with “You want fries with that” and brings the site owners experience into the discussion (in terms of accessibility) doesn’t understand what the user-experience is about or how it affects the disabled or possibly even how far accessibility and disability reaches.
Law of averages Spike, bound to happen sooner or later
As for going off topic, I gave on the actual thread topic ages ago.
Maybe you have to include me in that then, despite 10 years experience in webdesign I clearly don’t get the ‘user-experience’ because I think that analogy was spot on. ‘’‘Do you want fries with that’ is a last attempt to add extra value by McDonalds (who I thoroughly despise by the way but not for that particular thing) except maybe it’s an example of ‘upselling’ rather than an ‘exit pitch’. Same difference to me though. I’ve used a ‘call to action’ on the home page, designed to draw the eye and lead the user down a conversion path to a predetermined action, do you object to that too or is it just the extra click a pop-up causes?
ALL marketing is invasive, marketers are constantly competing for your attention and trying to make you want to buy their product. Where it becomes unethical in my view is when you target children or are misrepresenting your product (or just downright conning someone). If the target demographic for this site I’m working on included disabled people, I would still use this pop-up, I think this is being blown out of all proportion. It’s a pop-up for gods sake, I’m not disabling the back button or infecting their pc using malware or overwriting their home page or some such dirty trick.
If you’re going to object to pop-ups I suggest you turn your energies to the many forms of marketing which far exceed pop-ups in terms of their being unethical or even downright dangerous.
Looks like we got here too late. Hopefully the gibberish will subside and you’ll be back to normal soon
Maybe, maybe not. There are certainly different degrees of intrusiveness. Presumably, you have some line you won’t cross. What if closing the exit popup triggers another popup. Is that OK? If not why not? If it is OK, what if closing the 2nd popup triggers a 3rd? Etc. At what point does it become a bad idea and why? I bet I could apply that reasoning to the very first occurrence of the popup being triggered.
Just out of interest, are there any stats that show the effectiveness of exit popups?
What I object to is the use of techniques which effectively hijack the browsers natural mechanism. Whether it’s breaking the back button, pushing alert boxes to the screen (which refuse to close) or cancelling out the end users ability to exit a website (directly interfering with the navigation between pages). Call to action mechanisms I don’t have a problem with because while they do draw attention (and it could be said they interfere with the natural reading flow) the key component is that an individuals right to be affected by that marketing is entirely optional. Clicking a call to action button is an “opt-in” form of marketing (just like conventional adverts), it’s all down to the end user having a choice to “spare a moment of their time”, and that’s fine for usability and accessibility because it’s not a unexpected or predatory action to confuse an expected action. What you are attempting (with the exit script) is the complete opposite, it’s an “opt-out” mechanism which effectively gives the user no choice but to have their right to leave a website messed with on the grounds that you first want to try and reach out to them again (and probably looks like a sign of desperation that you need to start throwing your weight about to get some attention). If you had a brick and mortar store and you were dancing in the window with a sign saying “give me your email for some amazing deals”, most people would at least see it and consider taking the action… however if you blocked the exit of the store when I try and leave and say “are you sure you don’t want to give me your email?” I would probably extract a few of your teeth with my fist … perhaps you don’t agree, that’s your prerogative, but I doubt you’ll get much respect for implementing such a script. Most sites I’ve seen using them have been budget hosts (like one dollar a month), scam websites and get rich quick pyramid schemes (offering PDF’s for cash)… kinda says it all really.
They vary depending on who you ask but if I get 1 sale then it worked.
As where the line is, I explained in my previous post where my line is. I’m not targeting children, spamming anyone, causing any danger nor misrepresenting the product, just making a harmless exit pitch. That’s well on my side of the line.
Alex you’re well out of order here mate. First of all I’m not ‘blocking’ anyone’s exit, secondly I don’t like the hypothetical “extract a few of your teeth with my fist” remark even with a smily face, and thirdly your comments about how much respect I’ll get or not and the comparisons with scam sites are offensive and certainly uninvited.
I didn’t actually ask for anyone’s opinion on pop-ups, I asked how to implement one and have been tolerating the ensuing discussion out of politeness and because I like a debate as much as the next person but now you’re getting personal and I’ve had enough of having to justify my decision.
I’ll put words in your mouth and make assumptions with a view to you putting me right:
Let’s pretend that you visit a site and then decide to leave. An exit popup appears momentarily stopping you. Closing this popup triggers a second popup. Some would see red, but you aren’t annoyed yet. However, when you close the second popup and a third popup appears - it’s then that you get annoyed. Why? Because the webmaster is completely disregarding your request to leave the site. You may see one exit popup as being acceptable, but there is a number of popups you don’t find acceptable.
The opinions of everyone who doesn’t like pop-ups have been noted, it’s been an interesting discussion but now I’d like to get an answer to my original question.
Anyone got any actual advice on how to design this exit pop-up?
I didn’t mean to be, I was purely explaining how the experience would infuriate someone in the sense of real world scenarios. Exit pop-up mechanisms do prevent a “clean escape” from a website… preventing someone from navigating away from a website without interference is by definition “blocking the exit”, after all, that’s exactly what the JavaScript is intending to do. As for the hypothetical, I was pointing out if you exhibited the functionality you wanted offline to show exactly why that form of marketing is uncalled for (IMO). In reference to the scam sites… I don’t see why you would take offence, it’s based on nothing other than research. I recently went to see if what you wanted to-do was possible so I looked at a wide number of implementations (to see if it could be done in an accessible manner)… EVERY instance of a website using an exit script like that was one of those “buy my PDF on how to get rich quick!” websites… that or offering a “discount” upon exiting without buying an already budget hosting solution. I couldn’t find any exit scripts in use on what you would call “quality” business websites.
Oh alright- I’ll bite my tongue for now - but you were the one who opened up this free for all!
Have you looked at maybe using a footer ad like offered at http://www.ultimatefooterad.com/ - but be careful though, if you visit and try to click your back button they’ll display a popup with a special offer for you.
Sorry I can’t provide more direct help in how to actually accomplish this, but maybe someone in one of the programming or javascript related forums here could better help?
Oh, and when you do get a solution setup - I’d love to know the results you see from testing this out.
Take a look at ForeSee’s model on exit pop ups. They randomly ask users upon entry if they would like to participate in any survey’s during their visit and then show a survey and some point during the site, sometimes upon exit if that is required.
This is the most unobtrusive model I have seen in regards to exit surveys. I would recommend using them only if you make over $500k a year on your site, if not the ROI is lacking.
You need to be careful when participating in obtrusive marketing techniques because your results can be skewed negative since you are asking for feedback the user didn’t care to give.
That’s particularly why I stated that the best method of maximum visibility would be a lightbox, they can be achieved (in most browsers) entirely with CSS, though the stop browser function and IE support would be required to use JavaScript… I confess that out of all methods of interrupting the user, a lightbox has a certain “pause the DVD to get some more popcorn feel” rather than a “window launches gone viral”, especially as all browsers now have popup blockers turned on by default. The URL trying to escape could possibly be cached using JavaScript (to get the URL in the address bar, cancel the action and then revert to the lightbox before redirecting.
