No one is clicking my slide box popup - Can it be improved?

Question

Earlier I asked when it the right time to prompt the visitor to opt in for web push notifications (they work on both PC and Android devices).

I was just loading the default prompt and every day maybe just 5% or less than visitors have clicked "allow".

It was suggested I should wait for some user interaction, and show them some info for why they should opt in, so I decide to use a slide box pop up which shows right after user start to scroll down

I have attached my design.

I tested it for a whole day, and 0% have visitors have clicked "Activate Now".

What can I improve? Design, Copy, CTA?

I don't want to display the prompt only after a certain user action or time, since many users view the website just for information and that's fine. it doesn't mean they aren't interested, they just might not have the money to buy the item right now. So with notifications, I can send them an alert a week later for example. that's why it's important to collect permission from as many as possible, or I'll lost those leads for good.

Answer 1

Pop-up windows are a pestilence on the web. Users are fed up with them.

People visited your web site because they wanted to view information about some product. But as soon as they started scrolling down, an annoying pop-up window appeared in the middle of the screen, blocking what they were trying to read.

Their response was simple - get rid of that window by the quickest way possible, by clicking on the "X" button. This allowed them to carry on with what they were reading.

What can I improve? Design, Copy, CTA?

Get rid of it entirely. Provide an option somewhere on the page that they can click on if they want to sign up for updates. But be aware that most people wont click on a "please send me lots of spam on products that you want to sell to me" link.

Answer 2

As other have said, most visitors have developed a banner blindness and will either ignore or close your pop-up without reading its content. Improving the content of the banner will have minimal effect on this behavior.

A better alternative would be to advertise your feature inside the page content and not as a generic overlay. Depending on what value your feature provides, you should place an access to this feature in strategic locations:

• If your feature provides a way to track price change: put a button next to the price labelled "Track". Here is an example of this that used to be implemented in Google Shopping*:
• If your feature provides a way to subscribe to new offers without having to repeatedly make the same research: put an action button on the search page labelled "Subscribe...". Here is an exemple of this implemented in the Job Board Wordpress Plugin*:
• etc.

If all of the above is covered by the same feature (browser notifications), once a user click one of those buttons you can explain in a modal window the benefits of this feature (e.g. "Activate notifications to get price tracking & much more...") with an action button to activate it.

Users will be much more attentive to the content of the modal that opened while looking for the feature than a pop-up that opened automatically out of context.

_{*: I have no affiliation with either of those websites, they're just the first results I found in Google image. Those screenshots are used for educational purpose only under the fair use policy. If anyone wants to replace them with wireframes, feel free to do so.}

Answer 3

There are a few issues that spring to mind here.

For example:

• The title of your Popup is 'New Feature!', but you don't explain clearly what that feature is OR why it's of value to the user.
• If the current 'deal' the user is viewing isn't interesting, why would they want updates of a similar type?
• The button text says 'Activate Now'. Again, the user may not fully understand what you are asking them to activate OR how this 'feature' benefits them.

Employ some meaningful UX copywriting to grab the attention of the user. The title could read something like: 'Get notified about new deals!' or 'Find out when new deals launch!'. This will introduce the benefit before the ask for a commitment.

Make the body copy more informative; tell the user what benefit they can expect to receive for choosing to activate notifications and why it's a great idea. Generalize this so it doesn't sound specific to whatever they're currently viewing.

Lastly, change the button copy to something more human: 'Yes, please' or 'Sure, notify me'. Adding a secondary CTA to allow users to say 'No, thanks' could be beneficial for tracking your Yes vs No % rate over time.

Answer 4

TL;DR You don't, and can't, get high response rates because nobody wants the notifications.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, actually wants to "opt in for web push notifications".

That is the core problem.

One of the absolute top things I do on a customer's computer the first time I work on it is to remove existing browser push notifications and turn off the ability of web sites to ask to add new notifications (the action that presumably is attempted if someone clicks "Activate Now"). I have never had anyone say "oh, I want to keep those notifications. Never. The vast majority of the time they don't even say anything because they don't realize how easy it is (in Firefox, Chrome and many other browsers) to stop the notifications. Until I say "should I get rid of these notifications" and they typically tell me "Yes, please!"

Nobody wants these things. NOBODY.

Email is a different story. There are many people who are OK with periodic (weekly or even daily) emails from many different vendors or other organizations. There is a big difference between email and web push notifications: Control. The end user can delete the email as easily as they can close the push notification. But they also only see those emails when they want to look at email. If they are doing something else, they don't get bothered with notifications. In addition, power users can setup filters to automatically file the emails so that they are even less intrusive.

Answer 5

I think the biggest issue here is that it's not clear what will happen once I click that CTA (as Scott mentioned).

Where and how will I be notified? "Activate" sounds like I will be installing a new program or browser extension. The best thing to do is just make it more clear what you actually mean.

---

Another issue could be, that it visually looks like an ad and people have developed a banner blindness.
Though I am not a visual designer and don't know what exactly would have to be improved in that regard.

Maybe the icon could already show more?

Answer 6

Drop the popup, make it an option in the main page. And make it look better integrated with the rest of the page (e.g include it in a list of options with "buy now" and "add to wishlist")

At the moment, that look like an advert, spam, or clickbait, trying to trick users into going to a different (potentially malicious) website. It hits almost every red flag and alarm bell in my head, bar two: it's not trying to say that I've won anything, and it's not showing or implying people in various states of undress.

If you insist on having a popup of sorts, then there are 3 ways to make it look less like a phishing expedition, and more like it actually belongs on the website. First, try to improve the text slightly. "Activate Now" does not make sense in that context, try something like "Add Alert" (and, include a "manage alerts" button beneath it, so that people can check what types of products/deals they are currently subscribed to), and probably get rid of the "New Feature!" title.

The other two options would be to have it as a narrow bar along the bottom of the screen, or to have it appear in what would normally be whitespace (e.g. the StackOverflow "Manage Cookies" popup, which appears under the menu on the left of the screen) — notably, both of these ensure that you don't block the user's attempt to view the actual content.

Answer 7

It's possible that 95% of your visitors don't want push notifications.

My humble suggestion: Put two more buttons on the pop-up. One that says, "Close this popup" and a second that says, "Close this popup and never show me another pop-up on this site again."

Tally your responses. That will point you in the right direction.

Answer 8

I believe I can answer this question. Couple of years back I faced similar issue of users not clicking the pop-up as I desired. So, as you have mentioned that users would mostly leave the page after they get the desired information. In order to increase the conversion rate what I did was, instead of using the pop-ups I used to place the same content of pop-up box into a placeholder so subtly that it would blend-in with the rest of the content and at the same time it wouldn't stand-out as a pop-up, still would hold it's relevance and convey the desired message.

For e.g., Let's say the article was on optimising the memory(space complexity) of a search algorithm. So I would place one or two subtle placeholders saying 'Get weekly article on optimising algorithms in your email' and similar with the CTA containing similar accent colour. And at the end of the article I'd place another message placeholder saying:

'Get more algorithm optimisation guides delivered directly into your inbox! Send me the weekly news letter'

I hope it gives you some kind of rough idea to begin with.