Website Popups Give Your Visitors Click Stress

I can feel the stress levels rising as I click around various web sites these days (not just vacation rental sites). I’m almost nervous to move the mouse around, let alone click on some of the links. What’s going on?

• Newsletter popups (sign up for my free newsletter) as soon as I arrive at a site
• Newsletter popups when I try to leave the same site (will I ever escape?). Do I click ‘OK’ to get rid of it or will this take me to yet another page?
• Add this, share this, tweet this – popups appearing in headers, in footers, all over the place
• Fixed position highlights that stay on the page even if you try to scroll away (‘have you checked out the latest news?’)
• Finally, the worst offender, when I try to click out to another site I’m informed that my exit click has been tracked, would I like to use the service on my site and by the way, would I like to visit the site I was trying to get to in the first place?

Some of these appear when you click your mouse. For others, all you have to do is float your mouse over a dangerous area of the web page.

I think this all contributes to a new syndrome and I’m going to call it click stress. The things you click on don’t do what you expect. You can’t get to the information and the pages that you do want. You can’t escape from annoying pages without clicking close 3 times (this might even open up some new popups for you if you’re really unlucky). It makes web surfing difficult and stressful.

If you use some (or all) of these techniques, it doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s tempting to add a few of these widgets because they are easy to install, free and carry the promise of more visitors (or more tweets, or more friends, etc). It’s important to make sure your website does the right thing and actually helps your readers. Is it gently educating them and then maybe, just maybe offering them some related information? This is the way to build trust, teach your readers and encourage them to come back for more another day.

Popups are like interruption marketing at it’s worst – unwelcome, unrelated, usually irrelevant and badly timed.

Tags: facebook, fixed position, newsletter, popup, twitter

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