It seems like everyone is adopting exit pop-ups these days. Whereas they were once a tool utilised by only the savviest early adopters, now everyone’s onto them and thus their effectiveness is fast declining. To continue to stand out effectively and really gain from these features, you just need to up your pop-up game and there are simple ways to do this. But before we continue any further, let’s just clarify what exit pop-ups actually are. Exit pop-ups, are one of the most common types of eCommerce website lead generators. They appear on the screen right at the moments when a consumer is about to leave a site, or occasionally they popup when the consumer has already left.
Exit pop-ups exist in order to increase engagement and mitigate bounce rates. Those visitors that click off your site are potentially lost leads and consumers who leave your site early could theoretically be about to click onto your competitor’s site and no-one wants that.
A well designed exit pop-up encourages a conversion, or a further page view on your site. In terms of text the exit pop-up should make it clear to the user what the site’s ask is and encourage users to perform an action, be it subscribing to a newsletter, checking out some other offers or promotions, anything to keep visitors engaged with the site and moving towards the checkout process.
Here are the best ways to optimise your site with use of exit pop-ups.
Unique is best
Pop-ups are everywhere. So the challenge is, how can you make your exit pop-ups stand out? eCommerce sites need to work hard to distinguish themselves, starting with their designs.
The offer in the pop-up, usually the key thing that the site is using to keep visitors tuned in, must be compelling and accompanied by a relevant image. The shine shouldn’t stop there. The design of the pop-up needs to look unique to the sight, any old template won’t do. It needs to fit with the overall branding of the site. A failure to convey brand consistency, could raise suspicions as visitors may think the pop-up is spam. Like all eCommerce experiences, the pop-up must fit seamlessly with the rest of the site in terms of colour scheme, font and design. Everything must be in sync.
The call to action must be relevant and instantly redeemable
Concise relevance is popular when it comes to eCommerce site exit pop-ups, but so too is instant gratification. We are talking about online shopping after-all. If a user has exited your site because they consider it incapable of meeting their needs, they will have been unsuccessful at getting what they wanted quickly and without fuss. The pop-up is your last chance to convince the visitor that you can supply them with what they are looking for. In order to do that let the consumer know as succinctly as possible what you are offering, why it’s so great and how they can straight away get their hands on it.
Don’t make all your exit popups the same
Pin-point why a visitor left your site in the first place and take care to bear this in mind. When you know why users are dropping off, you can tailor your pop-ups with personalised offers. A standard exit pop-up is not effective in meeting the needs of all visitors who leave your site. You need to adapt the slogans on your pop-ups according to why people drop off. For example, maybe visitors found your shipping costs excessively high and dropped off at this stage of the checkout process. It would benefit you greatly if this occurrence triggered a pop-up in future, where the CTA offered free shipping or a discount, in order to keep those users on your site, where they will hopefully complete their transaction.
Don’t convey a false sense of urgency
Although conveying urgency in eCommerce can often stimulate action, showing a reduced price or dramatic slogan promising the last chance to purchase whatever item the visitor was just looking at, is suspicious. It can damage your credibility and brand value. Reducing the price of an item isn’t necessarily an issue, but telling the visitor who just clicked off your site whilst browsing an item that it is marked down for now and now only, seems a little too obvious. Instead, try adding a specific length of time to your reduced price offer. This pop-up doesn’t fake urgency. Instead, it gives the user a personalised, and time-sensitive offer.
So there we have it, exit pop-ups are great for increasing your conversion rates, if you take care to ensure that they are unique to the user who has just left your site. Make sure they are brand consistent and that they don’t look too generic and you are sure to coax shoppers back to your site to finalise their purchases.
