The Email Wars

Do you remember back to a time when we all learned to hate the pop up ad? They became both a massive issue with users and the media and at the same time a profit center for so many ad networks and those hocking anti pop up blockers. In the end the pop up lost that round… until the invention of the light box. Yes that cool function so many of us love as it brings functionality right to the top of the screen while not killing the overall site visit is the new pop up. But is seems we like it. And even more importantly it seems to really be working in conjunction with newsletter list growth.

We are not only seeing it with content publishers but more and more we are seeing it across marketing and brand sites. And all use cases I have seen are pointing to it working and not being hated as much as the browser take over ads that make you wait 5 seconds till an ad runs or allowing you to click past it. And why is this? Well this one I found from a recent link (as no matter what you think I am not a reader of AskMen.com) was a good example of why they are working.

1. They allow you to still see the content you are there for. Sure it hurts the ability to interact or read it, but it does not create a bad user experience IMHO that makes you have ill will toward the site.

2. They opt in takes place quickly and then fades away to let you continue your visit.

3. They just look so much prettier than another window spawning outside of your browser or opening a new tab.

I would think that we will see more of these start to appear as this year goes on. As long as they are done in a creative way and are easy to move past I would not expect that we see much hostility towards the use. I have also lately seen them not open on a first page but X pages into a visit. We have used them in a magazine site to appear after 3 pages viewed with good success. One thing that we did test was based on the user analytics after a few months of testing. We found the average visit page view patterns and fine tuned them to 3 pages as we noticed a drop off in visits after 3 pages. By adding this we did not interfere with the intention of the visit and did not interfere with the content. The list growth has been directly tied to this tactic as we can tell the difference in subscribers coming from the normal newsletter sign up forms/boxes vs those that opt in via the light box. A little creative form tagging can do this for you as well.

Take some risks with this and see what you find. Try it on a few unique pages where you see drop offs or exits in the visit patterns. Or try it based on average page views and work backwards from there with an “X” variable. It all takes testing but without trying you will never know.

Long live the light box – or at least until we find a new way to advance the experience in a non obtrusive manner.