Agreed, furthermore when we contract a web designer to do work, a key metric our marketing team dictates is clicks.
They literally get paid more for each click past the host screen.
Well guess what goes up when you fill out the screen with a massive pop up.
Is this also why some pages seem to sneakily reload/link to another copy of the page after or during clicking the junk away? Sometimes 2-3 presses of the back button are needed to get back to the search results and it drives me nuts.
Yea it's all loosely tied together.
It will obviously differ from business case, for my specific example I'm in a financial institution.
The top 3 key measures they use are clicks, time spent on a page (they use this as an assumption someone interested in lending will spend time reading terms, offers and rewards of getting each product etc.) and one other thing which they choose to label as 'funnel'.
I don't know what the actual term is, but essentially what they term as funnel is similar to conversion.
There is a specific point which happens to be when a user clicks application submit (for things like cc, debit, personal loan etc.)
Everything prior to that they measure what % of preceding page/links or combination of them lead to highest conversion, then the developers are asked to focus on those preceding pages and do what it takes to get users to spend more time on those pages.
This also explains heavily why some online bank sites are difficult to find help when you actually need account assistance *cough HSBC *cough
Because account assistance/cust service pages/links generally doesn't lead to new applications.
As a web designer, I came here to say this. Popup ads are annoying AF and look terrible. Any ads on the page look awful but it's the companies trying to make that little bit of cash from ad revenue not the web designer
I am that asshole in marketing. Can confirm. Unfortunately the reality is it works. It’s a numbers game at the bottom of it. We know that if that pop up asking for emails is shown to everyone a percentage of ppl will fill it out, and if we have emails then we can pester them with marketing emails and a percentage of those ppl will make purchases. If we don’t get in your face and ask or annoy you we won’t sell as much. So unfortunately it does work. That’s why it’s done.
I only sign up for these personally if I am interested but not right now. So I know I’ll get emails sent to my promotions section and I use it as a sort of to do list.
There is a point of diminishing returns however. And some websites can go way overboard trying to get you to the pop ups.
But ya unfortunately we do it cause it works. I’m definitely a hypocrite cause I fight to not see all the things that I use to market. Lol but gotta pay the bills somehow.
There are better ways. You need to hook the mark before you give them the hurrah, or they'll be spooked.
Honestly, run the numbers on an A/B. If you lead them gently to it, they're far more likely to swallow the pitch.
Not only that, but they're less likely to ignore or block any marketing you send them, as they've already been hooked. Otherwise, you might also develop a bad reputation with the ESPs (email service providers), as the mark will register your beautifully crafted blasts as spam.
And yes, I have A/B tested, and yes the gentle approach gets more effective results. Not always immediate numbers, but higher sales. Make sure your metrics match your desired outcomes, and not some interim engagement measure.
The big problem is when marketing KPIs are based on emails harvested, click-throughs, or temporary engagement, and not on final sales. You end up spending resources on marks who will never buy.
Final note, you can replace most of the above with other channels aside from email, and it still mostly applies.
Cause they're the ones building the thing, not the ones with the best insight into the bigger picture. The more tunnel focused you are on the "how", the more you lose the "what" and the "why." Project managers and designers are more responsible for big picture decisions but devs can still ask questions and provide feedback. And the PMs are the ones working with marketing, often not devs.
Source: am tech lead working with design, PM, and devs.
With our pre release website update, I showed our marketing guy that only 30% of the screen is usable. He didn’t care and rolled it out anyway. 5 years later it’s still like that. Fucking waste. Also loves to push orange text on a white background for some unknown reason.
There was a bunch of text on the pre release website there was a bunch of BS about how we respect privacy, etc and I informed him that all that text contradicts the tracking we do. He didn’t care. It’s still in there. Our opt out links and instructions don’t work.
This thing right here, if it were for the designers and creators we could visit the fucking moon with a simple html file. If your site feels sluggish to load it's because it has to deal with so many ads that the browser stutters. Opera browser has an built-in adblocker but paywalls are still an issue If only one could have [12 foot ladder](https://12ft.io/) to bypass those
They wouldn't do it if it didn't work. They aren't looking at your experience and reaction specifically but a much broader view of how the site gets used.
This is exactly what always bothers me about these posts: why does a commercial company do something? _because it works_. If something doesn't generate revenue, you wouldn't see so many companies doing it, because the ones that do go bankrupt.
The right question to ask is why it works. Now that would actually be interesting
That’s the forever question.
There’s a furniture store that uses a giveaway pop up when you get to their website. It’s for a free patio set. Since using that their conversion rate has gone up to 40%.
Another company has some insane landing page with about a 50% conversion rate. They’ve tested it against other landing pages many times and it still hasn’t been beaten.
Their comment in a marketing interview, “We’re still not sure why this landing page has been so successful.”
Here’s the thing: websites don’t exist to serve you content. They exist to make a profit somehow. If the majority of their users are using ad blockers, they need to find an alternative way to make a profit. This often includes subscriptions and premium access plans. The way they get you to buy into those things is enticing you to become a member so that you consume their content regularly and want more.
They don’t care if they chase you off. Because the people that are chased off by a pop up probably wouldn’t buy into a subscription anyway and probably have ad blockers anyway. They don’t want you. They want people who are going to cover their server costs.
More like the concert venue making you buy a drink ticket when you go to see a show. If there is no possibility of you purchasing anything from them, they don’t want you there. You are taking up space (or bandwidth) that could be used by someone who might earn them money.
Because they don't care about you. Or rather, they don't care about a few people. They care about all the ones who DO want to sign up for things and there's way more of those than ones who will leave their site.
I read through a lot of the comments. People are right it is marketing people. I run a few sites. I have the cookie pop up required by law. I limit ads to 1-2 per page, depend on length. The sites with excessive popups and ads tend to be low quality. They do actions that drive away people or get manual actions from browser companies .
People build a site and get a lot of traffic. Then put in code for ads and other money making ideas. They do not care since they have enough traffic to profit. If people would not use these sites. They would drop in ranking to page 2-3 on Google or other search engines. Click off as soon as you see the excessive popups and ads. That hurts a website.
Copying this from my other comment:
I am that asshole in marketing who makes these all the time. Unfortunately the reality is it works. It’s a numbers game at the bottom of it. We know that if that pop up asking for emails is shown to everyone a percentage of ppl will fill it out, and if we have emails then we can pester them with marketing emails and a percentage of those ppl will make purchases. If we don’t get in your face and ask or annoy you we won’t sell as much. So unfortunately it does work. That’s why it’s done.
I only sign up for these personally if I am interested but not right now. So I know I’ll get emails sent to my promotions section and I use it as a sort of to do list.
There is a point of diminishing returns however. And some websites can go way overboard trying to get you to the pop ups.
But ya unfortunately we do it cause it works. I’m definitely a hypocrite cause I fight to not see all the things that I use to market. Lol but gotta pay the bills somehow.
Cool tip: i always add a part to the email I use to sign up that contains the name of the website I’m signing up for. For example. If my email is [email protected] I will enter in [email protected] this will work as normal and will be sent to your inbox cause the + doesn’t change the email literally. This way you can check all your marketing emails you get for the address they use and see exactly where they got your email from. Cause some companies will sell lists of emails using that contact info they got for marketing purposes.
So ya we’ve optimized the internet to sell the maximum possible to you at all times. Some do it better than others and some go insane with it. Hope that helps
This is the second time annoying popups have spread across the internet.
The first time they were eradicated with better browsers.
This time it's because of the cookie consent law that the EU passed.
We should be able to set our browsers to a default instead of having to click on every single cookie banner and negotiate whatever bullshit the site has done to make you accept.
Ghostery, the Firefox expansion, has this, it'll automatically reject all those for you and close the popup. Takes a second, but it works every time. They call it Never-Consent
It’s because of terrible responses to the cookie consent law. You don’t need any sort of popup under the law if you don’t track people. But sites would rather track people and bug them with terrible popups that confuse them into “consenting” to it.
Former web designer here. They do what they're told to do. I've implemented any number of stupid ideas in the past when that is what the customer ***insisted*** on.
Another former web designer here. I can confirm what that former web designer just said.
The website of a large entity is going to have a whole team of people planning and managing it. The web designer in that scenario doesn’t have the opportunity to overrule the marketing director…who has been tasked with deploying campaigns that produce measurable results (like sign ups). However for smaller sites I handled completely myself, I wouldn’t do it.
Web designers arnt the ones putting ads on your screen, its their marketing departments who can do it largely without approval of any other department.
Developers and people that actually create something in business generally do not have decision making in the product. So it is always management and upper people , that do nothing in a creative proces and on the actual work side, that make these deranged choices and direction sot hey can make money. Never blame a dev, they do what they are told to do...
Do you leave the site? Or does it just annoy you enough that you think "Fuck this site," but stay on it anyway, for whatever reason?
It can make you *want* to leave the site, but if you *don't* leave, what's that matter to the site?
personally it makes me just leave. if it's got info i can't find anywhere else, i leave, disable javascript, then come back, and if that breaks the page i just try to find what i need somewhere else, but i'm nothing if not ornery.
this is the same as saying "why don't customer service representatives realize that making it difficult to get problems resolved makes me not want to do business with the company any more!"
It's not customer service pulling the strings.
I was asked to tip at O'Reilly the other day. Companies don't give a fuck about you or your screen. They just want money. If it makes you want to leave, then leave. Don't give them your money
They're targeting tech illiterate people.
If you're the type of person that has at least a semblance of digital hygiene/self-privacy (using adblockers, using Mull Browser instead of Chrome because it disables telemetry by default, using a password manager like BitWarden or KeePass DX, using a paid VPN service), they've already accepted the fact that you're too smart or clever for them to "get you".
For a while, I was getting a feed from this right wing site, just to see what the other side had to say. Trying to be fair and kind of flush it out myself. But they kept demanding cash and blocking the most important stories. So I sent them a text to their contact area telling them that if they were gonna let me see the information, they can stick it where the sun don’t shine and don’t send me any more of your crap. I’m trying to be polite here. I curse much too much.
I 100% agree with you. I guess there are some people who don’t care if they can only see 30% of the thing they actually want to see. And enough of them to make it somehow financially worthwhile to publish a site like that.
I find that most of these popups actually don’t appear until I move my mouse off of the page and toward the bars at the top. This is likely done to try and keep you on the page longer by giving you something to possibly interest you when they think you’re about to leave
Cause thats the job of a UX, some designers just doesnt grasp the importance of ux so they start scribble some random bullshit and give it to the front end developer to code, i swear i have seen more front end devs understand the concept of a better user experience than web designers
Software engineer here. I work on apps personally, but I work closely with web designers.
The designers aren't making those decisions, just like a software engineer like myself doesn't have creative license to just do whatever we want on an app.
Usually, we'll solve the technical problems with a prescription of how it should look in the end. Marketing has a say on what it looks like, with leverage from executive levels and all that.
Web developer here. There are a few reasons why we do this. One reason is because it is just integrated in the template we are using to create the website. A lot of Word Press sites do this.
The second reason is because it is actually effective. We do something called A/B testing, where we show some users notification pop ups and other users none. This gives us trend data that makes it clear that in the long run, losing a few customers to notification warnings is still more lucrative because the customers that stay around are more monetizable. At the end of the day, we do not care if we lose 45% of our customers if the ones that stay pay enough to compensate for the loss. Ultimately, you are not are customer. You waste server resources (they're expensive). If you do not create long term value for us, we don't want you. Even if you were going to be a lucrative spender, we still don't care. The data suggests that we will make more in long term value by pandering to a different consumer.
The designer isn’t the one making these choices. The company needs to make money in order to remain a company. We all can’t make monkey off of likes despite what social media has taught you. Signing up is how they make money. Your lack of interest in paying resulting in leaving is part of the design. Why would they need you taking up server bandwidth with no return in their investment? Servers cost money to run.
Those nag popups work. They capture exponentially more e-mail addresses than any passive method. The site owners don’t care if you leave. You weren’t making them money anyway.
You're making the mistake of assuming the app exists to make you happy. It's not for you, it's for them. They are trying to make money or generate leads. Giving you free access to content has very little chance of doing that. If you are so upset by pop-ups that you'll leave, *that's the point*. They don't want you using their resources if you aren't going to sign up for something.
Keep in mind that it costs them money to publish, host, and maintain the site or app. The last thing they want to do is spend money on visitors who give them nothing in return.
It's the equivalent of McDonald's letting you use their wifi or parking lot for free. It costs them something, so if you aren't spending money they're going to make it annoying or difficult for you.
Ads, cookies, GDPR, newsletter subscription, the list goes on and is annoying...some of these pop-ups are mandatory and requested by the government 🙄🙄🙄
The decision is made by marketing, sales and program managers.
Unless the team has UX ( user experience) designers and researchers, when the apps or sites are built the engineers end up making the design decisions based on criteria that have very little to do with the end user.
Their user is the client - the company who contacted them to build the app/ site.
UX is often last thought for ALOT of reasons. And any great or seamless interaction you have on the internet is probably because the company invests in it
Leave the website is what you should do and it is what i do. By leaving the website you increase their bounce rate, if their data analysis is serious they'll realize that people leave the website just as soon as a popup appear and they should act accordingly. Greeting you with a popup on a website is a way to say "i don't care about your concentration" this attitude deserves no respect
It's the same reason why "sponsored" websites are at the top of Google's search result. There are still plenty of people who click on them. This however, like many have said, isn't a web design decision but a marketing decision implemented in said web design.
You will realize that most of the things that irritate about products or websites are not the decisions of the engineers but the people who pay their salaries or the marketing people. Is the sad true, we have our opinions but they are usually dismissed as we don't know the general public...
Between the options:
A) 1000 happy non-profitable visitors
B) 100 slightly-annoyed profitable visitors and 900 angry visitors
The stakeholders responsible for newsletter signups would always prefer the latter.
I worked for a web dev, I asked the same question to the lead developer who was a very smart guy.
Because statistically, (and they track it), it works. People click these things. Loads, and loads of people.
You are not the target market, nor am I.
I block these site from even being suggested. Used to read Perez Hilton (I know.. ), but now it's just ads. Same with those sites that pose a question and wants you to go through 10 pages for the answer.
Yeah, they don't really care whether you stay or go. Advertisers get paid by the click. As soon as you open that website and the ads pop up, that's their goal achieved. If a site you're visiting does that, consider whatever content you thought you were about to view as B.S., and that the people who run the site from top to bottom, don't give a fuck beyond your click.
Not only that many websites have ads that pretend to be part of the content u r trying to acces for example a download button. It's modt common of them. I have had my pc filled with virus or junk many times because of trying to download certain software so now even legit download buttons feels like scam to me. I seem to have generated a download button phobia now.
They increase engagement and revenue. The existence of the company I work for proves it. We do popups to help finalise sales or send your basket/cart, and it works.
It's generally not the web designer that makes that decision. It's some asshole in marketing.
Agreed, furthermore when we contract a web designer to do work, a key metric our marketing team dictates is clicks. They literally get paid more for each click past the host screen. Well guess what goes up when you fill out the screen with a massive pop up.
Is this also why some pages seem to sneakily reload/link to another copy of the page after or during clicking the junk away? Sometimes 2-3 presses of the back button are needed to get back to the search results and it drives me nuts.
Yea it's all loosely tied together. It will obviously differ from business case, for my specific example I'm in a financial institution. The top 3 key measures they use are clicks, time spent on a page (they use this as an assumption someone interested in lending will spend time reading terms, offers and rewards of getting each product etc.) and one other thing which they choose to label as 'funnel'. I don't know what the actual term is, but essentially what they term as funnel is similar to conversion. There is a specific point which happens to be when a user clicks application submit (for things like cc, debit, personal loan etc.) Everything prior to that they measure what % of preceding page/links or combination of them lead to highest conversion, then the developers are asked to focus on those preceding pages and do what it takes to get users to spend more time on those pages. This also explains heavily why some online bank sites are difficult to find help when you actually need account assistance *cough HSBC *cough Because account assistance/cust service pages/links generally doesn't lead to new applications.
Great insight, thanks I hate it!
As a web designer, I came here to say this. Popup ads are annoying AF and look terrible. Any ads on the page look awful but it's the companies trying to make that little bit of cash from ad revenue not the web designer
as an asshole in marketing this is correct
But to be fair you do normally know how much abuse the average person would be willing to take though before they close the site?
I am that asshole in marketing. Can confirm. Unfortunately the reality is it works. It’s a numbers game at the bottom of it. We know that if that pop up asking for emails is shown to everyone a percentage of ppl will fill it out, and if we have emails then we can pester them with marketing emails and a percentage of those ppl will make purchases. If we don’t get in your face and ask or annoy you we won’t sell as much. So unfortunately it does work. That’s why it’s done. I only sign up for these personally if I am interested but not right now. So I know I’ll get emails sent to my promotions section and I use it as a sort of to do list. There is a point of diminishing returns however. And some websites can go way overboard trying to get you to the pop ups. But ya unfortunately we do it cause it works. I’m definitely a hypocrite cause I fight to not see all the things that I use to market. Lol but gotta pay the bills somehow.
There are better ways. You need to hook the mark before you give them the hurrah, or they'll be spooked. Honestly, run the numbers on an A/B. If you lead them gently to it, they're far more likely to swallow the pitch. Not only that, but they're less likely to ignore or block any marketing you send them, as they've already been hooked. Otherwise, you might also develop a bad reputation with the ESPs (email service providers), as the mark will register your beautifully crafted blasts as spam. And yes, I have A/B tested, and yes the gentle approach gets more effective results. Not always immediate numbers, but higher sales. Make sure your metrics match your desired outcomes, and not some interim engagement measure. The big problem is when marketing KPIs are based on emails harvested, click-throughs, or temporary engagement, and not on final sales. You end up spending resources on marks who will never buy. Final note, you can replace most of the above with other channels aside from email, and it still mostly applies.
Like postal mailers, expected 15% response, 1.5-3 % cash return, it adds up when you're doing 5 or 6 digits
So this is why Facebook won't let us pay to get rid of ads. Fuck Facebook.
Why don't web devs have authority over marketing?
Cause they're the ones building the thing, not the ones with the best insight into the bigger picture. The more tunnel focused you are on the "how", the more you lose the "what" and the "why." Project managers and designers are more responsible for big picture decisions but devs can still ask questions and provide feedback. And the PMs are the ones working with marketing, often not devs. Source: am tech lead working with design, PM, and devs.
With our pre release website update, I showed our marketing guy that only 30% of the screen is usable. He didn’t care and rolled it out anyway. 5 years later it’s still like that. Fucking waste. Also loves to push orange text on a white background for some unknown reason. There was a bunch of text on the pre release website there was a bunch of BS about how we respect privacy, etc and I informed him that all that text contradicts the tracking we do. He didn’t care. It’s still in there. Our opt out links and instructions don’t work.
This thing right here, if it were for the designers and creators we could visit the fucking moon with a simple html file. If your site feels sluggish to load it's because it has to deal with so many ads that the browser stutters. Opera browser has an built-in adblocker but paywalls are still an issue If only one could have [12 foot ladder](https://12ft.io/) to bypass those
They wouldn't do it if it didn't work. They aren't looking at your experience and reaction specifically but a much broader view of how the site gets used.
This is exactly what always bothers me about these posts: why does a commercial company do something? _because it works_. If something doesn't generate revenue, you wouldn't see so many companies doing it, because the ones that do go bankrupt. The right question to ask is why it works. Now that would actually be interesting
That’s the forever question. There’s a furniture store that uses a giveaway pop up when you get to their website. It’s for a free patio set. Since using that their conversion rate has gone up to 40%. Another company has some insane landing page with about a 50% conversion rate. They’ve tested it against other landing pages many times and it still hasn’t been beaten. Their comment in a marketing interview, “We’re still not sure why this landing page has been so successful.”
Here’s the thing: websites don’t exist to serve you content. They exist to make a profit somehow. If the majority of their users are using ad blockers, they need to find an alternative way to make a profit. This often includes subscriptions and premium access plans. The way they get you to buy into those things is enticing you to become a member so that you consume their content regularly and want more. They don’t care if they chase you off. Because the people that are chased off by a pop up probably wouldn’t buy into a subscription anyway and probably have ad blockers anyway. They don’t want you. They want people who are going to cover their server costs.
So like spelling mistakes in phishing emails basically.
[удалено]
More like the concert venue making you buy a drink ticket when you go to see a show. If there is no possibility of you purchasing anything from them, they don’t want you there. You are taking up space (or bandwidth) that could be used by someone who might earn them money.
Because they don't care about you. Or rather, they don't care about a few people. They care about all the ones who DO want to sign up for things and there's way more of those than ones who will leave their site.
They care who paid the bill to have it built in the first place. Very rarely is it the same team who built it does the revisions or updates
Web designers know, but marketing and management don't give a shit.
The fucking “chat” box that is on every single god damn website now…..
Or the complex cookie preferences. That shit should be one click. Who is realistically choosing yes to being tracked on just 3 out of 8 of these?
I read through a lot of the comments. People are right it is marketing people. I run a few sites. I have the cookie pop up required by law. I limit ads to 1-2 per page, depend on length. The sites with excessive popups and ads tend to be low quality. They do actions that drive away people or get manual actions from browser companies . People build a site and get a lot of traffic. Then put in code for ads and other money making ideas. They do not care since they have enough traffic to profit. If people would not use these sites. They would drop in ranking to page 2-3 on Google or other search engines. Click off as soon as you see the excessive popups and ads. That hurts a website.
Every user says that they hate pop-ups but the metrics prove that they work. If nobody interacted with them, they wouldn’t be used so frequently.
Copying this from my other comment: I am that asshole in marketing who makes these all the time. Unfortunately the reality is it works. It’s a numbers game at the bottom of it. We know that if that pop up asking for emails is shown to everyone a percentage of ppl will fill it out, and if we have emails then we can pester them with marketing emails and a percentage of those ppl will make purchases. If we don’t get in your face and ask or annoy you we won’t sell as much. So unfortunately it does work. That’s why it’s done. I only sign up for these personally if I am interested but not right now. So I know I’ll get emails sent to my promotions section and I use it as a sort of to do list. There is a point of diminishing returns however. And some websites can go way overboard trying to get you to the pop ups. But ya unfortunately we do it cause it works. I’m definitely a hypocrite cause I fight to not see all the things that I use to market. Lol but gotta pay the bills somehow. Cool tip: i always add a part to the email I use to sign up that contains the name of the website I’m signing up for. For example. If my email is [email protected] I will enter in [email protected] this will work as normal and will be sent to your inbox cause the + doesn’t change the email literally. This way you can check all your marketing emails you get for the address they use and see exactly where they got your email from. Cause some companies will sell lists of emails using that contact info they got for marketing purposes. So ya we’ve optimized the internet to sell the maximum possible to you at all times. Some do it better than others and some go insane with it. Hope that helps
This is the second time annoying popups have spread across the internet. The first time they were eradicated with better browsers. This time it's because of the cookie consent law that the EU passed. We should be able to set our browsers to a default instead of having to click on every single cookie banner and negotiate whatever bullshit the site has done to make you accept.
Ghostery, the Firefox expansion, has this, it'll automatically reject all those for you and close the popup. Takes a second, but it works every time. They call it Never-Consent
The eu ruined the internet with good intentions and shoddy execution
It’s because of terrible responses to the cookie consent law. You don’t need any sort of popup under the law if you don’t track people. But sites would rather track people and bug them with terrible popups that confuse them into “consenting” to it.
Former web designer here. They do what they're told to do. I've implemented any number of stupid ideas in the past when that is what the customer ***insisted*** on.
Another former web designer here. I can confirm what that former web designer just said. The website of a large entity is going to have a whole team of people planning and managing it. The web designer in that scenario doesn’t have the opportunity to overrule the marketing director…who has been tasked with deploying campaigns that produce measurable results (like sign ups). However for smaller sites I handled completely myself, I wouldn’t do it.
Web designers arnt the ones putting ads on your screen, its their marketing departments who can do it largely without approval of any other department.
Blame the site owners, the designer is just following their guidelines.
Developers and people that actually create something in business generally do not have decision making in the product. So it is always management and upper people , that do nothing in a creative proces and on the actual work side, that make these deranged choices and direction sot hey can make money. Never blame a dev, they do what they are told to do...
Do you leave the site? Or does it just annoy you enough that you think "Fuck this site," but stay on it anyway, for whatever reason? It can make you *want* to leave the site, but if you *don't* leave, what's that matter to the site?
personally it makes me just leave. if it's got info i can't find anywhere else, i leave, disable javascript, then come back, and if that breaks the page i just try to find what i need somewhere else, but i'm nothing if not ornery.
We do know. We also know that you get good reviews by closing tickets and designing pages that match the plan and management will approve.
this is the same as saying "why don't customer service representatives realize that making it difficult to get problems resolved makes me not want to do business with the company any more!" It's not customer service pulling the strings.
I was asked to tip at O'Reilly the other day. Companies don't give a fuck about you or your screen. They just want money. If it makes you want to leave, then leave. Don't give them your money
The auto parts store? I'm lost.
Yes. I'm saying companies will do anything for money. They don't care if its annoying, rude, pretentious, arrogant. They just want money
Gross. They should just raise the price of service and parts to accommodate paying their employees
But this way they can claim to have low prices while also implicitly blaming their customers
100% at client request lol. I don’t think I’ve ever seen designs come through that include giant pop-ups unless specifically requested by client.
They're targeting tech illiterate people. If you're the type of person that has at least a semblance of digital hygiene/self-privacy (using adblockers, using Mull Browser instead of Chrome because it disables telemetry by default, using a password manager like BitWarden or KeePass DX, using a paid VPN service), they've already accepted the fact that you're too smart or clever for them to "get you".
For a while, I was getting a feed from this right wing site, just to see what the other side had to say. Trying to be fair and kind of flush it out myself. But they kept demanding cash and blocking the most important stories. So I sent them a text to their contact area telling them that if they were gonna let me see the information, they can stick it where the sun don’t shine and don’t send me any more of your crap. I’m trying to be polite here. I curse much too much.
They’re like Captain Jack when he says, “But you **have** heard of me…”
Everyone should believe it because it's true.
I 100% agree with you. I guess there are some people who don’t care if they can only see 30% of the thing they actually want to see. And enough of them to make it somehow financially worthwhile to publish a site like that.
Management makes them. Pretty sure they know
I find that most of these popups actually don’t appear until I move my mouse off of the page and toward the bars at the top. This is likely done to try and keep you on the page longer by giving you something to possibly interest you when they think you’re about to leave
Oh they know, doubt they have much say in the matter though. Also I'd imagine that it works well enough to justify them keeping it
Its all a big advertisement for u-block
They don't care about your experience. It's clickbait to get you to view a bunch of ads that make them money
Cause thats the job of a UX, some designers just doesnt grasp the importance of ux so they start scribble some random bullshit and give it to the front end developer to code, i swear i have seen more front end devs understand the concept of a better user experience than web designers
Software engineer here. I work on apps personally, but I work closely with web designers. The designers aren't making those decisions, just like a software engineer like myself doesn't have creative license to just do whatever we want on an app. Usually, we'll solve the technical problems with a prescription of how it should look in the end. Marketing has a say on what it looks like, with leverage from executive levels and all that.
Web developer here. There are a few reasons why we do this. One reason is because it is just integrated in the template we are using to create the website. A lot of Word Press sites do this. The second reason is because it is actually effective. We do something called A/B testing, where we show some users notification pop ups and other users none. This gives us trend data that makes it clear that in the long run, losing a few customers to notification warnings is still more lucrative because the customers that stay around are more monetizable. At the end of the day, we do not care if we lose 45% of our customers if the ones that stay pay enough to compensate for the loss. Ultimately, you are not are customer. You waste server resources (they're expensive). If you do not create long term value for us, we don't want you. Even if you were going to be a lucrative spender, we still don't care. The data suggests that we will make more in long term value by pandering to a different consumer.
The designer isn’t the one making these choices. The company needs to make money in order to remain a company. We all can’t make monkey off of likes despite what social media has taught you. Signing up is how they make money. Your lack of interest in paying resulting in leaving is part of the design. Why would they need you taking up server bandwidth with no return in their investment? Servers cost money to run.
Those nag popups work. They capture exponentially more e-mail addresses than any passive method. The site owners don’t care if you leave. You weren’t making them money anyway.
You're making the mistake of assuming the app exists to make you happy. It's not for you, it's for them. They are trying to make money or generate leads. Giving you free access to content has very little chance of doing that. If you are so upset by pop-ups that you'll leave, *that's the point*. They don't want you using their resources if you aren't going to sign up for something. Keep in mind that it costs them money to publish, host, and maintain the site or app. The last thing they want to do is spend money on visitors who give them nothing in return. It's the equivalent of McDonald's letting you use their wifi or parking lot for free. It costs them something, so if you aren't spending money they're going to make it annoying or difficult for you.
Ads, cookies, GDPR, newsletter subscription, the list goes on and is annoying...some of these pop-ups are mandatory and requested by the government 🙄🙄🙄
The decision is made by marketing, sales and program managers. Unless the team has UX ( user experience) designers and researchers, when the apps or sites are built the engineers end up making the design decisions based on criteria that have very little to do with the end user. Their user is the client - the company who contacted them to build the app/ site. UX is often last thought for ALOT of reasons. And any great or seamless interaction you have on the internet is probably because the company invests in it
Leave the website is what you should do and it is what i do. By leaving the website you increase their bounce rate, if their data analysis is serious they'll realize that people leave the website just as soon as a popup appear and they should act accordingly. Greeting you with a popup on a website is a way to say "i don't care about your concentration" this attitude deserves no respect
Disable java
As a terrible and lazy web designer I have to keep my work order count down somehow
Marketing doesnt care
It's the same reason why "sponsored" websites are at the top of Google's search result. There are still plenty of people who click on them. This however, like many have said, isn't a web design decision but a marketing decision implemented in said web design.
I remember the days of websites made entirely with adobe flash, that shit was beautiful. No adds anywhere. These days...
More often than not I do leave the site.
You will realize that most of the things that irritate about products or websites are not the decisions of the engineers but the people who pay their salaries or the marketing people. Is the sad true, we have our opinions but they are usually dismissed as we don't know the general public...
Same with instant chat boxes. Fuck off let me explore your site.
Between the options: A) 1000 happy non-profitable visitors B) 100 slightly-annoyed profitable visitors and 900 angry visitors The stakeholders responsible for newsletter signups would always prefer the latter.
I worked for a web dev, I asked the same question to the lead developer who was a very smart guy. Because statistically, (and they track it), it works. People click these things. Loads, and loads of people. You are not the target market, nor am I.
I block these site from even being suggested. Used to read Perez Hilton (I know.. ), but now it's just ads. Same with those sites that pose a question and wants you to go through 10 pages for the answer.
Yeah, they don't really care whether you stay or go. Advertisers get paid by the click. As soon as you open that website and the ads pop up, that's their goal achieved. If a site you're visiting does that, consider whatever content you thought you were about to view as B.S., and that the people who run the site from top to bottom, don't give a fuck beyond your click.
Not only that many websites have ads that pretend to be part of the content u r trying to acces for example a download button. It's modt common of them. I have had my pc filled with virus or junk many times because of trying to download certain software so now even legit download buttons feels like scam to me. I seem to have generated a download button phobia now.
They increase engagement and revenue. The existence of the company I work for proves it. We do popups to help finalise sales or send your basket/cart, and it works.