Are using popups on your site a good idea?

Hi,

I have a site where I had no popups on it, but need more revenue from a few sections of it so I put a popup code on two of my sites sections. I had one code from one CPM network on one part of my site and another popup code on another section of my site from a totally different CPM network.

I have not done it so there is more than one popup per page and I have also done it so that once one popup is shown to a visitor from both networks then he/she will never see another popup on my site again unless they come back in about 13 hours time.

Do you think that even doing this will make you loose visitors. By the way this is on a free online games section of my site.

Once I had the popup code inserted in have found that traffic has slowly decreased but don't know if it is just because of my rankings in google has also decreased meaning lower visitors.

Has anybody had any experience and now for a fact that you will lose some or alot of your visitors if when they go to your site they will have 1 or 2 popup ads shown to them and then no other popups.

Do you still loose visitors this way or is it only when you keep having popups poping up from page to page non stop.

 

If I go to a site that has pop ups, I'm out of there! Not only are they annoying, but I go to a site for specific information, and when was the last time you found info in a pop up?....LOL....or just another method to try and make money off the viewer. Give me a website with no gimmicks and useful information, and I will spend my money with you.

Jim

 

You might would like to read a tutorial I wrote about this: http://www.webnauts.net/new-window.html

 

popups are nasty. i (and probably 60% of all others) have a popupblocker, so i dont see most of it. some guys use layer ads or other "in your face!" ads, which is just rude. i have this bad habbit to press alt+F4 s soon as i see this kind of ads.
wonder who still uses this adspace, there was a tread where someone bought 100k popups to advertise his site and didnt even got 1 single signup/customer...

 

What about if it only has 1 popup on the site where you only see it once or what about if the information on the site interested you really alot. Would you still leave straight away.

I am asking this because I have seen this site that is ranked around 893 in alexa which is very good and I go on there games site and it has popups poping up on every page and they also have CPM ads, say about 2 - 3 on a page.

They must be making a killing, but also their ranking is very good, I have a feeling that it could even been much better if they didn't have popups.

I have only had popups on my site for about 2 months which is long enough realy. I had taken them of before starting this thread and I am now watching my traffic closely to see if I roughly get more pageviews per visitor on my site.

 

Yes....most likely....because my experience is where there is one pop up, there are usually more....or other annoying gimmicks. And, even if you only have one, you just lost a potential customer like me...because of the past experience. There are always other sites I can find the info I want without having to deal with annoying and intrusive advertising.

Jim

 

Thanks for the replys. I had taken them down before posting here and have decided to keep them down. I have looked at my traffic closely as they have been down for about an hour and don't see any changes in my how many pages my visitors are looking at. But I guess I can't go by an hours traffic. Something like this I will notice any changes in looking at long term stats.

Anyway, even if my pageviews per visitor doesn't improve and I will make more money from having the popups, I still have decided to keep them of as I was a little un-comfortable knowing that they were on my site in the first place.

Now they are off I feel alot better knowing this and nowing that my visitors are not getting annoyed.

Also, out of curiosity, does anybody know if having popups on your site, does it affect your search engine rankings. If a site has popups would it treat that site as if it is not as good and then rank it lower or will a search engine not know if it has a popup as it can't read Javascript.

 

Popups are 1) annoying and 2) useless. Most people don't even look at the popup and possibly close it before it even loads. I would ditch them.

 

Thanks for the comments. I ditched the popups early yesturday.

Popups are now banned from my site.

 

I just thought that I would write another comment saying that I am seeing a slight downfall in my earnings only because I have now reduced my ads as I have taken all the popup ads off my site.

Although I have seen a drop in earnings, it doesn't really worry me as I had noticed that my traffic was slowly dropping since I had put them up but thought that it could have just be my Google rankings going down.

But today it looks as if my sites traffic is going to be the best since 15th June 2006. So it looks as if them sh*tty popups were turning visitors away afterall.

Even if they didn't turn my visitors away, I still were considering in removing them anyway as I just didn't want my sites to throw popups in front of my visitors. I prefer a more clean site and now that I have done that I can sleep a little better at nights.

 

Pop-Ups are one of most profitable tools if it is related to name capturing;

If you can provide good info (not just adsense in the popup (tm)), then why not;

Ok, you will loose say 30% of your visitors, but you will gain some in the optin list and from there you can email them 10x more so basically if say, 30% leaves, and 10% optins, so then 10 mailings will give you 100% - 30% = 70% extra exposure;

As we all know in sales ppl need either to buy impulsively or they need to have the stuff repeated 7 or so times.

Of course, this depends from industry to industry.

Good luck.

 

I think using pop-ups on your website it`s the worst idea, because the visitors will not come back because of them

 

I agree. My traffic is slowly recoving. I also feel better knowing that people are not seeing popups on my site.

Overall, I am loosing money on the popups, but in the long run I will end up making more as I will receive much more returning visitors in the long run.

 

It depends. If you have a site that is good and people will like it and return then don't ruin it with popups. On the other hand if your site is rubbish and people find it and never return then you may as well make some cash with popups.

Both of these sites can make a lot of money it just depends on what you want from the site.

 

I guess moving the popups were a good idea then as I only make sites what I think will interest others.

If I don't think a site will interest others then I will not make it.

 

popup will be very annoying for your visitors, even one already is
try to keep them of your site, that your visitors will appreciate

 

I suppose most people these days have pop-up blockers. I'd say you might loose some visitors but then there are the advantages.
Also, remember that you're not allowed to place AdSense in pop-ups or on a page with pop-ups.

 

Stay away from pop-ups, they really do tick people off.

 

if the content is really of great interest ( though most of the info can be easily found out on other site )..then one popup for a session is okiez .But many people now have Popup blockers installed .