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Comment by bryans | Hacker News Reader

For clarification: Your website is an advertisement for your business. You don't need an ad for your business obscuring your ad for your business. It reeks of desperation, and the vast majority of people visiting your page right now who are seeing that modal pop up, will promptly forget you exist.

I shouldn't need to explain why that is that case, of course, because public relations and marketing and UX are based entirely on the same psychological principles. And therein lies the problem. You're a public relations company displaying the inability to relate to the public.

Don't fix this "today", fix it right now. It should be your top priority.

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bryans, we'd fixed this earlier (with the pop-up, moving it back to a later time). i'd meant to write this earlier.

I don't think you quite understood my point. There should not be a pop-up at all. Ever. Period. You have calls-to-action all over the site. Having one more pop up while the user is trying to read or navigate your site will do nothing but alienate them.

Like I said, it reeks of desperation. Every time something pops up over the actual content of your site, you might as well just replace the text in that pop-up with "please, please, we beg you to give us your business!" Because that is all anybody sees. I assure you.

Source: Web developer of 18 years, watched companies literally go out of business based on similarly poor user experiences that I could not talk them out of.

thanks for your feedback. we've taken down the pop-up. we were on the fence earlier about having it up and you brought up good points.

While I agree that this popup is poorly timed, and also agree that they are pretty annoying in general, there are plenty of case studies out there about people getting big conversion boosts with these kinds of things when implemented correctly.

That doesn't necessarily make them a good idea, since annoying many of your users or going against your principles may not be worth the boost, but you should be careful about assuming your own ux preferences will lead to the best conversion rate--unfortunately, the data will often prove you wrong.

Most websites to the promotion-model when reading unrelated content, like a blog post from the company.

Doing a promotion-model on a page that already is promoting the product is "yo dawg" levels of silliness.

Agree completely in this case... just pointing out that for better or worse, there are situations where they can be effective.

I'm pretty late in responding to your comments, but I feel the need to point something out.

If an annoying UX element actually increases conversions, it is purely a sign that your overall UX or UI or marketing verbiage is failing. Conversions will increase significantly more if you fix the core issue, because not only will a proper UX/UI still elicit the conversions from users who might have been pressured by desperate tactics, it prevents alienating those users who are not susceptible to those tactics.

I have never once come across a situation for which this was not the case.

Edit: I think the perfect example of this is your own website. And I don't mean to insult you, I'm just giving you my take as a visitor and an experienced developer.

I was entirely turned off by the pop-up, which puts me firmly in the insusceptible category. Then after closing that pop-up to explore your actual marketing message, I was overwhelmed. Not just by the meaningless industry jargon, but by the sheer amount of dissimilar and unorganized content on a single page.

I can guarantee, without any shadow of a doubt, that a more succinct and meaningful message will increase your conversions more than the three desperate elements currently on the page ever will.

You are certainly entitled to your philosophy... but I don't get the sense you've validated it with data. When you hold yourself to account in this way, your level of certainty about what works and what doesn't decreases dramatically.

Completely agree that our site and message can be improved. It's a continual work in progress. That said, the exit intent popup has been a large driver of leads for us. There are doubtlessly better ways to get leads, but given limited time to seek perfection, for now I'd rather have the clients this gets us than the approval of a purist who offers no data, just personal opinions.

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