January 2002

Website Technique

Pop Up Boxes by Tom Antion

Whether you love or hate pop up boxes, they can be used judiciously on your website to serve you. A pop up box is a small window that opens up generally when you enter or leave a webpage. The box is actually a mini webpage usually used to promote something.

Many people hate pop up boxes. This is primarily because when they were invented (probably by the pornography people) they were used, and still are, to harass and catch you in a continuous loop that only the most savvy web surfers know how to get out of.

In general the people that hate pop up boxes the most are techie types and academic types. Fortunately for most of us, this is a very tiny segment of the potential market for our products and services, so I just sacrifice them. Many in that market don't spend any money anyway so it's no great loss. 

I don't want you to get worried and scared off by some technogeek that vehemently warns you against pop up boxes. You might hear them say, "I won't do business with anyone who uses pop up boxes on their website." I say, "Big deal." I know one guy who has 260,000 technogeek subscribers to his newsletter and he can't make any money because they don't buy anything anyway. Most of them know how to steal just about anything they want, so don't fret about losing these people.

Now let's talk about the phrase "judicious use." Judicious use does NOT mean A. multiple pop up boxes on the same page of your website, B. pop up boxes you can't get out of, or C. continuously recurring pop up boxes as people travel through your site.

Judicious DOES mean using pop up boxes sparingly and in a manner not irritating to your average website visitor.

SIZE AND SHAPE
Pop up boxes are normally smaller than the original page and can be any variety of sizes that suits you. Most are rectangles a little bit taller than they are wide. Some are shaped like banner ads which are much wider than they are tall. The one I use at http://www.public-speaking.org  is 350 pixels wide by 350 pixels high. (take a good look the first time because it won't pop up for you for another 30 days) see cookies below.

You can either lock the size of the box or allow the viewer to change the size to suit their viewing preferences.

ATTRIBUTES
Pop up boxes can have title bars at the top, tool bars, scroll bars and just about any other attribute that a normal browser window would have. Remember they are just mini webpages being shown in a browser. You can control these attributes by putting the appropriate yes or no answers in the code for the pop up box.

HOW DO POP UP BOXES POP UP?
Heck I don't know. All I know is that they have coding that is put in the background of your webpage that "knows" when it's supposed to pop up. It's all automatic once it's installed on your pages. A little later I'll show you the coding I use at http://www.public-speaking.org  to tell the box when to pop up.

ENTRY POP UPS
An entry pop up is a pop up box that pops ups when someone first enters a web page. This is the type I use at http://www.public-speaking.org  to alert people to sign up for my free speaking ezine http://www.antion.com/ezinesubscribe.htm  .

This pop up box is ready to spring into action on any of the 160 pages at that site. If you first land on the home page, you get a pop up box. If you first land on any of the 150 article pages you get a pop up. When you go to your second page on the site the pop up coding recognizes you and doesn't pop up again for you for 30 days. (see cookies below)

When I first started using pop ups, I had one that would pop up each time you entered the home page. This was very annoying to me and to my visitors so I scrapped it for the one I have now that is a little smarter and judicious.

Entry pop ups can be used for all sorts of things. Like promoting your ezine, leading someone to a specific area of your site, testing headlines (see below).

EXIT POP UPS
Exit pop ups occur when someone leaves a web page. You may want to use an exit pop up when you don't want to distract your visitor from reading the page they are on. They can be set to display any time a person leaves the page or more judiciously like I use them.

You can see an example of an exit pop up I use by visiting http://www.antion.com/click.htm  . This is the sales letter promoting my ebook "Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing for Speakers." This pop up is set to display if you leave the page in any fashion "other than" clicking on the order link. 

If you click the order link, you are already convinced that you want to buy the book, so I don't want to distract you from completing the purchase. If you click on the order link, the pop up never displays. It just waits to do it's duty on someone not as courteous as you :)

If you attempt to leave the page, then the pop up displays and offers you a free sample and the entire Table of Contents. Since you weren't quite convinced by reading the sales page, I want to take another shot at you with the free samples.

You can use exit pop ups like I do above or you could use them to promote other products and services of yours. A good exit strategy is to use associate links (links where you get a commission if the visitor clicks through to someone else's site and buys something). This is a really good idea because the visitor was leaving your page anyway so you may as well take a shot at making some money on them even if it's only a commission from someone else.

I make a couple thousand dollars a month on commissions from other people which take no effort on my part once the affiliate links are installed on my site.

TESTING HEADLINES
Another good way to use either entry or exit pop ups is to test headlines. Let's say you wrote 4 headlines to get people to visit a certain sales page on your site and you couldn't decide which one was the best (you shouldn't be deciding these things anyway because what your visitors think is more important than what you think). You put all four headlines in the pop up box and link them to the same sales page. All you have to do is track the number of times each link was clicked on and you have a pretty good real world test of which one your visitor liked best.

WHEN TO AVOID POP UPS
You may want to forget about using pop ups on pages that you are really depending upon to get high search engine rankings. The coding necessary to make the pop up can be an inhibitor to search engine spiders. 

I primarily use pop ups on sites I've created for directories where keyword placement is not so critical and on sales letter pages where I'm driving the traffic by using my ezine. I don't really try to optimize sales pages for search engines although you could.

If you don't care about search engine positioning, then use your pop ups wherever you feel they will do the most good.

How to get out of pop up loops.


Script from Public-Speaking.org

To view the script I use at http://www.public-speaking.org view the page in Internet Explorer or Netscape and click on "view" then "source" or "Page source" You can copy the script if you like and have your webmaster adapt it for your site and install it.

They're not actually difficult to install once you are taught how or if you know a little bit about the HTML language that is behind the scenes at your website.

The script will start with:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!--begin

var cookie="publicspeaking";

and end with 

// end -->
</SCRIPT>


Cookies

Cookies are tiny text files that are set and read by a website. In the case of a the above pop up the cookie is set so that the pop up box doesn't pop up over and over again for the same person. The one I use keeps the pop up box from popping up for 30 days after it first pops up for the same visitor.

Pop ups are very, very valuable to you when used properly. I highly suggest you learn more about them and implement them on your website. An extremely inexpensive ebook on this topic by Jonathan Mizel can be found at http://www.amazingpopups.com/power 

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