Make Sure Site Popup Doesn’t Block Visitors

We are influencers and brand affiliates.  This post contains affiliate links, most which go to Amazon and are Geo-Affiliate links to nearest Amazon store.

I was browsing another blog online recently using my Chrome browser when a popup interrupted me which is a common occurrence and I myself use Popup Domination to entice readers to join my mailing list.  When implementing a light box however one should make sure they test the performance of that lightbox on every major browser (IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera) to make sure that it is actually working properly.  Instead of having a traditional “X” to close out the window I saw what was a completely transparent popup with just text that sat on top of the background.  In addition to being illegible I had no ability to close the lightbox at all.  Escape wouldn’t work, nor would clicking outside the frame, there was no X and I tried to find one.

image

I was left with no choice but to leave the page and as I don’t always recall what sites I visited, this means it may be days or weeks before I stumble across this bloggers blog again.  Now as a common courtesy, I always report problems I find to the site admin if I can find a contact page.

On another blog, I noticed that the lightbox is much cleaner with an easy way to close out of it.  However you have to scroll down to fill out the form and click the subscribe button.  When using a popup lightbox you should make it as convenient as possible for people to sign up, fit all of the information including the entire form into the framed window without any scrolling.  I don’t know how long the form is, or how much scrolling is needed so I am more likely to just close out than even check and fill it out.

image

I myself became annoyed with my own lightbox when I saw website snapshots of my own site showing my lightbox instead of my homepage, this told me that my lightbox was displaying far too quickly so I delayed it out to 30 seconds and made it only show up if there has been a 2nd click on my website.  This has reduced my number of signups but was a small price to pay to decrease annoyance for my readers.

-Dragon Blogger

We are influencers and brand affiliates.  This post contains affiliate links, most which go to Amazon and are Geo-Affiliate links to nearest Amazon store.