The Use of Popups in Different Countries

While still living in South Africa, I noticed a steady drop in the number of popups on websites. Plain and simple, popups are irritating, obtrusive and an unintelligent approach to obtain clicks for your advertisers.

Well, when I moved to Germany, I noticed that a huge percentage of websites use popups!

Let me be clear, one popup irritates me (even when I get the "popup blocked" message in my browser) but more than that throws me off a website faster than I can blink. I just won't tolerate it, I feel like I am in a store where the salesman is following me at every turn, not letting me simply look!

Well, that is the case with popups on German websites. I have only really browsed websites from the States, UK, South Africa, Portugal and Germany on a regular basis. I have found that a lot of the Portuguese websites make use of heavy flash content and (for some really unknown reason to me) a ton of music in the background!

This, too, is highly irritating and I'm not sure which sites I bounce off faster - the popup-frenzied sites or the music-infested ones!

The Point of This Rant - and How to EFFECTIVELY Advertise

Don't use popups on your website! If you want to make money off advertising on your website, have a website that has users stay on your site and visit it regularly. Then place your ads in a position where users can find them easily.

I often visit the 4guysfromrolla.com website and find it an excellent website. Each of their articles has a huge advert smack in the middle of it. I have no problem with that because, to be honest, the advertising offered on their site (in addition to the programming info) is very interesting and relates to the website. Hence, they have picked their advertising in such a way that I probably will click it because I am interested in it.

This is miles different to the site-owner who feels he must throw a window at you every half a second in the hopes that you mistakenly click it while rushing to click the "close" button on the window!

The "Less Obtrusive" Alternative to Popups

Due to popup blockers (yes, not due to user-experience, which would be the logical choice for me!) companies have had to find alternatives to the traditional popup. There is one that is possible which you usually see when you are asked to do a survey on a website (for example) which is more of a "hover" instead of a "popup" i.e. it is not really a "new window" that opens up but sort of "floats" onto the screen and disables the rest of the screen until you explicitly close it. Although still slightly intrusive they are nowhere near as distracting as traditional popups. And are more likely to be seen, too!

If you have the obsessive desire to use popups on your website, please use this latter option. It allows for a much easier user experience and you will have prevented at least one visitor from bouncing off your site faster than you can say the word "popup" (myself!) - but I think you will have prevented more than only me bouncing off your site.