Popups or small html pages ?

[dracula]

I received a request from one of my colleagues to remove all kind of popups from ours web site www.sky-tours.com as some browser create problems.
He thinks we are losing conversion by having popups. We should have small html pages instead for better results.
What are the pro's and con's
Eager to hear your opinion.

[imvain2]

When it comes to dealing with colleagues who think they know what they are talking about, sometimes the best thing to do is provide actual proof instead of someone's opinions from forums or blogs.

The way to accomplish this is to do AB testing. Where you randomly show the page with popups to some visitors and the page with links to the html pages to others. Then you track the visitor's transactions with your stats program *like google analytics*, over a certain amount of time (lets say a month). Then you can provide statistical analysis to your colleague of the outcome of that test.

A/B testing is by no means 100% perfect, because it relies on variables that you CAN'T account for. Like the specific visitor's experience, knowledge and mood for examples. But it is the more reliable way to get some hardnumbers to compare. Google and Microsoft have used A/B testing in the past on the search results pages.

[HTMLBasicTutor]

You kind of answered your own question:

1. Cross-browser compatibility issues
2. Low conversion

Other cons:

1. Stopped by popup blockers
2. Accessibility issues
3. Usability issues

A series of pages showing the progression of the order stages would be my preferred method.

[astro]

I hate pop ups of any kind, so do most people I speak to. Besides the back button is disabled on a pop up....... html or otherwise. Not good

[Buxykay]

He he, I have come across diversity of opinions here. First, I too didn't like popups until I read somewhere that they may increase your conversion. I wanted to try and installed a popup on one of my wordpress blogs. The popup had a season related ad. It was the first sale I made on that site.

Talking about A/B testing, imvain2 seems to know something about that. I would have liked to have a little knowledge about that because I have read discussions on that topic too. I think I should do research. If people are talking about something, I think it is worth a closer look.

[morestar]

If you wish to use content in a pop-up manner, you can use shadowbox. With very a simple installation/configuration and a slew of help/example pages on the web for you, in case you or your colleague get stuck, you'll find that it's a pretty way of displaying pop-up content, easy for the user to close and compatible with all browsers to date.

[imvain2]

If you wish to use content in a pop-up manner, you can use shadowbox. With very a simple installation/configuration and a slew of help/example pages on the web for you, in case you or your colleague get stuck, you'll find that it's a pretty way of displaying pop-up content, easy for the user to close and compatible with all browsers to date.

I should have clarified, on the definition of "popup".

If the popup is using the window.open style javascript, then I'm with everyone you should get rid of it, there are many things that block popups and they are annoying and are constantly on the top of top website petpeeves. Instead I would do what morestar is is suggesting.

However, if you are already using a shadowbox/lightbox type system, then I standby by my original post of doing a A/B test.

[weegillis]

That should be 'window.open() method'; but we get your point. The fact is that all means of creating pop-ups or intermodal dialogs require JavaScript, not just window.open(). Many users are blocking unauthorized scripts which basically tells us that the trust factor must be seen to, first, so that visitors will allow your scripts. Whichever method is chosen, the site needs a fallback in a non-scripted state to be able to reach out for conversions.

[Web Res]

For me, pop up is a term that could apply to several actions. I've just been looking at your website to see if I could find pop-ups, but didn;t happen upon one. What I did see was that some of your services are supplied by other websites: either they are your websites or you are an affiliate. Often, when I saw that, it was a webpage replacing your web page.

I deal a lot with booking engines for hotels and links to affiliates and for me it is hard to manage this exit from one website to another gracefully. In some cases I open the new websites in an iframe, others have systems that allow me to create headers that have my navigation on their websites and others still I just have to open a new website and when I do that I use target=blank which creates a new browser window. My thinking is that people will click around on the new window and when they are done they can close it and my website is still there. Maybe that is a pop up, but then I know you can open new browsers with commands to close menus, scrolling and other normal browser features, which I would not do.

I really like Morestar's suggestion of a shadowbox although I would assume that doesn't work on mobile devices. But, for basic web browsers it would give the buyer the appearnce that they are still on your website and when they close the box they are back where they started on your website.

However you cut it, you need to hand your website visitors off to another website. So, do you just flick them over with no return path, or do you use some option to display the new website and still have an obvious return path? I think giving the customer a way back is better.

[alphaomega]

Pop ups are blocked by default by most browsers (Java script driven), so it is impractical to use them. I am all for shadow box as well.