Five Common Mistakes Everyone Makes While Creating Popups

Five Common Mistakes Everyone Makes While Creating Popups

Pop-up is one of the best marketing tools and when used in the right way, they can increase your conversion rate. Case studies show that about 20-70% of visitors provide their contact details when pop-ups are used in the right way. There is a misconception that pop-ups annoy visitors but that is not true. Good pop-ups do not annoy visitors, instead convert them into the lead.

Good pop-ups are well-designed with relevant content with respect to the page. A website with a thoughtfully designed pop-up converts a hundred times better than the one with a bad pop-up. Pop-ups have been around for a long time and with the passage of time marketers have learned what kind of pop-ups and strategies work and which don’t work. 

In this blog I will talk about the most common type of mistakes that marketers make while creating pop-ups and such mistakes should be avoided in order to increase conversion and provide a better experience to visitors. Here are the five most common mistakes you need to avoid in order to build an effective pop-up marketing strategy. 

Five Common Mistakes Everyone Makes While Creating Popups

  • Full Page Pop-Up  

Using a full-page pop-up that covers the entire page will get your audience’s attention but in the wrong way. Pop-ups are known to be disruptive, but not to the point where they become an annoyance. Use pop-ups that grab attention but do not block users from the content. There are many different kinds of pop-ups you can use that don’t cover the whole screen, such as floating-bar, sidebar, and side-in pop-ups.


  • Pop-up Timing

The most common mistake you can make is bombarding users with a pop-up before they even had a chance to read any of the content on the page. This kind of behavior will cause people to close out the pop-up, so they can go back to reading, or navigate away from the page in annoyance, therefore missing the pop-up content entirely.

There are two methods you can use to control when a pop-up appears on your site.

  1. User Behavior
  2. Time delay

User behavior implies the intent of the user. For example, you can trigger a pop-up when someone tries to exit or click on the content or element on the page. 


You can also set a pop-up to appear after a specific time has passed or if the user has scrolled down to a certain point. Let’s say, 20%-30%. 

Time delay pop-ups work best, but only if the user decides to stay on the page and does not navigate to another tab. Always pick the pop-up strategy that works best with your site, content, and audience.

  • Not Highlighting your Value Proposition

Pop-ups are effective because they offer a strong CTA, Telling visitors what to do next. But they are effective when you show how and why. Meaning, there are a lot of websites with a pop-up saying ‘’ Sign up for our newsletter’’, and that’s it. They don’t explain why you should sign up. Truth is most people want to know what kind of value they should expect before giving up their email address. To increase your conversion rate with pop-ups, give your visitors something valuable, for example, “Subscribe to Our Newsletter and get Monthly Deals and Discounts’’.

  • Using Generic Pop-ups

Most of the time marketers make the mistake of creating generic pop-ups that do not provide a targeted message, which results in conversion failure. So how do you avoid it? It’s simple, Always design the pop-up specifically to match the page they will appear on or to the pages they lead to. Also, while creating targeted pop-ups, make sure you do not mismatch them with wrong site content. For Example. If someone is browsing your store for mobile accessories, do not show them the pop-up for a discount on furniture.

  • Too Many Pop-Ups 

Pop-ups are a powerful, effective marketing tool, but only if you use them sparingly. If you treat every site page and blog post as an opportunity to display pop-ups, you’re bound to annoy many more people than you’ll convert.

As we discussed before highlighting your deals is a good strategy, but it would be better served as a sidebar or banner instead of a full-page pop-up every day. Use pop-ups only on key pages that get a lot of traffic or where visitors are likely to convert, like your homepage or blog content and also try to minimize the chances that a site visitor will encounter multiple pop-ups in their browsing session.

Conclusion & Best Practice

Pop-ups play an essential role on your website, and it's not only an email list building. The world is moving to new trends, and in the world of pop-ups, gamified pop up is the latest trend. Collecting visitor email is essential, and it will be of top priority and core purpose of pop up, but that doesn't mean you can't do anything other than that. 

Gamified pop-ups allow your site visitors to engage with your website. Pop-ups like Spin the wheel, Lucky lever, Scratch, and win are the prime example of gamified pop-ups offer by Milk The Leads. These pop-ups let your customers engage with your website in a fun way and which gives them time to make an image of your brand in their mind. 

Imagine yourself on a website. You clicked on an ad to be here, and now there is Lucky lever in front of you, which says pull the bar and get any of the available options. These could be 10% off, buy x get y, or as simple as free shipping. Won't you pull that lever to find out what you got? But wait, you have to write your email to enable the lever, that's how you engage your potential customer on your site and acquire their email address. 

The era of gamified pop up is the new best thing that can help you not only acquire more email subscribers but increase your conversion by engaging more and more visitors to your website. 

Remember, at the end of the day, you are not looking for an email address, you are looking for a customer. 

When are you planning to replace your regular pop-ups with Gamified pop-ups? Comment below.