Pop-ups. How can anyone still use this awful method of delivery?
Pop-up: a smaller-than-the-screen webpage that suddenly appears in the foreground of the webpage you actually intended to view. The pop-up usually has an advertisement in it or a request for information, such as a newsletter sign-up form.
I have been to several sites now where a popup will jump up and ask me to participate in a survey or sign up for something. The worst offenders are those that pop up after I have tried to close the window. “Are you sure you want to leave?” Yes! And now I never want to come back! Do not sign me up for anything. Do not send me anything. I will never buy anything from you because you have an automated process designed to waste my time and frustrate me.
One woman was sentenced to prison because of popups. She didn’t write them. She was just the substitute teacher in a classroom of kids when she triggered a popup while searching for hairstyle sites. That one popup triggered a whole cascade of pornographic images for the classroom kids to see. You see that, popup creators? You are contributing to the destruction of childhood innocence and the false imprisonment of our teachers.
And these aren’t from your regular, stupid website builders either. You expect popups from porn sites, near-porn sites or sites trying to sell you the latest ponzi scheme. But these popups are on marketing websites! People who claim to be experts in the field of web marketing are re-introducing the popup! In fact, they probably never stopped and I just didn’t notice because I have a good ad blocker in my browser.
So, what changed?
Technology, I guess, because the pop-ups seem to be outsmarting my pop-up blocker. In the olden days, Javascript was the language used to create the popups that would drive us nuts. And, BECAUSE WE HATE POPUPS we developed entire software programs dedicated to stopping them from showing up in our browsers. So, the ever inventive marketing / advertisers came up with a method for producing the same result with AJAX and then CSS code. I imagine the conversation went something like this:
People who suffer from these diseases often shy away to go to doctor or to share the responsibilities to maintain peace of the relationship. generic viagra discount viagra properien Alkalinity of bile and pancreatic juices promotes normal digestion. Risks visit description now levitra no prescription may be psychological or physical in nature. It works within 40 minutes but you do require the prescription from a qualified physician before deciding to buy Kamagra online. cheapest viagra australia “Gee, Scummy Marketer, our entire web audience hates the pop-up so much that they installed a software program to block it.”
“Really, Scummy Advertiser? Well, we’ll see about that! We can easily find a better way to force them to view our unwanted ads.”
I could rant for hours about this, but I won’t. Instead, I will point out the one thing about it that really bothers me. When a marketing professional chooses to use a pop-up, knowing it is a despised distraction, it shows us that this person still doesn’t understand that the landscape of marketing has changed. Marketing is now about creating relationships with customers and anyone else who’s interested. It is no longer about shoving our messages into the scowling faces of as many people as possible. It is about trading value for the customers time, even while we deliver the message. It is about creating a commercial message that has such value, the customer seeks it out. There is no need to force a message on people anymore.
But, the pop-up crowd still believes that the goal is to get the message in front of as many faces as possible, regardless of how it bothers them and turns them off. “If we scream the message loud enough and often enough, they will HAVE to buy it!” Gaah!
You make all of us look bad.