It is impossible to undervalue the role of psychology in marketing. This is the reason so many books and publications on this subject are being issued every year. Really, the emotional impact plays a crucial role in a buyer’s decision-making process.
Many of us have noticed that there are psychological triggers influencing our decisions while making purchases both online and at traditional – the so-called brick-and-mortar stores. Much regard is given to visual, acoustic, as well as olfactory senses. These catch up customers’ attention and determine the behavioral side of potential clients’ purchasing activity.
For example, when good music is playing at a store, I am more likely to spend more time there. By the way, human characteristic features like snobbery also must be considered. People are ready to waste what they have earned during the whole month because, for example, their ladles and saucepans are already “out-of-fashion”.
And marketers think “Why not avail of it?”
So as mentioned, every marketing strategy is based on triggering some psychological impact. Significant is the role of popups in relation to making an emotional influence. Configuring the right settings and customizing them to your needs, you can make more out of your marketing strategies. Thus, in addition to the types of popups that determine the visual look of popups and their functionality, there are also the popup events which, when set to a particular kind of a popup, function in relation to time and specific actions.
To elaborate this further, you can customize when the popup events open making it appear either on page load or after some period of time. Or else, you can make a popup appear after a certain action such as onclick, onhover, after scrolling, detecting an intention to exit and also after inactivity. So, let’s discuss these features and the emotional trigger in human creatures for implementing this or that action or reacting to a popup in a particular way.
On Load – Popup Appears as Soon as the Page Opens
After you have created a popup with a plugin, your next step will be adding it to your page or post and selecting an event. So, in case you have chosen on load popup events, the popup will open at the moment they come to your website. This popup event is used widely by website owners. But I think it is not the best option in case you want to come up with a content-relevant offer.
Probably, it will be a smarter decision to let your site visitors be familiarized with the content of your website and perhaps make an offer with a popup some seconds later. Although, if you wish a visitor subscribed to your mailing list, this option can be chosen so as not to interrupt your visitors later during reading or looking through the items.
It is also possible to customize the popup in a way that it opens some time after the page has been loaded. As you can see on the picture, popup opening delay is set to 3 seconds. Thus, your popup will appear 3 seconds after opening your website.
On Click – Popup Is Shown When a Visitor Clicks on Something
On click, popups is a wise strategy to apply because if someone clicks on an item. It means he or she is interested and in this case, you have more chances that your offer for, say, discounts will work. As an example, when you make discounts on products with WooCommerce plugin, you can make a countdown popup and place it so that it opens when clicked on a particular product. When clicked through, a countdown popup will appear creating a sense of urgency in buyers which in its turn is an emotional feature used by marketers to increase sales.
On Hover – Appears When You Flicker the Cursor on an Item or a Page
When someone is hanging in on a particular item and the program can detect the cursor hovering over it. This could probably mean that the item is being considered as an option. Perhaps, the person behind the screen is counting the price by currency or comparing prices of items alike. So, this can be the right moment to use a popup and come up with a proposal of a discount.
Likewise, if someone is hovering the mouse on a page section, we can infer that they would like to look up something there, so relative to page section content being flickered on we will see if we can make a relevant offer with the help of a popup. Of course, this popup event can be applied in relation to any other content of a web page.
On Scrolling – Shows When Scrolling with Your Mouse
Here is my favorite popup event. I like it when I enter a website and popup opens after I have scrolled down the page to some extent and familiarized with the content. When a popup doesn’t open immediately after I visit a website. I feel like my opinion has been considered by website owners, so I am for this approach.
And really, how can you know if you want something or not without looking through it? Moreover, a website owner has an opportunity to customize the settings. So that the popup events opens after scrolling down the page to some percent. Look at this screenshot to get an idea of how the settings are configured.
As you can see, the popup customized in accordance with these settings will appear after a visitor has scrolled down 80 percent of the page.
After Inactivity – Popup Window Opens After X Seconds of Not Touching the Mouse or Not Working with the Keyboard.
Image source – cartoonstock.com
It happens quite often when your eyes get tired from looking at the screen for some time. So when you need a break and go for a cup of coffee. When you get to work without a computer, there are some programs that fix this event. In my opinion, it would be a brilliant idea to come up with a popup during inactivity period.
Think of what your audience might need at this time. What if you offer them food delivery services, taxi services?Something to relax like audiobooks, gaming apps, psychological tests or some good tools to ease their work online. In addition, you could also make a funny video popup, entertaining your visitors and at the same time adding up your YouTube, Vimeo or Dailymotion video rankings.
Exit-Intent – Popup Opens When the Program Detects an Intention to Exit
“Leaving so soon? Give us another chance to please you”. This is a sample text that you can write in your exit-intent popup. With this popup, website owners try to use their last chance to keep leaving visitors on their website and this really works.
Detecting the case of abandoning your site. You can try to convince your visitors to stay offering some discounts. Free guides, books, podcasts etc. as an incentive to subscribe. It is a proven fact that applying the right approach. You will manage to bring back some of your leaving visitors. Just take care to configure correct settings and write up an engaging text.
In addition to popup events, it also matters how many times during a session your popup events appears. I think It is psychologically and tactically not correct to bother your users by showing them the popup several times during a session if you are worried about the reputation of your website. Actually, I have researched a number of websites that use popups events. None of them showed the popup the second time I visited their website. So, in order to take a screenshot of the popups I had to enter through the incognito window.
Wrapping Up
To wrap it up, everyone has its preferences and this also refers to popups. But it is still possible to analyze specific human features and place the right popup events. Those that come up on the right time and at the right place. And it is almost impossible to create universal and comprehensive recommendations for placing this or that popup event. You should always consider your website niche and your audience, and be polite, instead of being rude. And finally, you can always analyse how your popups perform to see what improvements should be made.