I got a question from Kumar (no domain name provided) about popups and such.
Hey Mark,
I don't have any popups or popunders or popovers or any pop anything on my site, but I do know that they can increase my optins. I also heard that Google doesn't allow these things.
I don't want to offend anyone, but I do want people to sign up. What do you suggest?
Kumar
Kumar,
Popups open in a separate window and are verbotten by Google when sending traffic from Adwords. You can have them deeper in your site, but not on the page you land on from Adwords.
Popunders are also separate windows. Anything that opens in a new window can be blocked by a popup blocker.
That's why I don't use them.
I use popovers, which are actually DHTML layers that appear over the page. They can't be blocked by blockers at all, and are allowed by Google.
I personally think it's offensive when they popup immediately on page load. I usually give enough time for someone to at least read the headline — about 5 to 7 seconds — before having the Popover move onto the page. I think it helps with the optin rate.
There are some people, though, who will close a popover no matter what. So, on the same page (about half way down), I use an inline form. If they closed the popover and later read what I'm about and want to opt in, they have a second chance on the inline form.
You can see all of this in action here:
http://www.LandingPageCashMachine.com
In Aweber, they call Popovers "popovers", but in 1ShoppingCart, they call them "Strategic Popups".
I hope that all helps.
–Mark