Interesting Result From Pop Up Test

Oddly enough, popups are one of those things that are highly disputed around here.

Generally, its one of those things where strong opinions emerge.

For starters, you are testing for yourself which is good. Every niche and website is different, so nobody can telly you with 100% accuracy what will work for you.

To me, your data makes sense.

If you think about it, what does giving you a like give to your visitor...nothing.

What do they get if they opt in...possible information and desired updates.

As far as what to try next:

I have been testing popups a lot and I have personally found that I get more opt ins with them than without them.

My theory (and its only a theory) is that there is a timing "sweet spot" that every webmaster who uses them has to find.

You have to look closely at your "time on site" number and determine how long interested people are staying and then have the popup appear right before that time comes.

In an odd-ball kind of way, this turns your popup almost into an optin exit popup of sorts, but without the feeling like you are being held against your will like a real exit popup.

Definitely do not have it splash across the page immediately upon their arrival...that will effect the dreaded "back button click of death".

What this timing will do is allow people to visit your site, navigate to the desired page, enjoy their visit, get the information they need, and right before they have decided to wrap things up display a message offering a nice and pleasant (and tempting with an offer of some sort) optin message.

For me personally, I have found that this has performed better than typical optin placement for what I think are the following reasons:

1) Overcomes optin form blindness - very similar to ad blindness
2) Doesn't interrupt visitor experience until their attention span clock is about up...the time they are psychologically primed to receive the next piece of information.
3) It is the equivalent of an exit popup that you can actually put an optin form on instead of a "silly looking" hard to read annoying "message of desparation.
4) From a technical standpoint it actually works. I have never seen an exit popup that even half way functioned decently from a technichal standpoint accross all browser platforms...not even remotely close.

What I do is simply set up a popup on my website and set it up to appear on every page but usually after a 120-180 second delay. What this does typically is show the popup to an average visitor on the last page they visit right before they leave. It works on all browsers, is unblockable, and hopefully doesn't interrupt their visit in an annoying way.

Hope that helps.

If you got these numbers from your test, they aren't crap.

Maybe people don't want their friends on Facebook to see what their political-stance is, maybe they are younger persons wich don't want to have your site in their ''likes'' page as politics are considered boring by young people.

A lot of people don't show off their political preferences (they are ashamed or think it will harm their career), at least not the people I know. The discrete updates in the e-mail are a better way for them to get updates.

Simple Stan

Yes if you are still getting likes then your script seems to be working ok. Of you want to really increase your conversions, then why not give them reason to subscribe? Give them a niche specific free gift

Asking a visitor to do multiple things is probably the problem. Choose one and focus on that. I would have to be your #1 fan to take multiple steps for nothing. Sure your list can add value, but overall there no immediate perceived value. So it makes sense that when you added a second step that the visitor chose one and then moved on.