WAIT! click ok to leave or cancel to remain on the page!

Of course they do.

It's lost traffic anyways if people are click out of your site. Think about it... If you get a single additional sale from using this, it was worth it. I find the best offers are opt in pages or downsells.

I find the practice personally intrusive and offensive, and I won't buy from a site that uses it and I will absolutely NOT use it on any of my sites.

It could also be said that most people that go to your sales page leave without buying... like anything, it's a numbers game. Of course not everyone is going to stay, but you are not aiming for everyone. At the end of the day they are leaving anyway, you may as well have a shot at them. Even if you get an extra 5% to opt-in or 0.5% to buy (just 1 in 200) then surely that makes it worth while (yes, I have seen increased conversions).

I think the key is to offer something a bit different before they go. Yes it's just annoying if you get a "please don't go"... if I didn't want to go, I wouldn't have clicked it in the first place... but if you get a discount, or an extra bonus, or something that wasn't offered in the first place, that works better.

Intellichat use this same concept, and although I haven't used them, I know people that have reported amazing results from this. This is basically where as they are going to go, a chat window pops up so they can chat. It doesn't need to be manned, because it uses artificial intelligence. It's actually way better than you might think... I tried to trick one knowing it was a robot one time, and struggled.

When I couldn't trick it at first, I asked it to sleep with me, and it said I was being rude and it was going to end the conversation... I almost started thinking it was real and started feeling bad! I did get it in the end, but I was very impressed.

Yes it does. Depending on how it's used.

For instance, say on my personal blog I used that script so every visitor that left saw that messgae. It'd probably just piss off everyone; they've viewed the blog liked it or not and have decided to leave. Maybe they'll come back maybe they won't.

But let's say you're using this script on a niche site that is there purely to get sales. If someone tries to leave than yes you need to try and make them reconsider. Because no matter what they most likely won't come back.

The difference is on certain sites your aim is to get them to come back, like your personal blog would be, and certain sites are there strictly to make sales.

Now it depends on how these pop ups are used, too.

One's the say "wait, are you sure you want to leave?" aren't going to work, at all.

Often on certain niche sites you'll do well if you say "Wait, before you leave I want to give you some free stuff on dog training."

And than if they say ok you'll send them to a page of your site with an opt-in box on it where you'll tell them the benfits of joining your list.

This works very well.

So in conclusion; yes they can sometimes be annoying but they can also help the reader and give them a great free gift. (Always make your opt-in presents of value, it's like a virtual first impression.)

Zach

Steven,

Here is the thing with your logic... you jump on a site, decide to buy the product... you will never see the exit pop, and won't even know it's there. You will only see it if you were going to leave without buying anyway, so using you as an example, even though you would never buy from a site that uses this, the vendor has not cost themselves a sale.

I s'pose yes, if a bonus is offered that does change the game a little bit, and may persuade me otherwise. But there are many sites that just seem to say they want to offer a bonus and then never actually deliver said bonus, or the bonus wasn't worth the time of day.

But yes, I guess if you are purely interested in sales and you offer a dandy bonus than it is worth upsetting some people for that extra sale. Thanks for the input everyone.

~Grae

I semi-agree with Steven.

I think using pop-ups or any cheesy marketing tactic when selling to marketers is just stupid.

I personally do use pop-ups, and they work very well, in non-MMO niches.

But I would never attach one to my own product in the MMO niche because, like Steven has said, it just turns people off.

Zach

There's a clue there ...if everyone is doing it .. it might just be because it's working.

I can think of at least one instance where I took advantage of the "wait, don't go" offer.

The original asking price was something like $47, but the "wait, don't go" offer was $19. I figured it wasn't worth $47, but it was worth $19, so I bought.

In another case, an affiliate pointed out the fact that a product had a "wait, don't go" offer and encouraged people to buy that way rather than pay full price. I'm sure it cost him $$ per sale, but it saved his list members some cash and he may have made up for it in volume.

-Roger

I agree with Kay King,

Most sites that employ this script offer a discount and I always check
to see what that discount is.
I actually purchased the Virtual Assistant script but do not over use it.
It's like using too many special effects in your videos.
Use sparingly if at all.

I hate these scripts and its a huge turn off and screams some sort of spam or a phoney site to me for some reason. I would never use this script ever.

You need to play around with them a bit and you may get an even better deal. There was one popular product that was $47. I closed it and the pop up appeared offering it for $37. I still wasn't interested, but for some reason clicked the buy button out of curiosity. I then clicked the back button and a pop-up appeared again, but this time the price was $7. That seemed like a deal, so I bought it. As it turns out, the product wasn't that good, so $7 didn't actually seem like much of a bargain after all. There was plenty of bonus material though.

As for the use of these scripts. I've just come to accept them as being a part of the whole internet marketing way of doing things, like the ugly sales pages they normally appear on with the big red text and 50 testimonials.

I, and I think most people don't buy on the first visit to a site. I have been to many a site that uses one of these pop ups and offers me $10 discount. So when i decide to buy and I go back, I know to click away to get the discount. I have got to a point where I click away just to see if they are going to offer me something.

I hate pop ups as much as anyone, and even the ones that get me a discount are annoying. Butt it is all part of marketing and it is hard to get mad at someone for doing their job and trying to make the sale.

In Beijing where I've been studying, when haggling one of the best tools you can use is the 'walk-away'. The merchant will usually cave in and sell to you if they are able to make a smaller profit at your asking price rather than letting you walk away and making no profit at all.

Of course sometimes I'm just simply walking somewhere else and planning on coming back later, but the merchant doesn't know that, so they sometimes yell increasingly lower prices after me while I'm walking away to go to the bathroom.

The exit pop-up in my mind is like that merchant trying to get you to buy before you leave. They don't know that you intend to come back later, in their mind something about the product or its price is not to your liking and caused you to walk away, so they try to sweeten the deal in an effort to make some profit. If you don't like it you just keep walking (or clicking), if you were planning on coming back then great, now you know you can get it for cheaper. I don't really see any reason to get upset over it.

SENuke use this for their OTO. It pops up a "are you sure you don't want it" type of message, then they hit you with another OTO and another pop up message.

It's actually done quite well, even though it is annoying.

Just because they are leaving doesn't mean that they will not return. I guarantee you if you have one of those, I won't return. They annoy me. But I have purchased many things on the second or third or fourth visit to a site. Some people may be waiting for a paycheck or just haven't done enough research yet.

Those pop-ups cost vendors thousands of dollars in affiliate sales because you can't direct link to those types of pages, so guys like me don't even bother to test.

And I've run tests where it usually costs way more sales than it keeps because people think either

a. the site is "one of THOSE" scam sites
b. putting a virus on their machine.

So arguments that you are grabbing an extra sale here and there completely ignore the fact that it may have cost them 50 sales to get that one. My sites are trying to build lifetime value out of a customer, and if I hit them with a pop up, I probably drive them away forever.

It basically boils down to whether you are trying to grab every dollar TODAY with no plan for tomorrow or whether you are trying to build a sustainable, long term business with repeat customers, growth, etc.

I'm sure it works for some people, but it always costs me way more in long term customers. They won't come back when you hit them with the pop up.

My take is like this: you walk into an electronics to buy an MP3 player. But none of the MP3 players look good, or they are overpriced. There is nothing in the store you want to buy. You start to walk out of the door, but a salesman blocks the door, grabs you buy the arm to hold you, pulls your wallet out and tosses it away and maybe even locks the door closed and screams, "Wait! What if I gave you $10 off?" Now, true, some people might buy. But most people are going to pick up their wallet, leave and never EVER come back. And as silly as that might sound, that's exactly what vendors are doing to their customers online. When they see those garish pop ups, most users think 'Oh crap! a virus', or they think they can't get out of the site and/or they envision having to pay someone to fix their computer.

If I get one of those things not only do I click away from it as quickly as I can, but I also unsubscribe from the person who sent me the link in the email in the first place (and if I am a member of several lists of his/hers I unsubscribe from ALL of them).

Look, if I want to leave a web page it means I'm not interested in it. It doesn't mean I want to look at another little window asking me if I'm sure I want to leave, and then sometimes another one after that....

Bloody pain in the arse.

Not sure about other people, but my personal thoughts/opinions on these are that they are too invasive for me. I never buy anything the moment I go onto a sales page anyway (I look for reviews and judge the competition, etc, first), so if - when clicking off - I get these annoying messages, I just make a mental note to not purchase from such offers.

If I've decided not to buy, I still won't buy no matter what offer they're giving me through those pop-ups.
If I'm interested but not ready to buy it on that point, I'll read what the offer is .. if it's like "We'd like to give you a free access to exclusive interview with bla.. bla.. bla..." and if it's of value I'll probably trade my email address for the bonus.

But discounting through pop-ups are NOT good. It's diminishing the value of your product. One particular money making site I came across the other day offers the product for $49.95 then $17 on the first close, and $7 on the second (and last) close. I don't think this works. I do find it quite annoying instead ... but it's just me ;P

Obviously pro and cons. As a buyer I've encountered as many as 3 Wait - do'nt go's (on one webpage) and as already mentioned at a hugely reduced (discount) price. Desperate for a sale ? You bet. As a marketer I'm not in favor of pop-ups and this new sales trick. Everyone beats his own drum so to speak. You decide what you want to do with your business and how to do it. As finesse pointed out - my immediate reaction is : What is going on ? Why is this guy so eager to get rid of his stuff and why did'nt he offer it at the reduced price straight away.
Yeah I know - marketing strategy. Some people may fall for that but if you've been in
marketing for 20 years. Nope.

Not only is it annoying, but it broadcasts the message that this product is no different from the hundreds of others that use the same gimmick.

What I know to be true is this...

On niche sites outside the make-money market,
I see a reliable 20-30% increase in opt-ins when
adding a well designed "Wait, Don't Forget Your
Free Gift!" email submit exit-pop with a good ecover.

Sometimes the results are even better. I've even
been thanked for the "reminder".

You. Are. Not. Your. Market...

You won't see many people posting here reporting
sales going DOWN because of an exit script.

But you will see lots of people griping about them
as a consumer, some with great passion.

Ok. Duly noted.

I've put it down right here next to One-Time-Offers,
Upsells, Downsells, Cross-Sells, Affiliate Promotions,
Name Squeezes, Continuity, Video and On-Page Audio.

Check.

Best,

Brian

i click away almost immediately. I am almost immune to this kind of tactics. Even for sales pages, hardly read them. I just go to the buy button to see how much it cost. In the end, i check myself to see if i pulled my credit card to buy the product.

Salute to Steven Carl Kelly - rather concentrate on building a sustainable long
lasting relationship with your customers. They are not stupid. This annoying
little thing just smells like a ...... RAT!!!!

Yes as annoying as they may be, it will increase conversions no doubt.

In my opinion you have to be selfish when it comes to this rather sensitive subject...as when the prospect leaves they will usually leave forever and will therefore me no use to you.

This goes for opt-in pages too, once they decide to leave I hit them with a sales page for a $1 products, then $45 recurrs every month. I have generated some good sales from this technique.

I immediately leave after the message pops up. It does not attract me at all.

Their existence now makes me always click away from every offer to see if the price will go down. If it doesn't I leave anyway, if it does I leave because the guy took a 'shot' at me.
(Of course I have also stopped buying anything ending in a '7' or on a squeeze page, too)
LoL

And I unsubscribe from the list of the person that sent me there.
(figured that was an important point)
I know people that have been offered lower prices with these in other markets (they are not IMers) and for them, most tell me it reinforces that the decision they made not to buy was correct. Obviously, someone has tested it and found them to be of value in their market and I am betting 99% of the people that use them have never tested them in their market, they just 'assume' since there are so many, it must be good.

It is like going to Google's #1 site in a market and copying it. You don't know that that company is losing $300 each sale and is either ready to go under or sells enough on follow-up and back-end sales to sustain the loss. If you have not tested it and are using it, well to be blunt, that is just stupid.

Test, Test, Test. Then even if it annoys me and a bunch like me, you have tested it and KNOW it makes you more money.

If they were real Sales-driven Marketers then they'd remove the OK button (Ah-thank you!)

Increased conversions are great as long the refund % doesn't have an adverse affect on the ROI when utilizing this tactic to discount the product's price point (down sell).

Let's not forget about those who bought at first sight then returned to re-read the sales page/bounce then get offered a discount on the product they already purchased at full pop.

Ohhh... that sinking feeling of being had... refund please!

I'd be inclined to test it to see the real winner as I'm sure the results will vary from market to market especially the fickle MMO market.

LoudMac's implementation is best as it builds an asset & affords you multiple chances to get the prospect to see the offer/sales page written in multiple ways via follow-up autoresponder which addresses quite a few prospect's preference of not buying at first sight... usually they're wanting more information to make an informed decision as opposed to an impulsive one.

From there, the product owner can rip off the affiliate with their own sales link in the sequence but that's an entirely different thread altogether

LOL Lance, yes why look? Because like a crow, it is in my nature. Sad but true. Truth sadder than fiction.
But the 2nd post applys & if the customer ever returns to the site, your looking at a refund and then may or may not get a sale at the lower price from the refunded guy.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...er-inline.html :O

Gosh I really, really, really HATE those stupid pop ups. Especially when I'm just trying to find a decent looking LP to test out. Go to X out and get tricked by accident!

I've gotten a sale or two from them though.

Not to break up the enthralling "I hate them", "But they work" back and forth battle too much,

What do you all think of the slide-up footer ads? like this one I have been working on:

Affiliate Niche Monster - Footer Ad Demo

I think they are quite cool... however I may be jaded, since I'm developing one...

Back to your regularly scheduled program.

Im 50/50 on the popup when i leave the site, it does intrigue me that there may be a better offer (cheaper price etc), but it frustrates me because i have clicked off the site in the first place because i was not interested in the product. I imagine it must generate more sales done correctly unless all these websites would not use it

Before I utter a word here, I want to say that from the point of view of aesthetics, online experience, and the sheer joy of living, I agree agree agree, those things are ANNOYING! Grrrrr! and all that! I'm with you, I hear you Brothers and Sisters!

BUT!

'You Are Not Your Market' is a great mantra, too often ignored.

And yes, the attitude of not wanting to piss people off by adopting that style even if it makes more money is laudable, but is it really rooted in reality? Do they really get that pissed off?

Consider this: Brian MacLeod raises another really important point when he mentions "niche sites outside the make-money market".

The REASON so many of us marketers get ultra annoyed by all kinds of devices used to grab our attention, our email addresses, and yes, even our cash IS: we see it so OFTEN! By the very nature of our business, many of us, especially new to the game and still (come on, admit it now!) serial shoppers when it comes to IM products, are likely to be looking at conservative 10 to 20 sales pages a day. So YEAH - it's going to annoy the heck out of you - it does me too! - when you are seeing one of these pop-ups for the 12th time.

Whereas people in normal, civilized niches, people who are surfing for a nice ebook on How To Shave Your Cat, don't see this every day and don't get anywhere near as annoyed. They do often however, like seeing the price lowered before their very eyes by a pretty girl in a box offering to shave the price of cat shaving. Seriously, they do!

But let's step back and look at this. Let's even return to the IM niche: with the greatest respect to everyone here, lots of people will post on this forum insisting that they will not buy, have never bought, will always steer clear of, etc. They post this BECAUSE they hope it will stop people doing it.

First of all: it probabaly won't. In the marketer's ears, conversion figures talk louder than forum posters.

Second: Be honest! Can you honestly say that you have always totally refused to buy products you would otherwise have considered, simply because they had an exit popup? Or ... can you honestly say that you have never reconsidered, after seeing an intriguing product's $37 price tag reduced to a mere $17?? - even though you had to endure the 5-second horror of Nancy the virtual assistant to find this out?

I bet not. But if you really do answer yes to those questions, then you really are cutting off your face to spite your nose :confused:

We are all, presumably on the same page when it comes to what we are searching for: great value for less money. If you see a product that you believe will solve your problem, and you think it's a fair price, and then you are suddenly told (by dear sweet brainless Nancy or Bob) that you can have it for half the quoted price - is it really WISE to walk away, just so you can punish the marketer for bugging you with a pop-up?

In effect all you are saying to the marketer is: don't bother offering good quality for less money, because I don't want to know.

Don't get me wrong. We are right to make our feelings known about these things, and this forum is the best place to do it. But we can't argue with these guys when they say it makes money, because it really does.

Ken

I implemented it for a client, we offered a trial version of the main product at a vastly reduced price.

We increased sales by about 22% , adding tens of thousands monthly to the bottom line.

I don't find them irratating at all , infact I purposely go and check every one out I come across to see their version of the implementation but I would think Joe Bloggs would find them quite irratating.

On the other hand he has dozens of customers a week thanking him for the chance to get hold of his product "cheap".

I won't put them on my own sites as I have a closer relationship with my customers, but for somebody in a niche where it's more of a one off gig and they are more interested in the bottom line, not only do they work if configured correctly they can add serious revenue to your income.

I personally prefer a down sell or bonus offer pop-up instead, that gives a special offer if they are going to leave... and they can choose to look at it or click "no thanx". A little bit less offensive I think, and they hopefully getting a good offer.

Wouldn't it suck if every time you tried to shut down a program, you got a "Wait, don't go!" screen? Well, actually that does happen quite a lot. For example, when I close Firefox I get a "Are you sure you want to exit all your tabs" message. Or if I exit a game I get, "Are you sure you want to leave" (sometimes games even taunt you for leaving).

If I used any sort of intrusive device, it would be the slide-up footer as in Jared's demo. Those meet my personal standards of not being too intrusive yet commanding attention and not creating a new dialog box or opening an additional window.

I understand why people hate them. But it's a game and if you play it you can profit. Even on pages where I really want a product, I will alway click out to see how much of a discount they will give me. It's often 10 or 20 dollars. If vendors throw that up in your face, take advantage of it.

I don't mean to criticize, and I know the vendor for this product is a fine and decent man, but he has a top-selling Clickbank product right now and you have to go through 10--that's not a misprint--you have to go through a series of ten offers to finally click out of his page. That's ludicrous. One or two--maybe, but 10--come on.

Some of those scripts will burn affiliate links as well. Some don't. But if you are an affiliate sending traffic to a page and people hook up with the discount pop-up your commission evaporates. Now, the vendor and virtual agent company will tell you that the person was clicking out anyway so you wouldn't have gotten the commission--but still, it was your work and expense that got them there and you end up with nothing to show for it.

There are many affiliates who simply won't promote a product if the exit pop-up burns their affiliate ID and commission. --Mike

I absolutely hate those things!

On one launch recently, I had to click out literally 10 times before i was able to leave their page. In a case like that I would imagine it would really annoy potential customers and therefore decrease conversions.

But if used properly, they can give the customers a benefit and also increase your conversions.