Tip for pre-selling: Cite authorities while minimizing visitor exits

Sometimes you can be more persuasive by citing external authoritative sources that bolster your claims and information. For example, if you're pre-selling an herbal product, you might link to a Wikipedia ingredient page stating the ingredient is effective.

The problem with doing this of course, is you may very well lose some visitors by linking to external articles.

One solution to try is using popup windows. Your visitor can read the external article, yet your website remains the prominent window on their screen.

If you use WordPress, install and activate the TinyMCE Advanced plugin. When you create a link, there's a "popup" tab. Configure the popup window for the link. Check it out:


I appreciate you'll use this sparingly, but in my experience linking to an authoritative source can improve conversion rates (I'm using this techniqe in a few articles). It's also sometimes appropriate to provide the citation via a link (you can use it in footnotes when linking to sources).

You can also use this technique to display live demos etc. of the product/service you're promoting if the affiliate program doesn't offer affiliate links to a specific demo page (which is always unfortunate).

I'm sure there are other ways to create popups, but I thought I'd pass this tip along to anyone wishing to link to external articles for whatever reason, yet minimizing visitor leakage. You won't retain all visitors, but the potential for higher conversion rates may be worth it.