Why Popups And Auto Play Are Killing The Internet

Congrats, you got me to visit your site! Now here’s an annoying popup that makes you leave before you even start. This is destined to ruin the internet for me.

**Stands Frustratingly On Soapbox**

The internet as I know and love it is being ruined, and it’s happening everywhere I turn.

What planet did someone think that it would make sense to just litter a (hopefully) well designed page with popups?

Why would someone force me to autoplay a video on a news site? Like hello, I’m browsing at work and your stupid video starts playing. I’m on your site to READ the news.

If I want to watch the video I’ll go to the video section.

Popups Are Frustrating

I’m not going to name the site, but I really liked a site I was adding to Built With Bricks. I get to the main page, and a popup appears.

Before I could even click to get rid of the annoying cookie consent popup that has truly ruined user experience, two other popups came up. One for the “enter your email to get a discount” and one to enter my location to find a restaurant near me.

So now I have to close three popups before I can even browse the site. Congrats, you have successfully made me not want to browse any further.

Autoplaying Videos

We have to dive into the autoplay of videos, and how just absolutely miserable it is. I swear Fox News just wants people to stop coming to their website. Yes, I browse Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and others almost every day, just because I have always read the news.

In no way shape or form should you autoplay a video on a news article WITH SOUND. I am totally fine with autoplaying your video, but when I’m wanting to read an article, I’m there to read.

In my entire life I don’t think I have watched a video of the newscast when there is a written article. Ok, that’s probably an exaggeration, but you get the point.

Maybe it’s just me, but when I’m at my desk or in a crowded place, the last thing I want is to be bombarded with a wall of sound and when you have 40 tabs open and you can’t find which one is playing, it gets to be quite annoying.

Exit Intent Popups

Ok so this one is something I don’t really mind. Once, or twice. I mean fire it one time at me and I’m game – they do work really well after all.

Just don’t come at me with one every single page. And please make it easy to close out of.

The ones that hide the ‘x’ or don’t have a clear way to close it, those are the ones where I immediately stop trusting the brand.

Devs take note of this: do you really want to do something that destroys your client’s perceived value in the eyes of their potential customer?

So I’m going to give this one a pass though on the whole. It’s a useful tactic to get a clear message in front of a potential customer.

Especially if you pair it with a very well thought out email automation campaign. Extra bonus points if you educate me with some stuff for a few emails before you ever even try to sell me anything.

Final Thoughts

I’m off of my soapbox now. I think we as a society have become so accustomed to animations and visual effects that we just get to the point of overdoing it. When the internet first became popular I remember there being tons of popups, and then I remember them sort of going away, and now it seems they are back with a vengeance.

I think as web developers/designers, we owe it to use restraint when dealing with popups. Think them through. How is it going to make the user feel on mobile? Is there a definite reason you want to use a modal for a contact form rather than pushing them to the contact page? I understand the conversion aspects and wanting to make it easy, but it also makes it harder to track user flows.

Over and out.

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