Your thoughts on pop-ups and unders

[RickyG]

Vote and share your thoughts!

SETUP SO YOU CAN SELECT MULTI ANSWERS

[Stephan]

At the moment I use popunder on one site, but I will remove soon as I also stop trading thru game plugs, I try to make my sites more user friendly in hope they will return.

[lfhost]

Popunders are ok for trade sites, but not if you want to retain the visitor.
What I hate on some sites, you want to just go look at their stats page.
But you have the popup infront which you have to close all the time.
That does get annoying.

@stephan, that might be hard to do, as if you have one of those old visitors come back, they may have already given you a bad rep in their mind for being traded.
You might want to think of starting a new site for retaining people rather than trying to fix an old site.
Thats what im thinking about doing.

[gubugnet]

I think popunders have an unfair negative image. I have used them for some time and not seen a significant impact on traffic. Visitors return when I update content regularly and when I push traffic to my frequently updated sites. When I look at what guys are interested in playing and add similar games more people come back. I also use an email that goes out after a guy has not came to one of my sites in 2 weeks ( we miss you mail ) highlighting new content if any. This seemed to help when I do all these tasks in unison. Pops are not the kiss of death some people think they are and we are webmasters so we want visit a site with pops because we know 100 other ways to get the same content ( there is a difference ). most patrons of a site are not as savvy.

I am a musician and recording engineer and I want watch most vids on Youtube if the audio sucks but thousands of people do everyday because they don't frame the value of that video the same way that I do. I am a value shopper I stand in the isles at a grocery store deducing unit prices and comparing the nutritional content on the boxes but rarely do I see other people engaging in my overly analytical practice. The very best thing I learned from arcades is to look at what the numbers say and take my perceptions out of the picture and focus on the visitors. Ads are more aggressive on the net now and offline media is shifting to a down trend so the ads online will be monetized with pops and floats and whatever else to get attention as needed eventually. This is nothing new it just happens but I respect guys trying to keep their sites a bit more clean but I don't think it will change how the market is moving.

I used to try and record on wide tape in my little studio and could convince guys that the sound was warmer than digital recordings blah blah etc but eventually even the local store I bought the tape at went out of biz + I could not keep up with other guys recording digitally ( who were not paying $100 for tape LOL ) and the editing was just A LOT easier via computer. Pops have been around since forever and AOL was built on them. I think because of ad blindness and advertisers looking for affordable ways to get noticed pops are on their way up and things are just changing online as the net becomes more commercial.

[Jason C]

I have to agree with gubug on this one. I dont think pop ups/unders are that bad and I have not noticed a negative trend in visitors from it. Im starting to envision my new projects to do away with on page ads all together and just have a pop-under that bases ads on the user's browser's cookies if possible. Getting rid of the ads will be a huge plus in the eyes of a user and so that probably wouldn't mind a pop up with a targeted offer.

As for trading through plugs, I want to axe that also and just trade through banners. I know how to do this with ATS but I never found any instructions on how to do it with TAP. Ill start a thread on that one.

[theyungstar]

Popups are annoying users hate them, popunders look cool, some users like them. However, on large sites users will most likely ignore popups and popunders because you have a large database of games, or something that interests them. So if you have a big site, I recommend popups. I am no expert, just my opinion.

[ady]

Informative pop-ups are fine.Using them as a means to redirect people,that then becomes an issue.One pop-up or what ever yeah,but when you have a float following you everywhere,you'll lose the customer.What you need to do is take a look at your site from a guest point of view and not a webmaster's.

[waster34]

Is it possible to have the pop up appear say on just a links page where the user is about to leave your site anyways ? i know alot of sites i visit the pop up is right in your face on the very first click which is annoying.

[RickyG]

I think that might be possible, but I am not a coder

[ady]

Is it possible to have the pop up appear say on just a links page where the user is about to leave your site anyways ? i know alot of sites i visit the pop up is right in your face on the very first click which is annoying.

Question? Would you stay on a site that had one? Or the other???