How We Use Getsitecontrol Popups to Grow Getsitecontrol’s Business

The guiding principles of our strategy

Before we go further, there are two principles we follow when it comes to our popup-based marketing strategy.

The first principle we follow is: less is more . Based on this principle, we design most popups on our website to be discreet, yet still visible to visitors.

We want our popups to create a pleasant experience and evoke curiosity – not the desire to hit the Close button.

That’s why we often choose sidebars and slide-ins over modal popups and fullscreens.

The second principle we follow is: relevance is key . If we really must interrupt the users’ experience on our website, it will be to say something they’ll be interested in. That’s why we keep the content of our popups strictly relevant to the pages where they appear and use behavior triggers to approach only those visitors who are clearly engaged with our website.

Now that we’ve discussed the cornerstones of our popup practices, it’s time to talk about the goals our popups help us achieve.

8 Popup types we’re using on the Getsitecontrol’s website

1. Email signup form – to invite blog readers to join our list

Let’s start with one of the first popups our visitors see when they start exploring our website.

Since most of our visitors come from organic traffic, they’re likely to land on our blog first. Those who have shown interest in the content and reached 30% of page depth, will meet one of our email signup popups:

This popup appears on pages where we discuss general marketing-related topics. We assume that if someone has read at least 1/3 of the article, they’re likely to be interested in getting similar marketing tips in their inbox.

At 30% page depth, the popup appears automatically, but visitors who’ve missed it can also open the form by clicking the floating button in the bottom left corner of the screen, a.k.a. Launcher. We’ll talk more about launchers in a moment.

The second version of this popup promotes a lead magnet: a checklist of 9 tactics to grow your email list. In the name of relevance, this popup only appears on blog posts dedicated to list-building, and it works exactly like the first one:

The third version of the sidebar is targeting Shopify store owners. It appears on Shopify-related posts and features a relevant lead magnet: a checklist of 15+ ideas for increasing sales and growing your Shopify store.

2. Launcher – to let visitors join the newsletter from other pages

Apart from the blog, we also use a popup to collect emails in the Use Cases section of our website. However, instead of displaying the signup form automatically, we only display it if visitors click the floating button in the corner of the screen:

This approach helps us maintain discretion and grants that our visitors will see the form only if they are interested in subscribing to our newsletter. That’s why forms triggered by launchers typically have a higher click-through rate (CTR) than regular popups; this one, for example, has a 43% CTR.

Our list-building tips for you

• Delay your email-capture popups. Make sure to delay your email-capture popups or to add a scroll trigger. Why? Because your visitors are more likely to sign up after they’ve had a chance to check the content of the webpage. If they see the popup too soon, they might not be ready to join your email list, so they’ll just dismiss the invitation.

• Allow visitors to retrieve closed email popups. Sometimes, visitors may close your email-capture popups because they want to finish checking out the webpage first, or because they may be uninterested in your offer at the moment. However, some may change their mind later! Use launchers to let these visitors open the popup again and sign up.

• Consider using lead magnets. By offering your visitors something in exchange for their email, you’ll give them an extra reason to subscribe to your newsletter, and increase conversions. However, make sure your lead magnets are relevant to the content of the webpage where you display them. Otherwise, they may not be as effective an incentive.

3. Floating button – to remind visitors to create an account

We make good use of our launchers. That’s because they work as gatekeepers, preventing visitors from being prompted to actions they are not ready to take.

Our next launcher encourages visitors to sign up to our platform; we only display it on our Feature overview page where visitors find themselves only if they are already interested in our tool.

This floating button shows up at a 15% page depth and leads to our account registration page:

We use a floating button for this purpose because we want visitors to be proactive when it comes to creating an account on our platform. Instead of pressuring them with a popup in the middle of the screen, we leave the launcher well in sight and let them take the initiative.

Our conversion tips for you

• Display CTA popups on high-interest pages. Converting warm leads is easier on pages where visitors’ purchasing intent is medium to high: product description pages, pricing pages, or feature pages like ours. Visitors browsing these pages are likely to be ready to become customers, so you want to make sure they notice your call to action.

• Let your prospects take the initiative. Nobody likes to be pushed to make a purchasing decision. So, instead of using an automatically triggered popup, you may get better results by keeping your CTA visible, yet not intrusive.

4. Pop-up survey – to find out where our visitors have learned about us

Surveys are a powerful instrument that can help you learn more about your audience and evaluate your marketing strategy.

On our website, we’re using a pop-up survey to ask visitors where they’ve learned about Getsitecontrol. The survey appears on our pricing page, and features a discount code to incentivize people to participate:

The pricing page is another place where people tend go when they have medium-to-high purchase intention, so this popup helps us achieve two things. First, we nudge those on the fence to make a purchase decision by offering a discount. Second, we get to evaluate marketing channels that bring us warm leads.

In other words, we assume that visitors on that page are almost ready to create an account, and a discount will encourage them to follow through. How do we know our assumption is correct? More than 64% of the visitors who see this popup end up creating an account and claiming the 20% discount.

Our surveying tips for you

• Display website surveys after visitors spend time on your site. No one is ready for taking a survey as soon as they land on your website. Most of your visitors will likely dismiss your survey if they see it too soon – or even worse: provide an irrelevant response and skew your stats. Instead, you can delay your survey by a few moments, add a scroll-based trigger, or display the survey upon a button click as we do.

• Use a survey incentive to increase response rate. As you have seen, we advertise our incentive (the discount) even before we mention the survey. If you decide to offer a survey incentive too, make sure to let your audience know about it right away.

5. Pop-up contact form – to help our customers and visitors contact us

On the website, we try to share as much information about Getsitecontrol as it might be needed to make a decision. But people will always have questions and doubts. And if they don’t find information that answers those questions and clears those doubts, they’ll leave without signing up for our service. This is obviously not what we want. That’s why we have a communication channel where our potential customers can get the answers they need to make an informed decision.

To fulfill this purpose, we have a 24-hour live chat powered by Intercom and our trusty pop-up ‘Contact us’ form. This form is triggered by a link at the bottom of our website that is accessible on every webpage:

This ensures that our visitors will find the form without too much trouble. At the same time, once they are done filling out the form, they’ll find themselves back on the page they were browsing earlier. Much more convenient than having a ‘Contact us’ page that they need to visit, right?

Our contact form tips for you

• Keep your contact form well in sight on your website. Especially on the pages where you expect your visitors to have questions.

• Avoid redirecting visitors to a different page to contact you. Redirects tend to distract people and prevent them from getting back to the page they were browsing earlier.

• Let your visitors take the initiative of contacting you. Instead of having a popup appear on their screen automatically, let them click on a link, floating contact button, or panel when they want to contact you. This way, you won’t cause interruptions for those who are not interested in reaching out to you.

6. Exit-intent popup — to invite people to our demo before they leave

The last popup people see before leaving our website is a bottom bar triggered by exit intent:

This invitation to register for a demo pops up on our main product pages only — to make sure we're targeting visitors with high interest in our app. When a user clicks the button, it takes them to the dedicated demo registration page on our website:

That’s it for the popups we display on our website.

There are two more popups to talk about. These popups appear on the Getsitecontrol users’ dashboard because they are more relevant to our platform users. Let’s see what they look like, shall we?

7. Floating invitation – to drive new app users to our live demo

The first one of our in-app popups is another invitation for our live demo. This time it’s for our platform users. It’s a launcher displayed in the bottom-left corner of the main dashboard screen:

As in the previous popup, the floating button opens the demo page on our website, where users can find all the information they may need about the demos, as well as register for one.

8. Floating reminder – to ask customers to leave us a review

And we have come to the very last popup of our list.

It’s a small button in the bottom right corner of the dashboard. This one only appears for users who have a Shopify store. The button prompts them to write a review of our dedicated app (yes, we have a dedicated app for Shopify, in case you didn’t know 👉 check it out).

As you can see, the launcher opens a bigger popup where users get the option to open our Shopify app’s review page.

Once a user closes the popup, it will stop displaying for 7 days for them.

If you wait for your customers to write reviews of your business on their own, you may wait for a very, very, very long time. Even satisfied customers struggle to find the time to write a review, so you need to give them a little nudge if you want those reviews to roll in.

Our tips on collecting reviews for you

• Guide your customers. When customers write a review of your product, they do you a favor. So, when you’re asking them for that favor, make sure you tell them the exact steps they need to take and save them the time to find your reviews page.

• Strike when the iron is hot. Plan the popup timing and placement so that your customers only see it when they’ve had some experience with your brand and have something to say about it. For example, you can display your review request to returning customers or those who’ve just made a purchase from you.

Key takeaways

The way you choose to use popups for your business will depend on your customer’s journey. For example, although we consider ourselves to be the biggest popup fans, we are quite thrifty when it comes to displaying popups on our own website.

It’s only natural that SaaS brands use website popups less actively than ecommerce brands.

We have few popups that fulfill selected purposes. We make good use of our launchers to keep the distraction to a minimum. We let our visitors take the initiative to engage with some of our popups.

We try to put ourselves in our visitors’ shoes and think about ways to weave our CTAs without interrupting their experience on the website. What are they looking for when browsing a certain page? At what point of their journey are they ready to convert? What could spare them some time and effort?

Now that you know all of our secrets, it’s your turn: how do you use popups on your website?

Share your strategies with us on Slack. We have a channel dedicated to users’ popups, it’s called #widget-inspiration. We’d be more than happy to feature one of yours in our next post!