How to set up targeting for widgets

To fine-tune targeting settings, switch to the Targeting tab when creating or editing a widget.

To learn all about Getsitecontrol’s targeting options and pick the ideal settings for your purpose, read the guide below.

Page targeting (‘Display widget on’)

Page targeting, or URL targeting, allows you to specify the pages of your website where your widget will appear. You can choose to show it across all site pages or make it visible only on particular ones.

To set up page targeting, go to ‘Display widget on’:

By default, your widget is set to appear on all pages of your website. The asterisk (*) at the end of your homepage URL in the ‘Include’ section is in fact a wildcard, and it means “anything goes here”.

Including and excluding pages from the targeting

If you want the widget to appear on one page only, add the exact URL of that page to the ‘Include’ section:

As you can see, your domain name is already included. You’ll just have to add the part of the link that comes after it.

You can add as many URLs as you want to the ‘Include’ section by clicking the + Add URL link.

You can also hide the widget on particular pages while displaying it on others. To do that, in the ‘Exclude’ section, click +Add URL:

To exclude the homepage, choose the corresponding option and it’ll be filled in automatically.

To exclude other pages, choose Blank and paste the URL of the page you want to exclude:

Including and excluding subdirectories in the targeting

We already mentioned that an asterisk (*) in the page targeting rules means “anything goes here”. Knowing that, you can use it to target or exclude subdirectories of your website – such as blog articles, product or collection pages.

In the example below, the widget will appear on all pages starting with ‘getsitecontrol.com/blog’, no matter what’s in the URL after that.

According to this rule, the widget will pop up on all pages in the blog subdirectory, but won’t be visible on other pages of the website.

Apply the same logic to hide a widget from a subdirectory on your website.

If you want to display/hide a widget on pages that have a specific word in their URL, no matter where that word is placed, you can use asterisks in the following way:

In this case scenario, the popup will appear on all pages whose URL contains the words ‘lead-magnet’.

Targeting via query parameters

In URLs, query parameters are at the very end.

They are opened with a question mark (?). The word that comes right after the question mark is a parameter, and it can hold values. The value for the parameter is shown after the symbol “equals” (=).

A URL can contain multiple parameters, and in such cases, they are separated by an ampersand (&).

To add a targeting condition for a specific query parameter, click the Edit button in the Include or Exclude sections. Then, find the Query section, and add a key and a value for your query string parameter:

You’ll see that the key and the value are automatically added to your URL targeting settings.

Shopify preset pages

If you’re a Shopify user, additional preset pages are available for you upon clicking the + Add URL button. Here they are:

• Cart
• Thank you pages
• Order status pages
• Product pages

Let’s say you’d like to show the popup on your product pages: choose Product pages from the list and the corresponding pages will be added to the targeting settings:

If you’re wondering about the difference between the Thank you page and the Order status page, here it is:

The Thank you page is displayed right after the checkout and becomes unavailable after being closed, whereas the Order status page contains order details and is available at any time after the purchase.

A link to the Order status page is often included in the purchase confirmation email.

Targeting by audience (‘Display widget if’)

In this section, you can determine which part of your audience will see the widget.

For example, you can show it only to website visitors from a particular location, using a certain device, or coming to your site from a specific source.

These settings are available in the ‘Display widget if’ section of the Targeting tab.

By default, there’s no filter in this section. This means that your widget will be shown to everyone who visits your site.

To create a targeting rule, click + Add condition, switch to the necessary category, and find the right filter on the list.

Choose an operator from the first drop-down list: in most cases, you’ll choose between is / is not and match / does not match options.

Next, choose a value from the second drop-down list. For some filters, like UTM tags or API parameters, you’ll need to type or paste them instead.

Click Done to save the changes.

Follows a detailed description of the 6 groups of filters available.

Geo

You can display a widget to website visitors coming from a specific country, state/region, or city. Alternatively, you can hide your widget for visitors from a certain location.

Device

This filter allows you to show a widget based on the visitor’s device characteristics: the browser and OS, the language of their browser, the device screen width, and the type of device (Desktop, Tablet, Mobile, Other).

Visit

The filters in this group are based on the details of the person’s visit to your site: whether it is their first time on your website, what source they are coming from, how many pages they have already seen on your site, etc.

Developer

Here you’ll find advanced targeting options, such as API targeting, targeting by IP addresses, targeting by cookies, and by custom HTML conditions.

For example, you can use an IP address filter to target your own IP address and be the only one to see the widget. This allows you to check what your widget would look like on your website before it goes live for all your visitors.

Or, you can add a custom HTML condition to target visitors with items in their cart. To know more about setting up custom HTML conditions, check out this article.

❗Please note that some of these options require programming knowledge.

UTM

If you are using UTM tags to track campaigns, you can use them to target visitors coming from these campaigns. You can include or exclude visitors based on any of the five UTM parameters: UTM Campaign, UTM Content, UTM Medium, UTM Source, and UTM Term.

Shopify

If you’re a Shopify user, you can target your customers by filters available to Shopify stores only, such as Cart, Customer, Product, and Variant filters. This filter section is marked with Shopify’s green icon:

Cart filters allow you to display widgets based on the customer’s cart content, such as the total price of the items in the cart, the number of items in the cart, the specific product in the cart, etc.

This feature comes in handy when you want to cross-sell or upsell a product, for example. It allows you to set up a popup promoting related items to appear if a customer has a certain product in the cart.

With the help of Customer filters, you can target your users based on their customer parameters, such as their tag, the total number of orders they have previously placed, the amount of money spent in your store, etc. It’s also possible to show widgets based on whether the customer is logged in, or has agreed to receive marketing emails.

For example, you may want to use this condition to show a discount popup to your most loyal customers only (e.g. customers who have already placed at least 2 orders in your store).

Product and Variant filters allow you to target your customers by products or variants they are currently viewing in your store, i.e. the products/variants featured on the page they are browsing at the moment.

Using these filters, you can show a popup depending on the current product and variant properties. For example, set the Variant availability filter to ‘isn’t available’ to display the widget if the current variant is not in stock:

Combining several conditions

You can add several audience filters and combine them using the OR and AND operators.

If you connect two filters using the OR operator, the widget will be shown to visitors who meet at least one of the criteria.

For example, by applying the rule below, you’ll display the widget for visitors who are using tablets OR mobile devices to visit your site:

If you connect two or more filters using the AND operator, your widget will appear only for visitors who fit all the criteria.

For example, with the rule below, the widget will only appear for visitors using mobile devices with the iOS operating system:

❗Keep in mind that negative conditions — such as Visitor is not new, Device is not Desktop, etc. — can only be combined with an AND operator.

To create combinations of several filters, you can use segments. You can combine segments with AND and OR operators to create complex targeting rules, just like you’d do with separate filters.

For example, you can show your widget to visitors from specific countries, but exclude those who live in particular cities in these countries:

The AND operator will be automatically selected upon adding a new segment. Click on the operator to change it if needed.

Start conditions

Sometimes, it might be appropriate to show the widget as soon as a visitor enters the website. Such is the case with welcome popups or product filters.

However, in most cases, it’s better to display popups after a visitor has spent some time on your website and engaged with your content.

In the ‘Start displaying widget’ section, you can set up start conditions so that your widget will appear exactly when it should.

By default, the start condition is set to automatically, which means that the widget will be displayed as soon as the visitor lands on the website IF they meet the ‘Display widget on’ and ‘Display widget if’ conditions.

For example, according to the targeting rules below, the widget will appear as soon as the visitor lands on the website IF they visit the right page, they are new visitors, and they are not viewing the website from the UK:

If there are no particular conditions set in the ‘Display widget on’ and ‘Display widget if’ sections, the widget will appear for everyone as soon as they open the website.

To add a new start condition, click the +Add trigger link. Then, choose the necessary option from the panel.

For most conditions, you’ll need to specify the value: for example, the delay in seconds or the scroll depth in percent.

Once you’ve set things up, click Done to save the changes.

❗Make sure to remove the automatically condition, as well as any other condition that does not apply anymore, after you’ve added a new one.

Let’s take a closer look at the available conditions.

Exit intent

Exit-intent widgets appear on the site when a visitor is trying to leave it. The system detects the intention to leave by tracking the visitors’ mouse movements. Basically, Getsitecontrol’s exit-intent widgets appear whenever the visitor's mouse reaches the top of the browser (to close the current tab or the browser window, to move to a different tab, or to type a new address in the bar).

❗Since Getsitecontrol’s exit-intent technology is based on mouse tracking, it does not work on mobile devices.

For this reason, if you want to select exit intent as a trigger, we recommend using it for visitors on desktop devices only. For mobile visitors, you can create a separate version of the popup using a scroll trigger or a time delay.

Scroll depth

If you add a Scroll depth condition, the widget will appear when a visitor scrolls down a certain percentage of the page (of your choosing).

For example, if you’re using this trigger for long-form content pages, such as blog articles, you can be sure that only visitors who are interested in the page content will see the popup.

Inactivity

This option enables you to show widgets to idle visitors, i.e. people who have been on the page for a while without taking any action.

With this trigger, you can give them a hint, suggest getting in touch with you, in case they are stuck with something on your site, or deliver a special offer to nudge them to make a purchase.

Time on page

Timing is a crucial factor to consider when setting up widgets. If you show a widget too early, it may interrupt the visitors’ experience. And if the delay is too long, your visitors may leave before even seeing the widget.

Using the Time on page trigger, you can choose when to show the widget on the page so that it’s most effective. You can learn more about the best practices for using time-delay triggers on our blog.

Time on website

Just like the previous condition, this option enables you to set a time delay for your widget. However, this one is based on the time they have spent on your site in total, instead of the time they have spent on a specific page.

You can use it to set a longer time delay without worrying that a visitor may switch to the next page and miss your message.

Shopify

If you’re a Shopify user, you’ll have access to a couple of additional triggers in the ‘Start displaying widget’ section:

Adding to cart allows you to show the widget as soon as a customer adds a product to their cart.

Removing from cart allows you to show the widget as soon as a customer removes a product from their cart.

With the help of these triggers, you can upsell and cross-sell products on your Shopify store, offer discount coupons, or ask your customers what prevents them from purchasing.

Showing widgets programmatically

There is one more option to show your widget. You can display it when a site visitor performs a certain action on your website: e.g. clicks a button, link, image, or adds an item to the cart.

To learn more about this option, watch this video (or read this text guide).

❗Please note that this is an advanced feature that requires some programming knowledge.

It’s also possible to trigger a widget by clicking on another popup, typically a floating button.

Here’s an example of floating button you can use as a launcher for another widget:

The sticky button could launch a pop-up contact form like this one, for example:

You can learn more about how to use launchers from this video (or this text guide).

Combining several triggers

Start conditions can be combined with the OR operator only. This means that if you add multiple conditions, your widget will be displayed when at least one of them is met.

For example, if we use the rule below, visitors will see the widget after they’ve scrolled 50% of the page OR after 5 seconds on the page, whichever happens first:

Hide widget

This section allows you to automatically hide your widgets under specific conditions (i.e. without a user having to click the Close button).

By default, the hide conditions are set to automatically, which means that the popup will disappear if the ‘Display widget if’ conditions are not met anymore.

If you are displaying a popup upon a 30% page scroll, your visitors will see the popup when scrolling past the given point. If you set the ‘Hide widget’ condition to automatically, the popup will disappear on its own when visitors scroll the page up above the 30% depth mark.

Here’s another example: let’s say your widget should appear only if the Cart total price is greater than 50, and the start and hide triggers are set to automatically.

In this case, the widget will appear as soon as the cart value exceeds $50; but if the value goes down to $50 or lower, the widget will be automatically hidden. If the cart's total price exceeds 50 again, the widget will appear again as well.

Displaying time

It’s possible to automatically hide a widget after displaying it for a certain time.

For example, you can hide a widget after displaying it for 15 seconds, even if a visitor hasn’t interacted with it:

Scroll depth

This control allows you to hide your widget once a visitor reaches a certain scroll depth on the page.

Combining several triggers

In this section, you can combine conditions with the OR operator only. This means that the widget will be hidden if at least one of the conditions is met.

For example, you can combine the Displaying time and Automatically triggers to hide the widget after it has been displayed for a certain time or when the targeting and triggering conditions are not met anymore.

Stop conditions

From the ‘Stop displaying widget’ section, you can control when your widget will stop appearing for the same visitor.

By default, widgets are set to stop popping up for the same visitor for a day after they closed it:

Depending on your needs, you can remove this condition and/or set a different one.

Click +Add condition and choose a new condition from the panel:

❗If there are no conditions set in this section, your widget will be displayed to visitors who match the targeting conditions each time they visit your site.

For most conditions, you’ll need to specify the value; for example, the number of times visitors should see the widget before it will stop appearing for them.