It’s unfortunate that a lot of on-page marketing can be thought of as hunting or trapping your website visitor. And honestly, if that is in fact how you’re approaching it, there is a better way.
With your tools, tricks, and actions on-site; all that is done in the name of getting website visitors to take action, always think about it as providing a benefit:
How can I provide value to this reader at this moment?
That can and still will very much be through providing a call-to-action.
For instance, perhaps it comes after the visitor reads a certain sentence in your content, at a place where you feel it would then make sense for them to learn more about a related eBook though a pop-up.
Or, if the visitor has remained on a page for three minutes, and there really isn’t three minutes-worth of content to take in, perhaps they’re stuck, and a pop-up checking on whether or not they need help and further direction might make sense.
Point is, there is balance, and a time and place for everything.
I’m surely guilty of having ads, pop-ups, or CTAs where they probably might not need to be, but I am trying to make this blog a financially-worthy endeavor as well. If I’m spending my free time on creating content, I might also ask for a returned favor, and hope you can endure an extra CTA or two.
But what isn’t fair is to blast and plaster, to get in the way, and to ask for these favors before a website visitor can even take in even a bit of content.
Anyway, all of this leads me to the value of the scroll-trigger pop-up, and how it can be used to politely offer a CTA to your website visitors at a time that makes sense for both of you.
What is a Scroll Trigger Pop-Up?
A scroll trigger pop-up is a call-to-action (CTA) that “pops up” once a website visitor has made their way past a certain point on your page. Meaning, it’s their scroll to depths of 25%, 50%, 75%, etc. of that page that triggers the pop-up.
[adsanity id=”3475″ align=”alignnone” /]This is similar to an exit-intent pop-up that is triggered when a user moves their mouse to go “back” or to close their tab or window. It’s their action that is causing the pop-up to display.
Want an example? Scroll to the next paragraph.
When Should You Trigger a Scroll Pop-Up?
(Pretty cool, right? More on how I did it after this section.)
When to trigger really depends on a variety of factors, including the page’s content, who you think the visitor is, and what you’re offering through the CTA.
Meaning, if scenario one has a user heading to your site because they just searched for something like “how to change the background color of a photo” and you present them with an in-depth tutorial of 1,000 words, where the final, most valuable step of that tutorial comes around 500 words, when would it make sense to trigger the pop-up? At 10% of their scroll, or at 60%?
On the other hand, in scenario two, if you have a piece of pillar content that you’ve written for informational purposes, meaning, it’s something like how to promote your writing, and you’re giving a bunch of different tips, then things are a little different.
There isn’t a true “punchline” or “a ha” moment, but rather, the whole post is useful. At this point, you may be OK with triggering a pop-up upon a 25% scroll, or something much earlier than you would have in the first scenario.
And in both scenarios, I didn’t even mention what the pop-up CTA would be touting, which of course plays a big role here too…
I won’t get into the details, but basically, just stay relevant. There is no point in triggering a pop-up for product ABC if a visitor really is only going to be interested in service XYZ. At that point, your chance of conversion is low and you’ve annoyed what could be a qualified lead had you let things play out.
How to Create a Scroll Trigger Pop-Up
I’m sure there are a few different ways. I’m not a developer, and the good news is, you don’t need to be.
Plus, I’ll almost always default to an out of the box tool to get something done for the site rather than fiddling around with something that could take me hours to implement, and then still not even look good or achieve what I wanted to.
Anyway, the tool here is OptinMonster, and it allows for easy and nice looking scroll trigger pop-ups, and really, pop-ups in a variety of forms and use cases.
This is how easy it can be:
1. Select Campaign Type
As you can see, there are a variety of campaign types from which you can choose, and each serves its own purpose. In this case, if you want to trigger a scroll pop-up, you can do so with the following campaign types:
- Popup
- Floating Bar
- Fullscreen
- Slide-in
The most traditional or best fit in terms of “pop-up” would in fact be the first “popup” option, but the others work well, and can perhaps work better depending on your content and site format.
2. Choose Campaign Template
Once you’ve selected a type of campaign, OptinMonster provides a number of out of the box templates, each with a preview, and then all the elements you’d need to get your scroll pop-up working in a matter of minutes. Of course, each element is customizable and editable, for the most part.
[adsanity id=”3475″ align=”alignnone” /]3. Configure Display Settings
After you’ve played with the design and other options, the last step is just to configure when and where you want the pop-up to show. Given that we have been talking about scroll depth, you can easily do so as shown here.
And, as mentioned, you have full autonomy has to the percentage of the page you’d want someone to scroll to before the pop-up is triggered.
When is it best to trigger a pop-up?
Again, it depends. Think about your website visitor, and how they go to your site. Then think about your content and how your visitor might be taking in that content.
You might need to roll out a few different hypothesis, and you might need to fail a couple of times. But another great thing with a tool like OptinMonster or something similar, AB testing is easy as well, allowing you to test and tweak, test, and tweak some more.
Good luck!
