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No, I Don’t Want to Subscribe to Your Newsletter

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Re: No, I Don’t Want to Subscribe to Your Newsletter

#51

Post by JimDabell »

Nadya wrote: post #19
bradleyankrom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you go about detecting when a user is about to leave your site? Other than responding to a click on an external link? The two ways I typically leave a site are a) typing a URL into the address bar and b) closing a tab.

Watch for the mouse along the upper 10px of the window [0] or use of the [Ctrl] key (for Ctrl+L or Ctrl+W). Or as other said, for a threshold of upper/upper-left mouse movement. You'll get a few false flags from people trying to Ctrl+C but so many people use the right-click context menu to copy/paste...you can probably ignore Ctrl+_ entirely and just focus on that window near the top. Most users will pass by that are…

That's really irritating because you get false positives (not "false flag", that's something else entirely) whenever you go to change tabs with the mouse.

If somebody is interested in subscribing, then a subscribe box at the bottom or side of the content is fine.

Re: No, I Don’t Want to Subscribe to Your Newsletter

#52

Post by Frondo »

petercooper wrote: post #7
digitalengineer wrote: post #6

Yes it's annoying but they work: "sticking a big ole pop-up in their face can be one of the most effective ways to jolt their attention & grab their email for a return visit." Peep Laja. https://conversionxl.com/popup-defense/?hvid=2EcGFw

I'm in the newsletter business (and don't use these modals out of principle) and the folks I chat to about it confirm the same - they work really well . But, I counter, so does spamming or making 10000s of automated phone calls.. and we've agreed those things are damaging and unethical - I agree with Dave, it's about time we as an industry considered full screen modals to be dirty and unwelcome.

The way I feel about it, if this is the compromise we've settled on, between users and marketers, I'm OK with it.

I'd much rather close an email-gathering overlay once on a new site, than get inundated with spam or junk calls.

(I say this as both a user and a marketer.)

Re: No, I Don’t Want to Subscribe to Your Newsletter

#53

Post by kgwxd »

I made a add-on for myself to shun sites that behave in ways I don't like. It removes links to their sites from every page. It effectively removes them from the internet. I think that's a way scarier scenario for a website owner than just getting their ads blocked. If the list were community driven and widely used, I think site owners would start changing their behavior. I know most people just want the content and don't care if they block a few ads but I'm sure, like me, there a good chunk of people that are fine with respecting the site owners wishes and just never going to the site (by never seeing their site mentioned ever again) since I'm not going to "pay" in any form.

I did publish the Firefox add-on (desktop only) just so I could avoid having to use web-ext or temporarily install it every time I run FF. It's a complete hassle to set up and configure at the moment. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ssure/?src=se...

Edit: Source is here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/files/browse/601156... in case you want to try and not worry about it doing something shady.

Re: No, I Don’t Want to Subscribe to Your Newsletter

#54

Post by gkya »

morley wrote: post #5

The full-screen modal-with-windowshade newsletter prompts are super annoying. But I realize bloggers will always want to "expand their reach," to use the distasteful marketing term. I'd much prefer the prompted blinded in from the side quickly, or ideally, appeared in the site's sidebar. I'm guessing they're used everywhere because you could drop in a code snippet to do everything for you, and a vast majority of code…

I'd sort of be okay with them if they appeared immediately and were easy to get rid of. But with them it takes me a minute to reach the content (page load time included, which is about 30 seconds on average for me nowadays with modern websites on a 16mbits ADSL connection).

Re: No, I Don’t Want to Subscribe to Your Newsletter

#56

Post by makecheck »

Publishers should approach everything from the point of view of a person on the street: if it wouldn’t be acceptable in real life, WHY is it acceptable online!?

The equivalent of a pop-up newsletter modal is somebody on the street PULLING you aside, standing directly in front of you and preventing you from going any further until you answer their question. All without bothering to observe what you were doing beforehand. Your choice then is to step back the way you came to avoid the creepy sidewalk-blocking people. Ridiculous, creepy and unacceptable in real life but essentially exactly how web sites treat their visitors.

Re: No, I Don’t Want to Subscribe to Your Newsletter

#57

Post by romuloab42 »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #2

NoScript unless they earn the privilege of executing code. I wish whatever spec would have covered the concern had stated script execution MUST prompt the user.

Disabling Javascript has singlehandedly fixed several annoyances I had, even with ad blocking. No more tabs draining my battery (ok, css animations are still a problem), no more things jumping around, no more page popups, no more Intercom chat windows from people eager to talk to me, no more 3rd party crap Javascript tracking me (ublock prevented them already, but it's nice to know there's no way they can bypass adblock). Things load and render fast.

Some pages still require Javascript, and SSO is usually a pain, but for those cases I have a Chrome profile with Javascript enabled and a simple Hammerspoon script that launches that profile in incognito mode for the url I have on my clipboard.

Oh, and Gmail basic html mode is so snappy!

Re: No, I Don’t Want to Subscribe to Your Newsletter

#59

Post by M_Grey »

digitalengineer wrote: post #6

Yes it's annoying but they work: "sticking a big ole pop-up in their face can be one of the most effective ways to jolt their attention & grab their email for a return visit." Peep Laja. https://conversionxl.com/popup-defense/?hvid=2EcGFw

At first, sure, but essentially you're training people to ignore you regardless of what you do. As advertisers are finding out, eventually someone will create a tool that allows people to ignore you online the way they would anywhere else in life.

The clear trend is just tuning out what you don't want to do deal with, from rantings about religion and politics, to someone trying to sell you shit.

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