Popup's Completely ruin the product they're advertising

I agree that they are completely annoying and I would never buy something presented in that manner. But let me tell you a short story. I wrote a piece of software back in the early nineties that was really amazing for the niche market it targeted. I packaged it and started offering it online back in the BBS days. I was being cute and sold it for "$50...none of this .99 stuff".

I sold about 2 copies per week which was quite low compared to what I expected. Someone told me I should change the price to $49.99 and I did. The next week, and for years after, I was selling 10 copies per week on average.

The truth is...people are stupid. They fall for this crap and it actually works. In fact, anything you see sales-wise works or you wouldn't see it. Advertising is so expensive and complicated that only what works, continues. Not much different that a cat or dog and a red dot laser. Ooooo...SHINY!

a reply to: Akragon

For me it's the same with websites that ask you to join their newsletter with a popup right after your browser loads the site - before you even have time to read an article. Why would I want to read a sites newsletter before I can even know what they site is about?

These so called marketing people have no clue what real marketing is.

There have been numerous times whereby I've lost interest in an article because they have a big splash screen pop up right across the centre of it. You click on the fake 'x' and get diverted to the products page, click back and either get caught in an endless loop which redirects you again or end up with the immovable pop up. Stuff this, close tab and don't bother. It makes you wonder why the author would spend so much time for an article no one ever gets the chance to read because it's bogged down with pop ups.

Some sites are horrendous, when I first started making webpages back in college we were taught you prioritise the content loading first (usually text takes a miniscule amount of time) and then the various boxes can load whatever adverts they wish. Back in the day on a 28k modem you could be waiting minutes. Obviously, advertising pays and from a marketing point of view they'd prefer you staring at 20 adverts loading before the content finally appears - less consideration is given to the user and more towards those who stand to profit. To me though it's poor customer service.

There are also the sites where you are left with a tiny window to view the site through whilst fancy animated, bandwidth consuming and processor grinding animated pop ups adorn the screen - this is particularly bad on smart phones where the need for quad core processors is less relevant to gaming or running applications rather than getting the browser to run faster than a snail's pace.

I close down tabs now, I'm not interested in the rubbish they peddle. Sure, they still get the hits and statistics, maybe a few subliminal messages across but it's the author of the article and site which fails to get across their message because it's buried beneath crap. Maybe they too rake in the 0.1c per viewer from the pop ups and have money to host more sites and write better articles - but without a balance its nothing more than a multiplying germ and no one reads their words.