Sign in pop up

[cheathcote]

We would like to have the sign up window automatically pop up when someone visits our home page to try and increase sign ups and logins/interactions with the community. 

I was wondering if anyone else had done this or something similar? If so did it help to increase sign ups and/or engagement and how did you implement it?

TIA

[ClaudiusH]

Hi @cheathcote

Would you mind clarifying what you mean by "Sign in pop up"? Do you mean showing the sign in prompt instead of the actual content or an overlay with a sign in prompt?

Both are quite intrusive experiences and I don't think you will see hat much of an uplift in return for the damage to the visitor experience.

Instead you will probably see higher registration conversion rates if you preset small prompts ("Want to see more / be notified of / subscribe to content like this?") right after content or solutions were shown to tie a benefit statement to the registration prompt. Take a look at the signposting that Google Adwords have put into place, e.g. https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Analytics-Academy/What-session-users-convert-at/m-p/996101...

These are usually text only elements so not too complicated to add with some HTML knowledge. Also when you are adding multiple registration prompt on the same page think about adding web analytics tracking codes so you can determine the successful calls to action in regard to wording, styling and placement on the page.

[DanK]

I would also suggest being wary of forcing users to register before they can access content, even if the registration box can be closed. Similar to those pop ups on news sites that ask for your email address I can only see this generating negative experiences for users. A far better approach is to wait until a user has had an opportunity to see the value in your community and then prompt them to register. For example, if they attempt to interact with a post in some way (Me Too, Kudo, Mark Helpful, etc) that is your opportunity.

If you go into a retail store and before you have had a chance to browse the staff ask you to join the reward program, wouldn't that be a jarring experience? There is a good reason this interaction occurs at the checkout during a purchase.

[JasonHill]

I think this is an area in which the platform could be improved. I would like to be able to trigger a pop up to users to encourage them to register/sign in after they have been browsing the site for a certain period of time, much in the same way that the surveys current pop up. As long as it was easily dismiss-able, I don't think it would be too annoying to visitors and would be a powerful tool for increasing registrations.

Jason 

[PaoloT]

From a technical perspective - I would say it would be quite simple to write some code that triggers a click on the "sign in" link (and opens the pop up) depending on certain conditions.

You can try copying & pasting the below code in the browser console, just to get an idea - ensure you are logged out and on a page using our standard sign in links - Note: this is a test hack, not code I would use in production 🙂 )

LITHIUM.jQuery("a.login-link").click();

But I agree with what @ClaudiusH said - one need to be careful with automatic triggering of popups.

[cheathcote]

Hi @ClaudiusH Thanks for the advice. I was thinking of an overlay but agree this could be a little intrusive. My concern was that visitors arriving on our community via search etc may think it is just a content site and not realise that they can actually join as the join and the benefits of doing so. I like your suggestion of prompts though so will look into whether we can implement something like this.

Thanks!

[cheathcote]

@JasonHill I agree it would be a really useful addition to the platform. When we did the same on our blog, it increased our subscription rates/ conversions massively.

[cheathcote]

@DanK Thanks really useful advice. We already have the pop up in place for when they try to interact in anyway. 

[cheathcote]

@PaoloT Thanks. Will need to have a think about the user experience but will perhaps test something like this to see how it impacts sign ups.

[ClaudiusH]

 For some further inspiration on prompts to sign up or engage take a look at the Google Adwords Community. In particular the "Need help" popup, the "Guide Me" link and the "Didn't find what you were looking for?" prompt they added seem to be exactly along the same alley you are thinking.

They explain some of the community experience to increase engagement in the below webinar recording from @VarunGrazitti and @yurikleban here:

[JasonHill]

---

cheathcote wrote:

@JasonHill I agree it would be a really useful addition to the platform. When we did the same on our blog, it increased our subscription rates/ conversions massively.

---

@cheathcote

I couldn't find any feature requests like this on the idea exchange so have just added one. Please add your vote and comments to the following request - /t5/Product-Ideas/Pop-up-to-encourage-users-to-register/idi-p/282608

Jason

[SheenaK]

We have just gone live with a pop up that appears after the average time spent on the page. It remains to be seen if there is a benefit but I'll come back and let you all know how it went in a week or so. This is only on our blogs and not on the forum pages, as there's no real call-to-action otherwise there.

If you want to see it in action you can here - http://forum.three.ie/t5/NewsFeed/Weekly-Tech-News-Mobile-World-Congress-USB-Type-C-and-more/ba-p/15...

[ClaudiusH]

Thanks for sharing @SheenaK - Really curious what you will learn from this trial.

I think a big challenge is working out how various popups and prompt complement each other without competing too much or create an experience of being blared at as a visitor. In your example you have the survey and registration prompt competing (and it's gonna be hard to win against z-index: 2000000000; ):

[SheenaK]

You're absolutely correct @ClaudiusH, plus the last thing I want to do is ruin the customers experience (or trust) by having too many popups distracting them from the actual content.

My guess is that we'll look at the results in a week or 2, and decide then which pop to keep. If either the click-thrus on the pop up are not high enough to justify it, or we lose a lot of people when it pops, we will be turning it off. If it performs better than I expect it to, we may turn off the survey's on these pages, or alternate between survey or pop up.

We actually just went live with the survey Friday evening so I hadn't yet noticed the z-index! I guess the survey dev team really didn't want people to miss it  👀 

[cheathcote]

@SheenaK This looks exactly like what we would like to trial. Would you mind sharing the code?

[SheenaK]

No problem @cheathcote, although I should point out that I'm self taught when it comes to coding, so there may be a better version of this available somewhere, or perhaps someone may be able to suggest a cleaner way to do this 😳

This is a custom component on the page:

<div id="boxesnews">
<#if user.anonymous>
  <div id="dialognews" class="window" >
         <h2 style="font-size:30px"><br>Hey there!</h2><br>
		<div class="content" style="text-align:center">
If you like what you’re reading,  why not subscribe by registering below? It only takes one minute… We've timed it!<br><br><br>

<div class="CTAbuttons" style="background-color: #000000; border: 1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; border-radius: 5px; color: #EFEFEF; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Roman; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; padding:10px; text-align: center; width: 25%; margin-left: 36%;">
<b> <@component id="users.action.login" /></b>
</div>
<br>
<div class="CTAbuttons" style="background-color: #000000; border: 1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; border-radius: 5px; color: #EFEFEF; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Roman; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; padding:10px; text-align: center; width: 25%; margin-left: 36%;">
<b><@component id="users.action.registration" /></b>
</div>
</div>
  </div>
  <div id="masknews"></div>
<#else>
</div>

</#if>

</div>

<!-- newsfeed pop up -->

<@liaAddScript>
;(function($) {	
$(document).ready(function() { 
var id = '#dialognews';
   
var maskHeight = $(document).height();
var maskWidth = $(document).width();
   
$('#masknews').css({'width':maskWidth,'height':maskHeight});
 
$('#masknews') .delay(100000) .fadeIn(300);
$('#masknews').fadeTo("slow",0.9); 
   
var winH = $(window).height();
var winW = $(window).width();
               
$(id).css('top',  winH/2-$(id).height()/2);
$(id).css('left', winW/2-$(id).width()/2);
   
$(id) .delay(100000) .fadeIn(300);  
   
$('.window .close').click(function (e) {

e.preventDefault();
 
$('#masknews').hide();
$('.window').hide();
});
 
$('#masknews').click(function () {
$(this).hide();
$('.window').hide();
});
   
});
})(LITHIUM.jQuery);
</@liaAddScript>
<!-- end newsfeed pop up -->

And here's the CSS:

/* newsfeed popup */
#masknews {
  position: fixed;
  left: 0;
  top: 0;
  z-index: 9000;
  background-color: #000;
  display: none;
}
 
#boxesnews .window {
  position: fixed;
  left: 0;
  top: 0;
  width: 440px;
  height: 200px;
  display: none;
  z-index: 9999;
  padding: 20px;
  border-radius: 15px;
  text-align: center;
}
 
#boxesnews #dialognews {
  width: 550px;
  height: 300px;
  padding: 10px;
  background-color: #ffffff;
  font-family: HelveticaNeue-Bold,HelveticaNeue-Roman;
  font-size: 15pt;
}
 
#popupfootnews {
  font-size: 16pt;
  position: absolute;
  bottom: 0px;
  width: 250px;
  left: 250px;
}

.CTAbuttons, .CTAbuttons a, CTAbuttons a:link {
color: white!important;
}

/* end newsfeed popup */

EDIT: updated code 

[stutaylor]

Thanks @SheenaK I work with Ceri and we will try this on our dev environment in the morning and let you know how we get on.

Thanks for the help

[SheenaK]

Happy to have helped @stutaylor 🙂 I'll post back with how our trial went in a week or so.

[PaoloT]

Hi @SheenaK 

may I suggest something? In your code you seem to be linking an external jQuery library 

<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.1.js"></script>

However the code itself seem to be using the jQuery Lithium already packs in the platform. Unless you need it, I would suggest to remove the script tag as it means you only use one jQuery (the one we ship within Lithium) and not load another copy (which can make the pages slow).

Just my two cents!

[SheenaK]

---

PaoloT wrote:

Hi @3SheenaIrl 

may I suggest something? In your code you seem to be linking an external jQuery library 

<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.1.js"></script>

However the code itself seem to be using the jQuery Lithium already packs in the platform. Unless you need it, I would suggest to remove the script tag as it means you only use one jQuery (the one we ship within Lithium) and not load another copy (which can make the pages slow).

Just my two cents!

---

Thanks @PaoloT, I tested that out in the stage environment and you're absolutely correct, that line isn't needed 🙂 Appreciate the tip!

[ClaudiusH]

@SheenaK From what I can tell you are currently only showing this prompt on your desktop community experience (and the code and styling don't seem to be responsive ready yet). Are you planning to roll it out on your mobile experience pending on the results on desktop skin?

[SheenaK]

Yup, responsive is earmarked for later this year, so I'm concentrating on just desktop for now. If this does happen to be successful I may adapt it or duplicate it for mobile, but we're just going to see how it works for now on desktop. 

[SheenaK]

Hi everyone, just as an update we've seen approx 8% increase in logins/registrations since implementing this pop up.

Looking at the average time on the page and the exit rate, on one of our blogs the time on the page has increased by 26.7% and the exit rate has fallen by 11.98%, and on the other blog the time on the page has fallen by 19.61% and the exit rate has increased by 15.28%.

I'm going to leave it running for another week, and if the results are similar next week I'll turn it off on the blog that had the higher exit rate and lower time on the page.

[ClaudiusH]

Thanks for sharing. That's already a really promising data point.
The follow up question would be if you are increasing the overall community population size or only the fraction of lurkers 😉 I.e. are these additional 8% just as likely to participate?

Also these two blog pages where you quoted data from: Both show the popup and the only difference is the blog content?

[SheenaK]

---

ClaudiusH wrote:
Thanks for sharing. That's already a really promising data point.
The follow up question would be if you are increasing the overall community population size or only the fraction of lurkers 😉 I.e. are these additional 8% just as likely to participate?

Also these two blog pages where you quoted data from: Both show the popup and the only difference is the blog content?

---

Our main objective with this pop-up is 'growth' so getting the registrations is the main thing, but that should also increase engagement as our lurkers and casual users are almost 1:1 (still working on the superusers!). So every 2 registrations that we get, generally translates to 1 member casually engaging with the community. It'll be interesting to see if that ratio changes over time due to the newbies 🙂 

We have 2 blogs for the community: one is for tech news, industry updates and the like, and the other is a customer focused blog where we talk about our products and services. The customer focused one is the blog that has the better performing pop up at the moment, which is odd as I assumed it would be the other way around.