I’m sure you’ve come across them: You try to close a browser tab or move to a different one, and a popup window comes up with some last-minute message to catch your attention. This is an exit-intent popup.
Exit-intent popups are often used by websites to retain visitors that are about to leave the site. Users’ mouse movements are tracked, and when their cursor moves outside the upper page boundary, the popup is triggered.
Most conversations around exit-intent popups are about how companies can use them to their advantage — for example, in order to get people to subscribe to the company’s email newsletter. Gobs of conversion-optimization services tout their effectiveness in generating leads, newsletter subscriptions, and making sales.
Although these techniques may show small increases in conversion metrics, they can also negatively impact users. Most exit-intent popups ask something from the users, such as their names and email addresses or to like the company on social channels. Manipulative wording is often used in exit-intent popups to shame people into taking the desired action. Users see through these tactics, and the result comes off as a one-sided interaction: the company is the only party that benefits from it.
In this article, we’re not going to talk about how to convert and manipulate users with these popups. We’re going to discuss how to use exit-intent popups as a tool for improving the customer experience. The main idea is to increase the perceived value of the exit-intent popup and ensure that users get a benefit from the interaction that keeps them on the site. Ideally, the provided benefit should balance the cost of not pursuing their original intent (leaving the site).
1. Give an Instant Discount
Our research on ecommerce promotions shows users regularly leave the checkout page when they see an open field for a coupon code and they don’t have a coupon. In this situation, users search the web for a discount code. Instead of making users search the web for a code and possibly losing that sale if they don’t find one (or find a better deal elsewhere), offer the code when it’s contextually relevant: that is, when you notice that a person prepares to leave the site to find one. The user has already added items to the cart, so save her time and pleasantly surprise her with a little incentive to complete the purchase.
Note: The language employed (Not interested. I’d rather pay for shipping) is manipulative. (Image source: https://targetbay.com/blog/shopping-cart-abandonment-strategy/ )
An exit-intent popup doesn’t have to show a coupon to be beneficial to users. Sale items or other useful sales-related information can also deter users from leaving the site.
2. Prevent a Mistake
How many times have you thought that you had purchased something online, only to realize later that you did not fully complete the checkout process? This has happened to me more than a handful of times: I thought I had placed an order, but my item never arrived, and when I logged in to my account I discovered that the order didn’t exist.
Of course, in many such situations, the culprit is the interaction flow. Sometimes several confirmation pages appear before the transaction is processed and users lose their place or assume they are finished. Sometimes, the review page looks like a confirmation page, signaling to users that the transaction is complete when it is not. But, occasionally, users may get distracted and try to leave the process too early.
3. Save Progress
Sometimes users leave a page because they want to finish their task at another time — for example, if the process is too time-consuming and they’re not able to complete it in that moment. Any time users leave a process, there’s a risk that they won’t come back to finish it later, even if they intend to do so. Help them continue their journey and pick up where they left off without losing their progress. Saving progress is useful for any time-consuming task, not just ecommerce purchases.
4. Offer Something Else of Value
Before users leave, consider calling their attention to something on the site that might be useful to them — a piece of content or something else they might not have noticed. Take it as an opportunity to show visitors that your site is a helpful resource. Perhaps this final interaction will help build a relationship that will turn into business later.
5. Gather Feedback to Serve Them Better
Some websites use exit-intent popups to ask for feedback when users leave the checkout process. Although the feedback ultimately benefits the company, it may genuinely be used to help users in the long run. That said, the request for feedback should appear as user-centric rather than company-centric.
Although the examples above are from ecommerce websites, asking for feedback could be used on many other types of websites.
6. Offer to Remind Them Later
Not all users are ready to buy when they’re browsing a website. People often research and compare options with the intent to purchase later. This pattern is common on sites that sell goods and services for a specific occasion or season.
7. Offer Support
If your offering is complex or if customers might benefit from talking to a human, consider calling attention to your contact channels, especially if you have live chat. Users may not come up by themselves with the idea of contacting customer service or they may think that the effort to do so is too big. But, if you can catch users on their way out with a quick path to easy answers, they may just take you up on that offer. If your customer support is easy to use and real-time, this interaction may secure a customer. They’ll likely remember their positive experience with your company.
8. Direct Users to a Different Channel or to the Next Step of the Customer Journey
A static website experience may not resonate well with every potential customer. Some may benefit from interacting with other media to learn about your offerings, but they may not take the steps to do so on their own. If there are other settings or channels where you can educate customers about your services, alert users about them when they are leaving your site.
This type of popup lowers the interaction cost of searching and locating an alternative channel or supplementary information. It can work well in situations where users need to take action to initiate your services or find information about the options. For example, a box-subscription service may ask users to fill out a short survey in order to recommend a subscription box for them. Presenting the path to that questionnaire may be a quick way to get users into the workflow and to receive benefits immediately.
9. Make Users Aware of New Content or Features.
If your website is long established, it can be difficult to communicate new offerings to returning visitors who know your site for old functionalities and use it only for those. If you roll out new features, consider using exit-intent popups to communicate their benefits to users in relevant scenarios.
For example, TripAdvisor has been known over the years as a destination for researching and reviewing travel-related items such as hotels and tourist destinations. In 2015, the site added support for booking hotels. When a user researched hotels on TripAdvisor but left the site without making a booking, the site used an exit-intent pop-up to let her know of the new feature.
10.Mention Your User-Friendly Policies
When customers are researching products and services online, they’re considering multiple options across multiple sites. If you have outstanding customer-service policies that differentiate you from your competitors, draw attention to them.
User-friendly policies such as price-match guarantees, money-back guarantees, free samples, and free trials may just be the reason a user chooses your offerings over a competitor’s. Not all customers will search for these policies as part of their research process, so calling special attention to a valuable policy during the customer journey can be a benefit to users.
Conclusion
Popups have long been considered annoying to users. Often, it’s because they interrupt users during an important task or block out the page content with self-serving messaging. Yes, there have been plenty of examples of problematic popup usage. However, exit-intent popups are different, due to the timing of their delivery: they act much like a final message as users are on their way out the door. For this reason, they are less disruptive than traditional popups. And when designed correctly, they can be an effective way to deliver a critical message or provide something useful to a site visitor. They are also low-risk: those for whom the message is irrelevant can continue on their way without issue.
Do you have examples of an exit-intent popups used to improve the user experience? Tweet @nngroup with the hashtag #exitintentforgood to join the conversation!
Share this article: