A 'sign up for our newsletter' modal pop-up when the user first arrives on a website is not a 'beginner web design mistake' for one simple reason that even websites made by beginners can't ignore: They really work. People sign up in droves. Many people have tested it. It's annoying as hell, but the fact is beginner website designers should learn to make effective websites that work for businesses, not just pretty ones.
This comment needs an asterisk that I'm going to provide.
* Your results may vary. Actual numbers largely depend on how the popup is implemented (when it shows up, how often it shows up, etc). And even in the cases where you get increased sign ups, studies have shown that those who sign up via a popup have considerably lower engagement metrics, indicating that they signed up by mistake or they signed up because they thought they had to (note that a sign up, in-and-of itself is just a vanity metric with no meaning if it doesn't lead to increased engagement).
Our data scientist at Treehouse actually tested this extensively, but it's such a complex issue (lots of qualitative/anecdotal/branding evidence that's difficult to measure) that the results are still inconclusive. Basically, it helped us and hurt us in different ways, but the long term effects seemed bad enough that we stopped.
If after extensive research the worst you can say is that "results are still inconclusive," it is hardly a "beginner web mistake" on par with bad navigation.
I think the reason you included modal forms in your article is the same reason people are posting in this thread about them: you personally don't like them.
I would say that "substituting your opinion for testing" actually is a beginner web design mistake.
> I think the reason you included modal forms in your article is the same reason people are posting in this thread about them: you personally don't like them.
People not liking them is a form of qualitative data. That's the feedback we received from enough people to decide that it was damaging our brand long-term.
That audience is some huge percentage of the internet userbase, because some huge percentage of people are "clueless and naive." So people who want to just make money off a widely read website would do well to do what works. Just like how in the mobile gaming space irritating pay-to-play/in-app-purchase driven "games" are the money makers, and people who make games in order to make a lot of money should probably make a game like that.
Well, everyone has to make their own ethical choices.
Personally, I don't need the karma of annoying the customers, regardless of how much it may seem to work in the short term. I mean, you might as well be Zynga if you're going to do that.
No company survives in the long term by annoying and/or abusing their customers.
This is simply not true. Sure, you'll get signups from people aren't actually in your target market (clueless and naive), but at the margin you'll also get signups from people are intelligent and high value prospects that wouldn't have otherwise signed up if you weren't aggressive about offering it.
To deny the potential value of x by categorically defining all the people who you think would respond to x is ignorance at best and most likely just hubris.
You'll lose the people who click the back button the second one of those gets in their face and never return.
Hubris? Sure, if you want to call it that.
Personally, I think that expecting a person to sign up for your site based on no evidence whatsoever is pretty damned hubristic. The message I get is "WE ARE SOOOOO FULL OF TEH AWESUM THAT YOU WILL WANT TO GET SPAMMED BY US DAY AND NIGHT!"
Yeah, good luck with that.
Note that I wouldn't mind nearly as much if the site was clever enough to noticed that I'd looked at 15-20 pages (or whatever) and THEN asked me if I wanted to sign up. But it's never that way. It's always right on the front page, before you can even SEE what's on the site.
There's not a chance in hell that I'll sign up for something like that.
