5 essential popup strategies for ecommerce

It’s hard to convert ecommerce website visitors into paying customers. While some people are eager to buy a product or a service, others need a little extra push. There are lots of ways to push these visitors further in the sales funnel, but one strategy is especially effective: popups.

Popups are very effective in capturing visitors’ attention and achieving your ecommerce conversion goals. But website popups have gotten a bad reputation mostly due to entry popups that show up as soon as you visit an online store. However, if popups are used correctly, they can be helpful — not annoying — to potential customers.

To make popups that don’t ruin the user experience on an ecommerce website, follow these popup best practices:

• Never use those annoying entry popups. Instead, always use exit-intent popups.
• Be less intrusive and give the store visitors a chance to look around the store before offering them something. No one likes a nosey salesperson — and the same applies to ecommerce stores.
• Never try to guilt website visitors into signing up for an email list by making the opt-out option hard to reach. Instead, write in a friendly tone and make the experience as enjoyable as you can.
• Design a popup that is simple and beautiful and matches the look of the site.
• The offers that popups display should always be relevant to the target audience.
• To ensure the maximum efficiency of the popups, run A/B tests and continually improve the popups.

Now that you know what kind of popups you should use on your ecommerce site, let's take a look at 5 essential popup strategies you can implement in your next ecommerce site project.

1. Combat cart abandonment

On average, 69.5% of ecommerce shoppers will add something to their cart and then just disappear and never go through with their purchase. Many ecommerce stores fear it, but with the right popups, you can significantly lower that percentage.

Understand why your visitors abandon

Many ecommerce stores, regardless of what they sell, face these 2 common issues that result in cart abandonment:

High prices: Often, ecommerce shoppers do comparison shopping to find the best deals and will just add the same (or similar) items to their carts on multiple shops and then choose the cheapest one.

High shipping costs: Customers often abandon shopping carts after they see how much their order costs with shipping.

Answer shoppers’ concerns with the right popup

To prevent shoppers from leaving because of high prices, ecommerce store owners can show these customers popups with coupon codes and other special discounts. The popups sometimes have photos or illustrations of cute animals or characters, because who would turn down such a cute puppy?

To combat cart abandonment because of high shipping costs, ecommerce store owners can offer timed popups with free shipping. Timed popups that count down until the offer expires create a sense of urgency for the shoppers, which might give them that extra tiny push to purchase from the store.

2. Use coupons as incentives

If shoppers have the option to pay less for their purchase, they will do it every time. Everyone loves discounts, which is why ecommerce store owners often use coupon popups to boost their conversion rate. You can use coupons as incentives to get shoppers to take other actions on your site, including:

Sign up for an email list

If you show a popup that asks for the shopper's email in exchange for a discount, everyone wins. The shopper spends less, and the store makes a sale — plus they’ve gained an email for marketing purposes and their newsletter list. Even though email marketing has been around for ages, it is still one of the most popular marketing channels for keeping customers longer in the sales funnel.

Follow on social media

Similar to the previous popup, this website form asks for the customer to follow the store on social media. Social media has been one of the leading marketing channels for many years. In addition to getting new followers on social media and increasing the social proof of the store, the ecommerce store now has another opportunity to serve highly targeted ads to those shoppers that have already made a purchase, thus increasing their chance to get more sales in the long run.

Share a product

Create a popup designed to get the word around and use word-of-mouth to boost ecommerce sales by having the shopper tell all their friends on social media that they purchased a certain product. Like new followers on social media, social shares build social proof and brand authority. And when a shopper shares a product with their friends, it might even encourage the shopper's friends to purchase the product themselves.

3. Increase cart value with upsells

Upsell popups help ecommerce shop owners get more revenue from existing customers by automatically displaying targeted offers to customers who are already buying from the store, thus encouraging them to spend more. Upselling has been proven to increase the revenue of ecommerce stores. After all, it's a lot easier to sell to existing customers than to acquire new ones.

Upsell based on product category

Upselling based on product category doesn't require any special personalization. You just need to recommend the user similar items in a popup. The store owner can and should create upsell product recommendations for all product categories in their store as they never know which similar product will catch a shopper’s eye.

Upsell based on bestselling products

Another simple and effective way to have shoppers purchase more is to offer them the store's bestselling and most popular items in a popup. This can be done in a few ways: you can place the bestselling items somewhere on the shop's homepage or label the bestselling products as trending products. The bestselling products can be shown in a popup on the checkout page just before the shopper checks out.

4. Offer live support

Some customers who land on the checkout page are going to complete the checkout process, but some of them won't. Those customers may have some questions that need to be answered before they pull out their card and buy.

That's why it's important to add an exit popup that has a call to action to chat with a support representative to answer any questions the potential customer might have. Remind your visitors you’re always there to help them if they have any questions or concerns. By being there for the customers and helping them out, you boost your conversion rate and improve the odds that those indecisive customers will purchase from the store.

5. Announce new arrivals and discounts

In this ever-changing busy world, ecommerce store owners have to do their best to grab the attention of as many people as they can, and simply getting people to visit the online store doesn’t guarantee sales. That’s why it’s important for ecommerce store owners to have attention-grabbing visual elements that will get visitors excited about the store. And hopefully that sense of excitement will get visitors to make a purchase.

New arrivals

This popup is designed to drive more traffic to the ecommerce store's new collection or product. When a potential customer visits the store, a popup that tells them about the new product or collection appears, which sparks the customer’s interest. The customer can then click on the call-to-action button and go to the product or collection page.

Hopefully, this will drive more orders for the ecommerce store as potential customers will be directed to check out the new products, especially if they have purchased from your store before.

Discounts on holidays

For so many holidays — Easter, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, just to name a few — holiday shopping is huge for all stores, especially ecommerce. During the holidays, customers expect discounts and deals. Encourage your customers to spend more by offering deals and discounts around holidays.

Usually holiday deals are only good for a limited time, which creates a sense of urgency for the shopper, as the deal will not be available forever. Combining a countdown with a special discount code might encourage even more customers to shop.

Convert more ecommerce customers with strategic popups

In today's busy world, converting website visitors into paying customers is no easy gig. Sure, some people are eager to buy a product or service, but most others need an extra push. The push that works most of the time in ecommerce is popups.

When popups are used correctly, they are much more helpful than annoying to customers and can help capture the attention of visitors, helping the ecommerce store owners achieve their conversion goals.

For popups to enhance the user experience, they need to use exit intent, be less intrusive, and be designed in the right style, tone, and language so they match with the rest of the store and the brand. Popups also need to be simple and relevant to the target audience, and you should continually improve them with the help of A/B testing. Get started creating popups following these 5 strategies to increase your customer conversion today.