[HN Gopher] I don't want to sign up for your newsletter (2018)
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I don't want to sign up for your newsletter (2018)
Author : luu
Score : 323 points
Date : 2023-04-24 07:54 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.katsnyderux.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.katsnyderux.com)
| jhoelzel wrote:
| Don't worry, as the tech illiterate slowly leave the internet i
| bet the time of annoyment is finally comming to an end.
| _dain_ wrote:
| people who grew up with phones as the primary computing device
| are more tech illiterate than those who started with desktop
| machines. they're inherently locked down, meant for consuming
| not producing. they're harder to customize, harder to do things
| in nonstandard ways, harder to learn how they work.
|
| e.g. hierarchical filesystems are gradually becoming esoteric
| knowledge for zoomers because of how much phones and always-
| online apps obscure it from the user.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| You think young people are tech literate? They are iPhone
| literate but they would be hard pressed trying to do literally
| anything on a computer beside opening Chrome and launching
| YouTube.
| ianai wrote:
| Whoa, news to me. What is indicating the tech illiterate are
| leaving?!
| jhoelzel wrote:
| The problem will solve itself eventually.
|
| Now that the elderly are leaving the internet, the chance of
| finding somebody who randomly follows instructions will make
| this malware trend vanish imho
|
| /e:
|
| apparently this is more true for Europe than it is for other
| locations. I mean come on, its two clicks more which you
| usually do once for a website. And we also had every news
| station explain to you why the GDPR is a good thing and a big
| deal.
| nicbou wrote:
| Watch people under 30 use computers. They are just as
| likely to have a million newsletter subscriptions, and to
| click whatever makes the cookie banner disappear. HN is not
| a representative sample of the current generation.
| ianai wrote:
| I stopped expecting a demographic change as the boomers age
| when I looked at the demographics of gen Z and younger. The
| population "drop" doesn't look so significant.
|
| Meanwhile intelligence/knowledge will always be a rarer
| feature in the population. There's just more to do in a day
| and no one picks the same hobbies.
| FredPret wrote:
| Leaving the internet? You mean joining in huge numbers?
|
| According to this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countr
| ies_by_number_of...) only 63% of us are online. Prepare for a
| _lot_ more tech illiterates joining over the next two or three
| generations.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Not to mention the internet moves so fast you can become
| illiterate again.
|
| I bet most internet users have never tried VR, crypto
| currencies or ChatGPT yet. Some new things will come. Some
| will even stick for the long run. And inertia means
| illiteracy will rise.
|
| No to mentions as the old people die, new kids are born in
| countries were internet is not widespread yet.
|
| After all, some parts of the world still don't have
| electricity.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-billion-people-
| witho...
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > I bet most internet users have never tried VR, crypto
| currencies or ChatGPT yet.
|
| I've tried none of those things and I've been on the
| internet since the last century.
|
| Don't feel like I'm missing out just like I don't miss
| trying to figure out how to do anything useful with gopher
| over some crazy convoluted connection that required a 20
| page pamphlet to set up.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| What I try to remember though is I felt that way about
| everything, initially:) . My wife didn't miss or need a
| second monitor for our first five years together - and
| then she finally tried it and she cannot imagine living
| without one now. She fought me on Netflix as cable
| already had so many channels she didn't need anything
| more (same results once she tried it:) . I fought my best
| friend on vr for 2 years until he practically locked me
| in his basement and stuck oculus on my head and now I
| feel stupid for not trying sabre beat or boxing apps
| sooner :).
|
| Not everything will work that way. But "I don't currently
| need" is not always a good / sufficient dismissal of
| something new.
|
| To the original point - I do not have crypto tiktok
| discord tor snapchat etc... And may indeed be considered
| illiterate to some, even though I too have been on them
| intertubes for 3 decades and make my living in IT:). It
| was a point of pride for people I knew in 90s and 2000s
| to not have tried interwebs.
|
| (I've tried chatgpt though and find it massively useful
| for learning!)
| iso1631 wrote:
| > I bet most internet users have never tried VR, crypto
| currencies or ChatGPT yet.
|
| I tried VRML when it first came on. Has state of the art
| moved on since then?
| timeon wrote:
| > new kids are born in countries were internet is not
| widespread yet
|
| Even if internet is widespread. Consuming apps does not
| count as literate.
| simonsarris wrote:
| If you use Substack and don't like this behavior you can turn it
| off, go to settings and look for "Subscribe prompts on post
| pages" and uncheck it.
|
| I love Substack but think this feature is ill-considered. I am
| sure it converts by the numbers, but I want 100% of my readers to
| have a pristine experience _reading,_ foremost.
| ryanblakeley wrote:
| I was hoping this would turn off the full page modal people see
| when they land on a post, but I already had it switched off, so
| I guess not.
| ale42 wrote:
| Never seen such popups... but that's probably because I close
| tabs using Ctrl+W...
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| Despite this topic being brought up regularly, these pop-up forms
| do work. That's why everyone uses them.
|
| Disclaimer: I use them and so do many of my competitors.
|
| "Does a poor job of increasing conversions" is the opinion of
| someone that has never looked at the data. You can be sure that
| the people interested in conversions run analytics and A/B
| testing on everything. If these pop-ups did a poor job and there
| was a better alternative, you can be sure that everyone would
| have already migrated to that alternative.
|
| The "rule of seven" can also be used to counter her argument.
| That is precisely why businesses try to get the email of
| visitors: to have more interactions. Otherwise, for the vast
| majority of visitors, the first visit would be the only
| interaction they will ever have.
|
| "Works against user goals" might be true for short term goals
| like jumping through the most amount of content. However, users
| have different goals and short-term ones are often not the best
| goals. A pop-up might address other long-term goals the visitor
| cares more about than going to yet another web page.
|
| But more than anything, these pop-ups serve business goals
| because most of these websites exist only thanks to their
| revenue. Without them my business would probably not be viable. I
| assume that many accept the small annoyance of a pop-up as the
| cost of keeping the websites they like running. And if the pop-up
| appears when the user is about to close the window, it does not
| even stop a visitor in his tracks. He can still close the window
| without any extra click.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| > You can be sure that the people interested in conversions run
| analytics and A/B testing on everything. If these pop-ups did a
| poor job and there was a better alternative, you can be sure
| that everyone would have already migrated to that alternative.
|
| And this is the problem with modern corporate logos. They think
| if the A/B numbers are trending up, it must always be a good
| thing. Nobody does real UX testing like Microsoft, Amazon,
| Apple, etc used to do. You know where they actually track down
| a non-technical person, sit them down in front of a computer,
| open up the website/app, see what the user does, then ask about
| how the experience was. _This_ is UX testing and will lead to
| meaningful impacts. A /B tests are inane methodologies that are
| formatted to confirm whatever preconceived notions upper
| management wanted to hear anyways.
|
| A more concrete piece of anecdata; my upper management told me
| they wanted us to boost the priority for sales eligible
| customers. I asked if this means we would prioritize people not
| paying for our service (since they're eligible for sales) and
| de-prioritize our already paying customers (who are not
| eligible). Upper management basically said, "yup that will
| happen. But it will increase our conversion rates which is what
| we care about". News flash, ruining your company's reputation
| for some shitty KPIs will damage your company in the long term.
|
| Prioritizing shitty A/B tests will eventually ruin your
| company. It may not be immediate, but the slow and inevitable
| degradation of a useful product will lead to utter contempt and
| disdain from your users and they will switch to an alternative
| that actually prioritizes UX. See: Medium -> Substack,
| Microsoft -> Apple, and more I can't think of off the top of my
| head. We forget that the reason the iPhone was so wildly
| successful was because Steve Jobs was obsessed with creating a
| meticulously crafted UX. We forget that Nintentdo shenanigans
| are tolerated only because the games are lovingly crafted and
| built by people that care about their target audience. We
| forget that Amazon took off because of Customer Obsession,
| among other admirable qualities (that unfortunately aren't
| followed as well anymore). Keep treating your users as dumb
| cattle and they'll wise up and leave. The users aren't stupid,
| they're just waiting for a viable alternative so they can
| finally dump the shitty product built by companies prioritizing
| all the wrong metrics.
| tootie wrote:
| You're wrong though. Moderated and unmoderated user testing
| is more prevalent than ever.
| qwertox wrote:
| Do you know the ratio of your annoyed vs. subscribed-via-that-
| popup users?
|
| I get terribly annoyed by them and always wonder why they don't
| just add a section to the page where one can easily subscribe,
| if one seems it to be a worthy thing to do?
|
| Edit: Also, I want to add, that sometimes I leave the page
| immediately _because_ such a popup pops up. The cookie banners
| are annoying enough.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Measuring a conversion increase means that there was a net
| positive.
|
| I know it's not a popular opinion on HN, but losing some
| annoyed users is an acceptable trade off if the net result is
| an increase in conversions.
|
| The truth is that visitors who are so easily annoyed that a
| simple pop-up will cause them to leave the site weren't very
| interested to begin with. If you gain 10 subscribers for
| every 1 annoyed visitor, it's still a big net win.
|
| Most visitors aren't as sensitive to annoyances as a lot of
| the people in these comments.
| Abimelex wrote:
| > The truth is that visitors who are so easily annoyed that
| a simple pop-up will cause them to leave the site weren't
| very interested to begin with.
|
| I don't agree here, maybe your service or newsletter is
| absolutely great for me as potential customer, but I close
| pages with newsletter popups instantly. Not because I'm
| annoyed, but to make a point. I guess a lot of services
| might have me lost because of this. You block yourself of
| getting even data from a user who's just a little privacy
| concerned.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| Actively disqualifying people that are not a good fit is a
| vital part of any business. The people that get easily
| annoyed are going to be a huge pain at every step, while
| the real customers buy silently.
|
| Also, when people have a true need, the pop-up is not an
| annoyance. I do agree that "subscribe to our newsletter" is
| not a great pitch, but it's a problem of content, not of
| method. If you get a pop-up on a website offering you a
| solution of a pressing problem you have, that pop-up is not
| an annoyance, but an opportunity.
|
| And finally, even if one would be interested in measuring
| how many of these annoyed visitors there are, that's not
| really something you can measure. Conversions, instead, are
| a concrete metric.
| lolinder wrote:
| > If you get a pop-up on a website offering you a
| solution of a pressing problem you have, that pop-up is
| not an annoyance, but an opportunity.
|
| I'm curious if you have an example of what this looks
| like done well. I have never personally seen a pop-up
| that I viewed as anything other than an annoyance, but I
| freely admit that I'm not a typical user (to the extent
| such a person exists). What kinds of great opportunities
| do typical users find in their pop-ups?
| edanm wrote:
| If I'm on Substack and am reading a genuinely interesting
| article, and half-way or something through I get a popup
| asking if I want to sign up for that person's newsletter,
| I might do it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The truth is that visitors who are so easily annoyed that
| a simple pop-up will cause them to leave the site weren't
| very interested to begin with.
|
| how do you know this? They chase me away even if I was very
| interested in whatever the page was talking about.
|
| Yes, a simple pop-up only a minor annoyance -- until most
| sites do it, then it becomes a really huge deal, like a
| tiny pebble in your shoe on a long walk.
| qwertox wrote:
| > Most visitors aren't as sensitive to annoyances as a lot
| of the people in these comments.
|
| Why on earth should I want to subscribe to a newsletter
| from a site I've never visited before, which I'm visiting
| for the first time in my life because an article from it
| trended on HN?
|
| I know nothing about the quality of the site, neither about
| the type of regular content of the site. I don't even know
| if I'm going to find it useful what I'm about to read.
|
| Imagine entering a store and the first thing they do is ask
| you if you want to give them your phone number so the can
| keep you informed.
|
| How can you call this sensitive if you view if from this
| perspective?
| mikro2nd wrote:
| But do you know this? What does it look like if you're
| losing 10 annoyed visitors for every 1 signup?
| tootie wrote:
| 10,000 annoyed users who never would have given us a penny of
| value is worth the same as 10,000 happy users that never give
| us a penny of value.
| Timwi wrote:
| > Despite this topic being brought up regularly, these pop-up
| forms do work. That's why everyone uses them.
|
| I think most people here know that. I was surprised by the
| author's claim that they "do a poor job of increasing
| conversions".
|
| The real criticism is not that they don't work. The real
| criticism is that "conversions" shouldn't be the metric, and a
| web designer who prioritizes that metric over any semblance of
| a welcoming or pleasant experience, is scummy and is treating
| their users as disposable garbage.
|
| It's similar to how we all hate sleazy politicians. We want
| them to serve us, the people. Instead, they serve their own
| interests (at best, getting reelected; at worst, helping the
| massive corporations they invest in). Why do they do it?
| Because it "works".
|
| Everybody knows that it "works" according to a metric that is
| not aligned with the common good. The criticism is that you
| should prioritize the common good.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| The problem is people take this perfectly legitimate bit of
| reasoning and apply it to the point the site ends up like your
| average British local news website; there's a good reason
| nobody bothers with local news in the internet era and not
| because it's unimportant it's partially because most of the
| sites are literally unusable. Not even in a 'I find the
| tendency of capitalism to turn everything into a glorified
| billboard depressing' sense that's a common opinion online, I
| mean that in a 'I've closed three nag boxes and I still can't
| see the content I came to read' sense.
| tipiirai wrote:
| With this analogy everyone should use popups. But why all the
| big respectable brands, like Apple, Stripe are not using them?
| Maybe they care about UX?
| rchaud wrote:
| Are you really wondering why multi-channel, billion-dollar
| companies like Apple and Stripe don't have to use the same
| lead generation method as a rinky-dink online blog?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > if the pop-up appears when the user is about to close the
| window, it does not even stop a visitor in his tracks. He can
| still close the window without any extra click.
|
| That's a much better way of doing it. If sites did that, I
| probably wouldn't put them on my "never go back to that site"
| list.
|
| But most sites don't do it that way.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Part of the problem is that relatively few people have a
| "never go back to that site" list to begin with, so it
| doesn't even move their numbers.
| outime wrote:
| >Despite this topic being brought up regularly, these pop-up
| forms do work. That's why everyone uses them.
|
| Unfortunately a good part of HN is quite blind when it comes to
| facts about things that aren't of the liking of the community.
|
| Some people seem to not be able to understand why K8s is widely
| used and not <whatever>, why the majority uses WhatsApp and not
| Signal or why the majority uses Twitter and not the <open
| source alternative of the year>. A not irrelevant amount of HN
| users will think, and many times literally say, that all these
| people are stupid and cannot understand how things _really_
| work.
|
| In reality, everything happens for reasons. Sure, some people
| will just blindly follow trends but when you see most of the
| big websites that have plenty of money to do studies to find
| out if it works continue to do it, perhaps it means it's
| working for them? I hate those popups like most end-users but
| at the end of the day I'd never think most of the website
| owners who do this are dumb and do it to harm themselves but
| rather I tend to think they have hard data that shows this
| actually works pretty well.
|
| I wish the community would realize how arrogant those "I don't
| have data on this / I don't understand why this is done
| therefore people who do this are just stupid" positions are.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > "Does a poor job of increasing conversions" is the opinion of
| someone that has never looked at the data.
|
| The data is biased. The visitors signing up for newsletters are
| probably way more interested on average.
|
| Also, of there is an A\B test the ones that does not sign up
| are harder to track.
|
| The sign up could probably just aswell be replaced by a big
| "click this happy emoji if you like my site"-button and
| marketers would argue the button increases conversion rates.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| We went from new page popups to these modal popups. Web has come
| a long way in 20 years.
| naruhodo wrote:
| Speaking of horrible web design, care to add a bit of contrast to
| your grey text on off-white page?
| Decabytes wrote:
| As someone who runs a news letter take my opinion with a grain of
| salt. The reality is that the marketing tricks work. The stupid
| thumbnails, the pop up windows, and the call to actions. They
| have been demonstrated over and over again to increase growth.
|
| It sucks that it's the case, but the internet is not the same
| internet of 15-20 years ago. We are in the attention economy now,
| and since most users expect things to be free, we have to worry
| about things like tops of funnels, SEO, evergreen content, and
| virality. The things that people have to say and do to stand
| above the crowd are ridiculous. And it's not just newsletters,
| look at the guy who made the AI Drake/Weeknd song, look at Andy
| Kelly's post^1 Why I'm donating $150/month (10% of my income) to
| the musl libc project, look at all the current advice for how to
| become a new published author. How you market plays a huge role
| in your success, and merit alone won't cut it unless your program
| or content is just that good.
|
| I write my newsletter because I'm excited to contribute to a
| space that has provided so much for me, both financially and
| intellectually. I'm eternally grateful for the opportunities tech
| has given me and every post I make is sharing that gratitude. But
| I also want my posts to be heard by more than just myself, so
| I've got to market it, even if I'm getting no financial gain from
| the newsletter. The tools and techniques people will choose to
| employ to get seen and heard vary, and each content creator must
| decided where they draw the line. Maybe it's my ego that demands
| I have more than a dozen eyeballs viewing my posts every week, or
| a corruption in my soul from decades of internet consumption. But
| I genuinely believe in the content I post, and I want to find the
| largest community of people who will enjoy it too.
|
| 1. https://andrewkelley.me/post/why-donating-to-musl-libc-
| proje...
| fwungy wrote:
| I hired a small business web consultant.
|
| His big advice was to build content with the intent of getting
| email addresses. The email address is the gateway to the real
| sales avenue.
|
| Everyone uses this pattern. You see it everywhere.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Is there a firefox extension to just suppress sending mouse-out
| events?
| idopmstuff wrote:
| "If "the rule of seven" -- that a customer needs to interact
| seven times before buying -- is marketing 101, why does the site
| demand a newsletter conversion before a new user has even
| finished reading one article?"
|
| This seems to really misunderstand things - if the customer has
| hit your website because they came to one of your SEO-optimized
| blog articles, there is a very solid chance they're not going to
| stumble upon your site again. The point of the newsletter
| conversion is to give you a chance to get those seven
| interactions.
| datavirtue wrote:
| So the web is just a fancy email funnel?
| idopmstuff wrote:
| Well the email directs you back to the web, so I think for
| accuracy's sake you'd have to just describe it as a sales
| funnel.
| indymike wrote:
| One of the hardest problems in marketing is making the
| uninteresting interesting. So instead of solving the hard problem
| (being interesting), a lot of marketers focus on tactical stuff
| like increasing subscribes to the newsletter.
| mp3geek wrote:
| Subscrive to Fanboy Annoyances in brave://adblock or in uBO. No
| more newsletter popups :)
| rchaud wrote:
| > If "the rule of seven" -- that a customer needs to interact
| seven times before buying -- is marketing 101, why does the site
| demand a newsletter conversion before a new user has even
| finished reading one article?
|
| This has happened because Google, Facebook, Youtube and other
| walled gardens have locked up the online audience. If you clicked
| on a site, chances are you discovering it via one of the above.
| And chances are, you'll never see that site again if you close
| the tab. So that's the 'rule of 7' out the window right there.
|
| If the popup converts even one person, that's better than it not
| being there at all.
|
| _" Yeah, but it's so annoying, I'll never subscribe via these
| tactics!"_ Congratulations, you are part of the rare few that
| know how the sausage is made. You probably also know that these
| modals aren't there for UX designers to praise or Substack to
| quake in their boots. They're there to convert.
| Veen wrote:
| I wonder if the people who implement this stuff consciously
| balance "it works" with "this is shitty" and feel a twinge of
| guilt when they do it. Or are they just scumbags who don't know
| the difference between effective and good?
| rchaud wrote:
| I doubt it. These tools have paying customers. At least, I
| doubt if they care any more than the people that work on pre-
| roll ads on Youtube, or Sponsored posts on Instagram.
| meerita wrote:
| It's been years I don't read emails that aren't job specific or
| have more than 10 lines of text. In fact, the email communication
| within my job is all reduced to notifications more than work,
| everything is handled on Slack.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I just put in somerandomname@<the_article_domain.tld> in the
| field.
|
| Or admin@, info@, postmaster@, or something like that.
|
| Hopefully it remembers "me" and doesn't bother me again.
| [deleted]
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I wonder if a browser plugin could be made to do this
| automatically. Not just hide the popup, but spam it with fake
| info in the background.
| pcorsaro wrote:
| There are some sites that I am actually signed up for their
| newsletter, I'll click a link in the newsletter to read the
| article on the site, and then I still get a popup on the site to
| signup for the newsletter. Most newsletter links have referral
| URL parameters. I don't know why they can't detect that I came
| from a newsletter click and just not show me the popup. I
| understand it could be "abused" or if the link was forwarded from
| someone you might want to try and capture new subscribers, but I
| feel like that's a small enough percentage that it would be
| better to make the experience less annoying for your regulars.
| louwhopley wrote:
| Out of interest, what are the typical conversion rates people see
| on this? What % of users actually sign up?
| mmvora wrote:
| The best part is after when the site tells you to "Enter your
| email" to Unsubscribe
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Or when you think you've unsubscribed, multiple times, only to
| see there's a "Preferences" link on their unsubscribe page,
| where you find out you've unsubscribed from 3 of the 48
| categories of newsletters they send.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Hey, as long as e-commerce stores keep giving me 10% off my first
| order, which I was going to place anyway, then I'll keep
| subscribing (and then unsubscribing) from their shitty
| newsletter.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| No, I don't want to read your thinner-than-hair-almost white-on-
| white text.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Yup, this is ridiculous - https://i.ibb.co/P58w9WT/Image7.png
| cabirum wrote:
| Everyone does it because everyone else does it. And since
| everyone does it, it does not hurt metrics. And seems like noone
| had the guts to be the first to stop this nonsense. (also applies
| to layoffs?)
| datavirtue wrote:
| Plenty of companies happily avoid layoffs...just not
| newsworthy.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| > Does a poor job of increasing conversions
|
| You say that but there is some asshole driving around in a
| Porsche 911 because it works.
|
| Why else would they do it?
| boplicity wrote:
| All of these complaints boil down to people wanting something for
| free, without any inconvenience at all, even something as minor
| as clicking an extra button.
|
| Unfortunately, most websites require an actual business model to
| consistently produce content. Business models usually need a form
| of lead gathering, or audience building. (Which is, frankly, core
| to most businesses.)
|
| If you don't want to engage with businesses, then there are still
| endless hobby websites out there that do little other than
| produce content for free, without any popups, ads, upsells, etc.
| jmbwell wrote:
| I think the author of the article and many commenters here are
| saying they are more than happy to take their eyeballs to web
| sites that express a different worldview, or at least a
| different attitude toward users.
| nicbou wrote:
| This is a common trope on Hacker News. Nothing is ever free
| enough, and no one is ever satisfied.
|
| As many people pointed out, if you don't fall into the sales
| funnel, the business does not care about you anyway.
|
| Still, I wish that browsing the internet didn't feel like being
| a tourist in a bazaar.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > Unfortunately, most websites require an actual business model
| to consistently produce content. Business models usually need a
| form of lead gathering, or audience building. (Which is,
| frankly, core to most businesses.)
|
| So why should I pay to support their unsustainable project?
| b3lvedere wrote:
| I will consume (information) how i see fit. Not how other
| people/companies think i should consume.
|
| If they have a problem with that, it is totally in their legal
| right to try and do something about it.
|
| Just as it is still totally in my legal right to consume
| (information) how i see fit. This may or may not involve legal
| workarounds.
|
| I do not care if their business/earning model is not compatible
| with my method of consuming (information).
| wffurr wrote:
| Why not let me read first and then prompt? "Want more like
| this? Enter your email to subscribe."
|
| You could probably get much higher conversion and lower
| unsubscribe rates by only going after readers who stuck around
| a bit.
| Jaygles wrote:
| If businesses want money for their content, then they should
| ask for money BEFORE they send it to whoever asks. Pestering
| someone after they send the article feels so scummy.
|
| There's a group of guys near where I live who stand around and
| hand CDs to tourists, and after a minute of chatting, start
| asking for "donations". It's the same vibe. Giving something of
| value to someone then using that to set the expectation that
| they should give something of value back. If you give something
| away, in my opinion, the transaction is complete. Trying to use
| that to get something in return is manipulative.
| asgerhb wrote:
| This is only applicable if these businesses spend $0 on SEO. If
| they want to clog up the top results, then I reserve the right
| to complain about them.
| boplicity wrote:
| Google could very easily populate search results with mainly
| non-commercial websites. However, they are very strongly
| incentivized to support commercial websites; I believe this
| explains why they don't generally penalize popups and similar
| things.
| Karellen wrote:
| I'm a fan of LWN.net's[0] business model. (Enough that it's the
| only news source I actually subscribe to).
|
| Links to external news articles are free for anyone to read,
| and for all account owners (paid or not) to comment on.
|
| Featured articles by LWN's paid contributors are available for
| paid subscribers to read and comment on immediately, and for
| everyone else to read and for unpaid account owners to comment
| on between 7-14 days after first publication.[1] If you want to
| check out their past article quality, or just read interesting
| previous articles, you don't even need an account.
|
| No pop-ups. No generic nag screens. If you're not a paid
| subscriber and you go to view an article you can't view yet, it
| tells you it's currently for subscribers only and how to get a
| subscription if you want one, but also tells you the date that
| the article will become free to read without a subscription.
|
| Yes, I lurked for a few years before I became a paid member.
| Because I was able to read everything for free, the site built
| its reputation for me to the point where I was happy to
| subscribe to get those featured articles just a bit sooner.
| (And be able to participate in the comments in a timely
| fashion.)
|
| [0] https://lwn.net/
|
| [1] It's a bit complicated. Featured articles from throughout
| the week are collected every Thursday into the "Weekly
| Edition", and the Thursday after that that Weekly edition and
| all its articles are available for free.
| Tepix wrote:
| The web has become quite unusable over the years with all the
| popups.
|
| Perhaps we need a browser that uses AI to block all the annoying
| page elements?
|
| Or we use crowd intelligence to achieve the task. If enough users
| flag the page elements that popup, and this data is shared, many
| could profit from a better experience.
| asgerhb wrote:
| Some ad-blockers already provide optional block-rules for
| "annoyance" elements. Unfortunately, they are less well
| supported. I used them for a while with AdNauseam until it ate
| some important UI element or other.
| figassis wrote:
| Is it a good idea to build an newsletter subscription service
| (like mailchimp) that works like apple email relay, where the
| customers don't have access to the actual emails? The difference
| would be on trust that the provider will not use the emails for
| it's own purposes other than what the newsletter owner agreed too
| in a contractually binding manner that survives acquisitions. Now
| the newsletter owns the relationship, and the readers are assured
| that they're not handing over their email and can easily
| unsubscribe.
| iso1631 wrote:
| As the viewer if I wanted to sign up to your email then I'd be
| using a unique email address (like icloud I guess) which I
| could simply block when you inevitably leak my personal data
| figassis wrote:
| Still is there value? whether you submit a unique email
| address, this model would still work for the millions of
| users who do not correct? Also, I assume icloud or similar
| services are not immune to leaks?
| [deleted]
| punnerud wrote:
| I have a list of newsletters it's almost impossible to disable.
| Every time I find a new one, I sign them up for each other.
|
| Most of them is the type: "No, I did not sign up for this"
| egypturnash wrote:
| I wonder how many of these popups result in newsletter
| subscriptions that quickly get marked as spam because nobody
| remembers subscribing to them and hitting the spam button is
| easier than finding the tiny unsubscribe link in the footer that
| may not actually do anything.
|
| Also, calling for an extra-light font with pale grey type is
| _super_ illegible, damn.
| barbs wrote:
| About time I saw an article about this on HN. Honestly one of the
| worst design patterns since the original popups. I can't believe
| it works, but it obviously must do, otherwise it wouldn't be so
| prevalent.
|
| Is there a plugin of sorts that turns these off?
| rchaud wrote:
| NoScript
| VinzO wrote:
| Ironically, the trend of having page design with low contrast
| text as in this article is almost as annoying as the newsletter
| stuff.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Immediately noticed the irony as well. Abysmal contrast on the
| text, also on the Resume page.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| It also seems to be full of nbsp characters*, which create
| random extra space between some words.
|
| * I'm not certain because I'm on mobile now and cannot easily
| check the source.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I just checked the source and it's not that. It's not a bad
| decision with regards to text justification as far as I can
| see, either. Might just be some broken kerning in the font
| it's serving up, this page is a dense thicket of machine-
| generated markup and I really do not want to investigate any
| further:
|
| <p id="viewer-9ptf9" class="mm8Nw _1j-51 WkT0MK _1FoOD _3M0Fe
| T3Ond1 WkT0MK public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 fixed-
| tab-size public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr">
|
| <span class="_2PHJq public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr">
|
| <span>When a user moves their mouse from the middle of the
| page toward the navigation bar -- presumably to abandon the
| page -- there are technologies which can track this behavior
| and trigger a "mouse-out" alert. While this UX element (from
| companies such as Crazy Egg and Rooster) has great potential,
| I've found it far too common that websites use this to
| overlay huge pop-ups across the entire screen as a last-ditch
| effort to convert users.</span>
|
| </span>
|
| </p>
|
| what _is_ this garbage, why does a paragraph need its text
| inside a span inside _another_ span, what generated this
| trash?
|
| <meta name="generator" content="Wix.com Website Builder"/>
|
| ah, gotcha
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| You'll see that type of output from most WYSYWIG editors.
| Some are better than others and they've improved over time,
| but a lot are still garbage. Both Redactor and TinyMCE
| would have produced something like this at points in the
| past (been a while since I used them, so that may not be
| the case now). Pasting from MS Word will also produce some
| gnarly HTML in most editors.
| [deleted]
| Hitton wrote:
| It's actually random double spaces scattered in the text and
| "white-space: pre-wrap" CSS property.
| magios wrote:
| this is why I have downloadable or website fonts disabled and
| in browser, use a singular monospace bitmap font, unifont, and
| across the entire system. you can do this with your preferred
| font. also eliminates any risk of security due to font parsing
| issues.
| egypturnash wrote:
| font-family: worksans- _extralight_
|
| color: rgb(41, 26,16) - osx's Digital Color Meter tells me the
| chip of this is #281A11
|
| fuckin' illegible unless I hit command-+ like 3x, or activate
| reader mode
| Springtime wrote:
| It's borderline unreadable (literally) on my Chromium browser:
| https://i.imgur.com/Y5QmTDn.png
|
| Some designers miss on the readability front when it comes to
| weight (ie: textual color) for body text. Most sibling replies
| talk about background/foreground contrast but something doesn't
| need to be stark in that regard to be more easily read (which
| also affects whether people will continue reading something in
| the first place).
|
| I brought this up years ago but there's a mid-century type
| design book that mentions a trend in the late 1800s of
| typefaces in print that were too thin, leading to complaints
| about readability. However it was in vogue so it lasted for a
| time.
| libjohn wrote:
| I personally find the opposite and love low contrast colour
| schemes. High contrast (e.g. pure black on white) is much
| harder to read for me. Apparently this is common in dyslexic
| people. I guess everyone is different.
| eviks wrote:
| Are you aware of a contrast number above which it becomes
| uncomfortable?
| thfuran wrote:
| As in this low contrast or just not maximal contrast?
| prxtl wrote:
| Extra painful given that the person is a UX researcher.
| daydream wrote:
| In addition the page is doing something funny with links that
| defeats the peek behavior on iOS. I'm not sure what.
| aimor wrote:
| After reading this comment I double-checked the website and,
| sure enough, there was five paragraphs of text I completely
| missed. My lizard brain saw the picture and format, interpreted
| it as a Tweet (I thought the title + picture was the content),
| and I completely dismissed the small grey text as something
| unimportant.
| dawidpotocki wrote:
| It's really hard for me to take UX people seriously that
| believe that such text style is okay. My eyesight is good but
| my eyes still get tired reading such thin font, even the "bold"
| text is too thin. I shouldn't have to turn on Reader Mode to be
| able to read your website.
|
| Don't touch my browser font, font size (no arbitrary px, use
| rem/em with main text at least 1rem) and font weight. How hard
| is this?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| It's definitely a personal preference though. I find super high
| contrast very harsh part 2 certain point.that being said,for
| linked website and with very low contrast colour they used, I
| sure wish they opted for a heavier font.
| [deleted]
| masswerk wrote:
| I guess, there's still a use case for modal pop-ups, since they
| provide an ideal break point for considering, whether the piece
| in question is worthwhile your time or not. So, you may simply
| leave instead of bothering to operate the button...
|
| In UX terms, there may be room for improvement with the wording,
| like, "Are you sure you want to read this till the end?" ;-)
| izzydata wrote:
| Just a few days ago I was reading an article from some tech site
| complaining about ads in Windows and the first thing upon opening
| the side is a popup ad for a newsletter. Do they not see the
| irony there or is the whole industry on autopilot?
|
| https://i.imgur.com/KOU98Bw.png
| hoseja wrote:
| Ctrl+W is a great shortcut, I have it mapped on the extra button
| on my mouse, along with Ctrl+Tab and F5
| nicbou wrote:
| I asked why newsletters are pushed so heavily:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32304011
|
| The main reason is that it's the only traffic that you own. It's
| not at the mercy of someone else's algorithm.
|
| There are more answers in the thread I linked.
| ffpip wrote:
| > The main reason is that it's the only traffic that you own.
| It's not at the mercy of someone else's algorithm.
|
| You are at the mercy of Gmail/Outlook's spam filtering
| algorithms
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of fairly low quality (but at least semi-legit)
| newsletters that I probably didn't explicitly sign up for end
| up in my Gmail SPAM folder--probably because enough people
| have flagged them as SPAM. But I actually find it pretty
| uncommon for a newsletter I directly signed up for to end up
| there.
| sharemywin wrote:
| especially if you mark it not spam when you sign up
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Not really, not if you pay your protection money to one of
| the email sending services.
| arvidkahl wrote:
| This becomes a question of orders of magnitude.
|
| On Twitter/Instagram/whatever, you're exposed to the
| arbitrary censorship choices of the platform AND the risk of
| being deplatformed for any reason. Once that happens, you
| don't just lose deliverability, you lose every single
| relationship you had.
|
| With an email list, at least you retain the list should your
| deliverability tank. It might take a lot of work to migrate
| to a new non-deny-listed setup, but at least you have a
| (hopefully double-)opted-in relationship with each prior
| reader still.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| This happens in brick-and-mortar too. It has become difficult to
| buy something in person without being asked to sign up for a
| frequent shopper program -- sometimes very forcefully.
|
| Apparently retailers despise the fact that some customers prefer
| to buy things anonymously without being spammed or having their
| privacy invaded. I predict B&M stores will soon begin to block
| you at the front door until you give them your email address.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| A few brick and mortar store retailers around South Africa have
| started asking "May/can I have your cellphone number?" when I'm
| making a purchase to which I respond with either "You don't
| need that." or simply "Nope.".
|
| When asked why, conversation typically goes like:
|
| Me: "I don't want my phone being sent SMSes or phone calls from
| your company or anyone they would share my number with."
|
| Them: "Oh, don't worry, that won't happen from us."
|
| Me: "Well it absolutely won't happen if you don't have my
| number.".
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "No" is a complete sentence. You don't have to justify it,
| especially to someone who may be paid to not see the
| reasonableness of your logic.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| While I'm entitled to take that stance, I opt to be less
| confrontational since the person I'm talking to is just
| doing their job in the manner mandated by their corporate
| head office. I've never had to explain more than that and
| in the unlikely event they insisted, I'd politely ask to
| talk to the store manager about it.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| "No" is not confrontational. It's simply an answer to
| their quesion.
| nicbou wrote:
| If it's impolite to decline, it's impolite to ask.
| Karellen wrote:
| I tend to go with "No, thank you, I'm fine."
|
| It kind of re-frames their request as if they were offering
| to do me a favour, which I then politely indicated I don't
| even need. I've found that it either cuts off most of the
| counter-arguments that the person asking was about to retort
| with, or it just throws them off-balance for long enough that
| the interaction moves on, enough that I don't get a lot of
| push back after using it.
| yawnr wrote:
| I literally couldn't buy something the other day without giving
| an email because "oh we're paperless!" Was the response I got
| when I asked for a paper receipt instead.
|
| Of course, 10 seconds later I got a "welcome to the family!"
| email.
|
| Should be illegal.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Should be illegal.
|
| Hum... Isn't that one of the main goals of the GDPR?
| ricardo81 wrote:
| I often wonder how many human hours/days/weeks/years are lost on
| these cookie & newsletter modals. Too many. There should be some
| sort of standardised comms with the browser to say what the
| browser would accept, probably via HTTP headers in case JS is
| disabled - and then the site can deal with this if they take
| exception to the browser's defaults.
| _dain_ wrote:
| It would end up like the do-not-track header -- brazenly
| ignored.
| timeon wrote:
| While I agree with you I must admit that it sometimes even save
| my time. When cookie/newsletter pop-up shows it breaks my
| procrastination habit. I ask my self in that moment if I really
| need to see that content. In most cases answer is no. So
| instead of closing the modal I just close whole tab.
| kylecordes wrote:
| I assume there are some conversion-optimization experts who think
| and consult data to choose the ideal timing and frequency to
| invite a visitor to sign up. I.e. the moment they are most likely
| to do so if invited.
|
| ... and the other 95% of folks who just grab an off-the-shelf
| email-list-invite popover widget and slap it on a web site.
| thathndude wrote:
| Can't upvote this submission, and the spirit of the post, enough.
| These drive me absolutely crazy. The decentralized news/opinion
| revolution is probably a net positive. But this, specific,
| behavior related to it, drives me nuts.
| hestefisk wrote:
| Agree. Who ever invented it deserves to have their mouth washed
| with brown soap.
| politelemon wrote:
| Is brown soap an expression or euphemism for poop?
| qwery wrote:
| Having your mouth washed out with soap is a "traditional"
| punishment, usually inflicted on those that have committed
| a mouth-related offence like swearing (if you can believe
| it) or smoking. It's now mostly a figure a speech. The
| brown soap is a less desirable bar of soap to have forcibly
| inserted into your mouth.
| PcChip wrote:
| I think their question was why is it less desirable
| arbitrage wrote:
| Allegorically it's a cheap bar of soap that tastes worse
| than a more expensive bar of soap that is dyed to not be
| an ugly colour.
| svachalek wrote:
| "I told you not to use the Lifebuoy!"
| Symbiote wrote:
| I think it's soap with extra lye. It's more for cleaning
| floors than bodies.
|
| https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brun_s%C3%A6be
| Symbiote wrote:
| I think it might be a Danish expression.
|
| Brown soap is a strong soap containing lye, more likely
| sold near the things for cleaning floors and surfaces than
| your body.
|
| https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brun_s%C3%A6be
| a_lesanka wrote:
| could you please give an example of "light design patterns" in
| such case? I've caught the thought: there are no magic bullets.
| And still.. what can at least softly help me to increase
| newsletter conversions?
| BigCryo wrote:
| Well you're going to get it anyway
| vermooten wrote:
| Hard-to-read grey fine type also acts against user goals. Is it
| still 2010?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| 2018.
| Tepix wrote:
| It has only gotten worse.
| poopsmithe wrote:
| modal popups
|
| * obscure everything behind it * distract the viewer * require
| dismissal to proceed
|
| I think modal popups for any reason is bad. It's always better to
| use a new page which can be deep linked and avoided if it
| contains content irrelevant to the viewer's interests.
| CPLX wrote:
| What I don't understand is why you can't just put a nice big (or
| small) square or element or CTA on the page prominently that asks
| people to sign up for the newsletter.
|
| Like, it's fine, go ahead, ask me. Make it obtrusive. Hell you
| can make it blink. But why can't I look at it and just scroll by
| it. Just like put it on the fucking page it's not hard.
| cubefox wrote:
| I think they actually did that in the past. Apparently it
| didn't work as well.
| aembleton wrote:
| > Hell you can make it blink.
|
| No thanks
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Preferably at the end of the article because if you've made it
| that far...
|
| Unfortunately I'd never see it because I almost always clicked
| off the site if reader mode doesn't work unless it's something
| I'm _really_ interested in. Can almost watch the battery drain
| with all the auto-play videos and animated ads they pack into
| websites these days.
| ninkendo wrote:
| Yup, reader mode is the only way the web is tolerable any
| more. It's truly sad.
| asgerhb wrote:
| This stuff has forced me to read every article in Firefox' reader
| mode. I am forced to tolerate missing figures and bongled
| formatting (from bad internal markup) because I cannot read an
| article if at any moment I might be hit with a newsletter-
| jumpscare.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Personally if I want a "newsletter" I'll look for an RSS feed to
| depolute my email inbox.
|
| Sadly they're not really fashionable there days :(
|
| At least I can subscribe and unsubscribe at my convenience
| without requiring the sender to take any actions (removing from
| mailing list).
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah, this is odd. Getting added to someone's RSS feed sounds
| like a marketing wet dream.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I gave up on RSS a long time ago. It's ironic how people
| think it's great to send full articles through email, but
| only want to push short (some times even misleading)
| summaries through RSS.
|
| Yes, RSS should be even better than email for the marketing
| people.
| 93po wrote:
| I recommend enabling the annoyances filters on uBlock Origin. It
| removes most of this bs
| muyuu wrote:
| install-my-app nagboxes are typically worse and more persistent
| skilled wrote:
| The crazy thing about this whole newsletter and popup thing in
| general is that, why in the hell would I give out my email
| address or anything else 1 second after entering a website? How
| and where exactly is the connection there that makes sense?
|
| I actually sent a strongly worded email to MIT Tech Review
| yesterday (there was an article on the front page) because they
| have 3 separate popups on first-entry to the site. Like, wtf?
| Have you not heard of timed popups (such as those that trigger
| past a certain element), or popups that don't make you want to
| immediately close the site?
|
| It's so pathetic and such a 2005 trend, it's hard to believe
| people still do it in the most annoying way possible.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Have you not heard of timed popups (such as those that
| trigger past a certain element)
|
| In the sites I interact with, that is probably the majority of
| these popups. You find them preferable?
|
| I find them just as annoying and counter-productive as OP is
| describing.
|
| For one thing, when your heuristics say I'm getting interested,
| that's when you decide to interrupt my attention? It's like
| they've intentionally decided to algorithmically make this as
| annoying as possible, when is the time we can interrupt the
| reader as annoyingly as we can?
|
| And as you say, even if I've read 35% of an article or
| something, it may still be the first time I'm interacting with
| a site, and why do I want to give them my email address?
| auggierose wrote:
| You could make the argument that if you read the content for
| free, but cannot even be bothered to be asked for your email
| (you don't have to provide it!), then there is probably not
| much lost either for the site or for you if you never visit
| the site again.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| that hypothetic argument depends on the ridiculous
| assumption that if a user won't convert within a minute or
| so, in the middle of the first piece of your content
| they've ever read, they never will
| auggierose wrote:
| Well, I would put the pop-up more towards the end of the
| content.
|
| Also, you misrepresent the assumption. The assumption is
| that if the user is so annoyed even by just the attempt
| of conversion that they leave the site, that then you
| will have a hard time to ever convert them.
|
| That assumption doesn't sound ridiculous at all to me.
| Also, it doesn't need to be true 100% of the time. Even
| 50% is probably enough to justify it, because if you
| don't attempt to convert, you will not convert for sure.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| it indeed sounds ridiculous to expect them to provide
| their personal information to you the first time they
| ever see any of your content, even if it's _almost 1
| whole piece of content_
|
| 1 webpage view is rarely worth a piece of personal
| information as intimate as an email address, so you could
| either focus on demanding something less demanding, or
| making that 1 webpage view into multiple
| auggierose wrote:
| Or just make good content, and let people filter
| themselves out, if they are not interested. If my content
| is not worth your email, you don't have to give it. If
| you furthermore don't deem my content worth the small
| annoyance of being asked for your email, fine! Bye bye.
|
| The alternative is that I have to track you somehow, and
| determine how often you visited my content. I wouldn't
| like that. It is more complicated, it is creepier, and I
| very much doubt that it would convert better.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| or just focus on demanding something less demanding, or
| making that 1 webpage view into multiple by making good
| content
|
| either way, you're in the minority in feeling that
| someone viewing <1 piece of your internet content
| entitles you to personal information about them as
| intimate as an email address, because it is a ridiculous
| expectation
| Timwi wrote:
| Your fixation on users as something that needs
| "converting", and your insistence that anyone who doesn't
| "convert" doesn't matter and is not worthy of any
| consideration... well, let's just say, it explains why so
| many websites are unusable.
|
| I want to visit websites that are made for human beings,
| not commodities.
| auggierose wrote:
| Me too! But human beings must eat. So, get rid of
| capitalism, or convert.
|
| Keep in mind that conversion here means to provide the
| author of the content, hopefully a human being, with an
| email, so that they can inform you of interesting new
| content. I cannot see anything inhumane in this.
| skilled wrote:
| Your argument is valid in the context of people who just
| don't have any idea about User Experience. A popup can be
| made very user-friendly and non-obstructive if you plan it
| that way. A small slide-out from bottom-right corner with
| soft colors (in my opinion) is a great way to let people know
| you have a newsletter.
| Timwi wrote:
| Absolutely not. A pop-up is, by definition, something that
| "pops up", which it does specifically to hijack attention,
| i.e., to be distracting and obnoxious.
|
| The best way to let me know that you have a newsletter is
| NO POP-UP. A pop-up immediately screams "this website is
| trying to hijack your attention, get out as fast as
| possible." The idea that I should want to stay on such a
| dystopian website, much less reward it with a newsletter
| subscription, is just so ludicrous it boggles the mind.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Sure, that's fine. I don't see those, I see popups that
| cover up the article I was trying to read, and I'm pretty
| sure this is quite intentional, someone designing it
| believes that will maximize "conversions". (I have no idea
| if they are correct about that or not, they may well be).
| tootie wrote:
| Think about it from the websites perspective. If you visit
| their website and leave without "converting" in any sense then
| why are they serving you? It's like do you get annoyed when
| servers leave a bill on your way out of the restaurant? Content
| sites are just trying to reacclimate people to recognizing that
| they just provided value. Ads are worth less than ever so they
| need to a relationship to milk. Emails are cheap.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| a better analogy might be a dude on a soapbox on a street
| corner demanding you give him your phone number because you
| heard his yelling:
|
| if your yelling is worth a subscribe, people will find a way
|
| focus on making the content that way, rather than feeling
| entitled to the personal info of everyone who heard your
| yelling
| tootie wrote:
| That's not a better analogy because the soapbox guy is
| essentially pushing spam. These popups are catching you
| leaving someplace you visited voluntarily. Like the retail
| people who stand by the door asking if you found everything
| you were looking for.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Content sites are just trying to reacclimate people to
| recognizing that they just provided value.
|
| By chasing them away?
| tootie wrote:
| By chasing away lookie-loos and building a platform for
| engaged users.
| tmaly wrote:
| It makes not sense to use popups. I think an inline form with a
| call to action is a better method.
|
| Does anyone test their websites anymore? Especially on mobile.
| Grimm665 wrote:
| > Have you not heard of timed popups (such as those that
| trigger past a certain element), or popups that don't make you
| want to immediately close the site?
|
| How about NO POP-UPs? Remember when browsers came with built-in
| pop-up blockers so users didn't have to deal with them at all?
| Newsletter sign-ups are the same bullshit as 90s style pop-ups,
| and everyone agreed we should block those then, why are these
| different?
|
| I don't want timed pop-ups, or pop-ups that are more
| convenient, I want NO POP-UPs, and as soon as I see one I am
| closing the tab and writing off the website as not worth my
| time.
|
| I don't mean to call you out specifically, I don't think you're
| arguing in favor of pop-ups, but I'm just confused why your
| initial response was to ask for lesser evil pop-ups, rather
| than no pop-ups at all.
| rchaud wrote:
| The popups you're thinking of were much more harmful than
| these. Those were separate browser windows that opened third-
| party sites and downloaded and ran insecure code.
|
| This is a popup in the visual sense. Although to be fair lots
| of sites use third-party scripts to handle these email asks,
| so maybe it's not that different!
| gspencley wrote:
| You're certainly not wrong about the malware / insecure
| code...
|
| But a popup that opens an in-page modal vs a popup that
| opens a new tab or window are pretty much equivalent from a
| user experience point of view in my opinion. I don't want
| either, and neither is less or more evil to me.
| bgirard wrote:
| At least the pop-up windows had a consistent way to close
| them and you could use keyboard shortcut. Now I have to
| think about the right way to close each custom popup.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'd go even further: I don't want ANY pop-ups of any kind in
| my computing experience, period. When I set out to do some
| task, I don't want my attention to be yanked away by
| _anything_. Computers should essentially be REPLs. Read my
| command, execute the command, print the result, and then read
| my next command. And the equivalent function when using a
| GUI: I click on something, the computer does that thing,
| displays the results, and then it waits for me to click on
| something else. They shouldn 't be doing a bunch of stuff on
| their own in the background. They shouldn't be trying to
| decide what they want me to be doing. I decide what the
| computer should be doing!
|
| We have drifted so far away from the light--when the user was
| 100% in charge of everything the computer was doing.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > I'd go even further: I don't want ANY pop-ups of any kind
| in my computing experience, period.
|
| And I don't ever want my focus dragged away from the window
| that I'm currently on.
|
| Whatever it is that the app developer thinks IS SO
| ABSOLUTELY FUCKING IMPORTANT THAT THEY NEED TO STEAL MY
| ATTENTION AWAY RIGHT THIS GODDAMN SECOND, just isn't
| actually that important to me.
|
| My relationship with a lot of applications is like a clingy
| sidepiece that I'm about ready to dump if they get any more
| annoying.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Arguably these in-page pop-ups can over some value if used
| judiciously, and unlike traditional pop ups cannot flood the
| whole screen or otherwise break out of the tab.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I don't want to use unsolicited synchronous interfaces
| ever. For any reason.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Nor do I, though I can see the argument from those paying
| for the hosting and content.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| The reality is that in a lot of cases, losing you is
| acceptable collateral damage. Some percentage of people will
| close the site if they see a popup (I do some of the time,
| depending on how much I care about seeing the site's content
| and how easy it is to close the popup).
|
| > everyone agreed we should block those then
|
| They didn't, though. It's very plausible that everyone in
| your social circle agreed on that, but there were a lot of
| people filling those popups out then, and there are a lot of
| people doing it now.
|
| That is not to say that you're not right - they are annoying,
| and I'd generally rather be rid of them. The reality is,
| though, people who immediately close websites upon seeing
| popups are a small minority, and for many websites the value
| lost by those people closing the website it meaningfully less
| than the value gained by some percent of people giving their
| email.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| I own an ecommerce company, and while I can't tell you the why,
| I can tell you that ~6% of people fill mine out. Is it
| annoying? Yup. Would it absolutely, unequivocally, be a bad
| business decision to take it down? Yup.
|
| You know what else I've got on the site? One of those annoying
| little notifications that comes up in the bottom right to say
| "Someone bought this four hours ago!" I hate those things! I
| swore I'd never put them on my site!
|
| The problem is, when I swore that, I was making the same
| mistake that you are here - assuming that I was the target and
| that everyone is like me. The reality is they are not, and
| these things work well. They're ubiquitous on ecommerce sites
| for a reason.
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Out of curiosity (I really believe the popup increases your
| total revenue), have you tried other similarly emphasized but
| non-blocking prompts?
|
| Like sliding it down from the title, or a block in the middle
| of the text?
| idopmstuff wrote:
| I've tried sliding it down from the top and up from the
| bottom, as well as a persistent email collection bar
| anchored to the top. All inferior in terms of form
| completion as well as revenue generated within three months
| for the cohort of people exposed to the form.
|
| Haven't tried a block in the middle of the text, but that's
| because most folks are landing on my product page, and
| that's had a lot of testing to ensure it's optimized for
| sales, which are naturally more important than email
| collection.
| IMSAI8080 wrote:
| What percentage of people immediately bounce off your site as
| soon an aggravating interruption like this appears? I know I
| do. Have you measured if customers stay longer if you don't
| display the interruption?
|
| Of that 6% how many actually read the newsletter as opposed
| to sending it to spam? Is that percentage more valuable to
| you than keeping people on the site?
| idopmstuff wrote:
| > Have you measured if customers stay longer if you don't
| display the interruption?
|
| That's not the right metric. I care about whether people
| buy things, and since I can measure that directly, it's
| better to do so than to measure intermediate metrics like
| time on page. Revenue is meaningfully better with the popup
| than without.
|
| > Of that 6% how many actually read the newsletter as
| opposed to sending it to spam? Is that percentage more
| valuable to you than keeping people on the site?
|
| Open rates vary from 20-40% depending on the type of email.
| Yes, it is more valuable.
|
| I'll reiterate something I said in another comment, which
| is that there are a lot of people who don't think of this
| kind of thing as an aggravating interruption. Most of my
| new users come in because they click on Facebook ads, which
| are anathema to a lot of folks on HN but a normal,
| reasonable thing to look at and maybe click on to a much
| broader swathe of the world. I'm optimizing for those
| people, not HN folks.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| People understand the value prop with e-commerce when they
| put in their email
| Timwi wrote:
| Nobody here is "assuming that [they are] the target".
| Everyone here knows everything that you said. Your behavior
| is still scummy.
|
| Just listen to yourself:
|
| > Is it annoying? Yup. Would it absolutely, unequivocally, be
| a bad business decision to take it down? Yup.
|
| Translation: given the choice between making the website even
| remotely pleasant and making more money for yourself, you
| choose the money every time. Everyone else can suck it.
|
| We are not criticizing your decision because we don't
| understand your circumstance or context. We are criticizing
| the decision precisely because we understand it. It's
| selfish, scummy, and it's the reason the entire web sucks ass
| now.
| dexterdog wrote:
| So 6% of people fill yours out meaning 94% of the people
| either ignore it, block it or get angry and leave the site.
| How many of the 6% fill it out because they think they have
| to? How many just give you a garbage email address?
|
| If somebody wants to be part of your email list, most of them
| will find a place to sign up for it and nobody will see your
| site as a slimy sales gimmick.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| See the problem here is you're projecting your feelings
| about popups (which I totally get, to be clear) onto my
| business. From a business perspective that's a bad thing to
| do.
|
| What I've done (and what countless other website owners
| have done) is operate based on data. I've done a lot of A/B
| testing of my email capture popup - I've tested content,
| timing, and whether or not it's there at all. "How many of
| the 6% fill it out because they think they have to? How
| many just give you a garbage email address?" Sub 3%. That
| one's easy to validate, and I've done so.
|
| You're calling it a "slimy sales gimmick" (which I think is
| somewhat harsher language than necessary), but the reality
| is most new users who hit my site come in from Facebook
| ads. I would wager that you and folks of your same mindset
| about the popup probably see advertising on social media as
| slimy as well. The people who come to my site clearly
| don't.
|
| What a lot of HN fails to realize is that the overwhelming
| majority of the world is not like HN and does not share the
| beliefs of the typical HN user vis a vis digital
| advertising, sales tactics, websites, etc.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > You're calling it a "slimy sales gimmick" (which I
| think is somewhat harsher language than necessary)
|
| I actually don't think that's overly harsh.
|
| > the reality is most new users who hit my site come in
| from Facebook ads.
|
| And, once again, we see the corrosive effects of Facebook
| actively making things crappier for the non-FB-using
| world.
|
| > What a lot of HN fails to realize is that the
| overwhelming majority of the world is not like HN
|
| I suspect that the vast majority of HN is fully aware of
| this. That doesn't make our complaints any less valid,
| though. What's alternative? "Shut up and take it"?
| idopmstuff wrote:
| > That doesn't make our complaints any less valid,
| though. What's alternative? "Shut up and take it"?
|
| I have been very clear in my comments here that these
| complaints are perfectly valid and reasonably. The
| alternative is obviously not to "shut up and take it" -
| it's to do what you're doing and leave sites that do
| things you don't like. Vote with your digital feet.
|
| My point remains that popups asking people to sign up for
| an email newsletter exist, and will continue to exist,
| because a significant enough portion of the population
| does find them useful (as evidenced by the fact that they
| give their emails and then later make purchases based on
| emails they receive), even if folks on HN think that they
| are slimy or evil or what have you.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| "My customers don't see it as a problem, so it's not a
| problem" is probably exactly how tobacco companies and
| casinos justify their practices as well.
| rchaud wrote:
| Works for Amazon. Been on their search results page
| recently?
| idopmstuff wrote:
| If you think a popup asking someone to give their email
| address in exchange for a discount is the same as an
| advertisement convincing people to smoke, then I don't
| think we're going to have a productive exchange here.
| retzkek wrote:
| "See the problem here is you're projecting your emotions
| and empathy onto my business. From a business perspective
| that's a bad thing to do.
|
| What I've done is operate on data. My customers are
| faceless numbers, not people, and so long as they give me
| money I don't care about them.
|
| What a lot of HN fails to realize is that the
| overwhelming majority of the world are suckers who will
| do whatever advertising convinces them to."
|
| I'm admittedly taking some liberties here, but it grieves
| me that business is now pretty much "fuck you I've got
| mine, or I'll do whatever it takes to get it." There must
| be a better way.
| rchaud wrote:
| The HN readership truly is unique; nowhere else will you
| see a community so virulently opposed to
| advertising/marketing, in an industry (tech) whose
| largest players have no other way of making money.
| nicbou wrote:
| I can believe that. I operate in a little bubble where
| all ads and annoyances are blocked. I aggressively
| unsubscribe from every newsletter and set filters for
| anything that gets through. I patiently went through the
| settings of every website to max out the privacy
| settings.
|
| Your average consumer, however, clicks whatever button is
| blue, enters their email wherever there's an email field,
| and powers through the ads which are personalised for
| them. I would not be surprised if the numbers that you
| described are true, and not just a fluke.
|
| But I chose to build the sort of internet I like. A
| quiet, straightforward internet that respects consent and
| privacy. It worked fine for me, so I feel no need to
| change my ways.
| dazc wrote:
| 'I can tell you that ~6% of people fill mine out.'
|
| 94% of people don't though.
| quaintdev wrote:
| Sometimes I feel its time to build separate Internet with a new
| protocol like Gemini but better. A protocol tht is resistant to
| all the BS of modern web.
| hiatus wrote:
| What sorts of resistance does Gemini have? How does it
| prevent ads and commercial use?
| pluijzer wrote:
| Like a previous comment mentioned, the only resistance is
| that it as a small user base and it makes no commercial
| sense to pit any ads there. This also makes is resistant to
| insincere content. There is no need for low effort click-
| bait content because if you would like to attract lots of
| users you wouldn't be publishing on Gemini.
| quaintdev wrote:
| This. Early days of Internet were exactly like this.
| rchaud wrote:
| Why stop at Gemini? You could bring internet navigation back
| to a CLI-only interface and someone would find a way to show
| ads.
|
| Heck, NPM of all things had ads until they sent out a
| community-wide request to stop that:
| https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/635
|
| The problem isn't the permissibility of a web browser. It's
| that we live in a capitalistic world; someone somewhere will
| always be trying to figure out how to post a bill on a wall
| that reads "POST NO BILLS".
| solarkraft wrote:
| Rich Harris has put it nicely: The web doesn't suck because
| of frameworks, it sucks because of capitalism.
|
| https://youtu.be/uXCipjbcQfM?t=1m29s
|
| The advantage of Gemini and consorts is that simply nobody
| has _tried_ to commercialize it because they have almost no
| users (like the early internet).
| yurishimo wrote:
| Small sidebar, but I really enjoyed this talk. So much so
| that I'm going to go try out Svelte having been a big fan
| of Vue for a long time. Don't get me wrong, I probably
| won't switch, but I think it's worth exploring the ideas of
| such an intelligent person across multiple facets of their
| professional outputs. I even learned a few things hanging
| out in React land a few years ago!
|
| Really excited to see where Rich goes over the next decade.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The key thing to cut out is the ability of web site owners to
| make clients initiate connections or exfiltrate information
| without the user's say-so. That plus the profit motive have
| made most of the Web spyware--and you're not gonna get rid of
| the profit motive, so it'd be more effective to make the Web
| practically impossible to use to distribute spyware.
|
| The Web needs far more capable built-in UI elements, and to
| remove most ability to script it. Including a great deal of
| CSS, which is under-rated as a source of bloat and slowness
| on the Web I think, in addition to having become a privacy
| threat.
|
| Never gonna happen, but it's nice to imagine.
| sBqQu3U0wH wrote:
| >it's hard to believe people still do it in the most annoying
| way possible.
|
| Considering that the internet is almost unusable without an
| adblock, this does not surprise me at all.
| solarkraft wrote:
| > Have you not heard of timed popups (such as those that
| trigger past a certain element), or popups that don't make you
| want to immediately close the site?
|
| They're arguably worse because it's a slap in the face while
| focusing on something.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| They do it because it works. Many people on the internet are
| not tech savvy and they just assume that in order to view the
| content they must input their email. It doesn't help that the
| close button is sometimes barely visible.
| criddell wrote:
| I would think the MIT Tech Review readers wouldn't be total
| tech noobs...
| gumballindie wrote:
| In this case MIT TR product managers are.
| dazc wrote:
| Adding people to your email list surreptitiously, via
| frustration or because of some incentive (like 10% off) is a
| great way of building a high number of subscribers but I
| doubt this does anything to your bottom line. In the case of
| discounts for sign-up it's almost certainly negative.
| CM30 wrote:
| What's the conversion rate though? How many of those people
| continue to read the emails sent out by said site?
|
| Feels like you'd get a lot of dead subscribers and opt outs
| (and spam reports), not an active community or follower base.
| datavirtue wrote:
| They don't read the emails. The scan the subject and maybe
| the body for value...really quick.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| If it is higher than zero somebody somewhere can justify
| it.
| zeroego wrote:
| As someone who used to work in marketing, this.
| Anecdotal, but in my experience working in marketing it
| was often funny to me how little we had to validate the
| numbers we presented. My boss didn't care how many people
| actually clicked on the link in our newsletter, as long
| as we had a lot of subscribers we were good.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| to be fair to your boss, you can't actually make me click
| on your link or read your newsletter. Delivering it is
| the only thing that you actually have control over, and
| you're probably delivering to one of those gmail
| purgatory folders anyways.
| zeroego wrote:
| I definitely couldn't "make" anyone click on anything.
| But delivering it wasn't the only thing we had control
| over. The format and content of the email we had complete
| control over. This was years ago, but at the time I
| suggested trying to record and study which emails lead
| subscribers to actually click the link so that we could
| learn to produce content/offers that more people wanted
| to see. The idea was mostly shrugged off but I did it
| anyways. When the numbers of people actually following
| the links went up my boss never wanted to show anybody.
| My somewhat cynical guess is that he didn't want to
| introduce real accountability (proof that we were having
| an effect) into some of the data he was presenting to
| other departments.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > it was often funny to me how little we had to validate
| the numbers we presented
|
| Yeah, your clients expected you to be the expert, and
| honestly apply that expertise for their interests. In
| other words, they expect _you_ to validate those numbers;
| if they wanted somebody they need to second-guess, they
| would just take opinions for free from a random web
| forum.
| zeroego wrote:
| We didn't have any clients, it was a marketing department
| for a CPG company. I was just a peon; I didn't have any
| say in how things got done. Say all that to say, you
| would think that at some point VPs of other departments
| would want to know how all the money that got allocated
| to marketing was actually benefiting the company. I'm
| talking a concrete dollars to dollars comparison. I
| personally didn't get to scratch that itch until I moved
| into e-commerce.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, ok, I misunderstood that part. But the expectation
| of goal alignment is even stronger for an in-house
| department.
|
| The people high up expected somebody on your department
| to validate your numbers and invest on the things that
| most benefited the company. For an in-house team, it's
| not rare that this expectation is so strong that nobody
| ever challenges it. So it's also not very rare that one
| team or another coast on it and don't deliver much value.
|
| Obviously, none of that is ideal. But that doesn't stop
| it from being common. Anyway, if your department never
| checked anything, somebody up from you was doing a bad
| job, because it's literally their job, not really the
| random VP (but it is the VP's job to discover if the dept
| was doing their job) and really not of any other
| department head.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is why there's so many subscription services (e.g.
| streaming, apps, etc) as well; they don't care about
| viewers or happiness, they (and the stock holders) care
| about subscribers, because subscribers = fixed and
| predictable monthly revenue, as well as loyalty (if they
| don't unsubscribe) and inertia (forgetting to cancel).
| zeroego wrote:
| I've often wondered about that. Spotify has never failed
| to have the music I wanted to listen to. Though their app
| interface has always been a little painful for me to use.
| nscalf wrote:
| In my experience, conversation rates were ~6% from a pop up
| timed to land when you were nearly done with the article
| (though on short articles, it was similar to what is
| described--I don't have data on those two broken out).
| Subscribers stuck pretty well, something like 40% kept
| opening emails. For my relatively small newsletter, churn
| was extremely low. They're basically warm leads if they
| make it to the end of an article, and email is extremely
| sticky.
|
| Email pop ups are a very effective short term newsletter
| growth tool.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > It doesn't help that the close button is sometimes barely
| visible.
|
| This particular dark pattern is nasty and unfortunately
| common across more than just newsletter popups. It doesn't
| trip _me_ up but I could see how others could fall victim to
| it.
|
| If opting out is so strongly preferred by users that you have
| to try to hide the opt-out button for users to do anything
| else, maybe you shouldn't be trying to do the thing they're
| so adamantly opting out of.
| user00012-ab wrote:
| I've gotten to the point where if a site displays a popup, I
| just close the page. If I had the ability to remove that
| source from all future searches I would.
| miroljub wrote:
| Why not entering a fake email and move on? It's not like
| many of them do email validation anyways. Something like
| kgistdaie@gmail.com will do.
|
| At least let them having to handle junk data.
| tux3 wrote:
| Or the site's own contact email addresses, if you want to
| be mischievous without potentially spamming an innocent
| bystander
| miroljub wrote:
| Good idea. That's what I'm going to use in the future.
| nsvd wrote:
| [dead]
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I've got addons (ublock) and a Javascript bookmarklet that
| removes all fixed elements, it's fairly effective.
| metadat wrote:
| This sounds great! Can you share the code?
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| NTHNer but here is the one I use. It's old but it still
| works a treat: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-
| sticky-headers/ (function () {
| var i, elements = document.querySelectorAll('body *');
| for (i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) { if
| (getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position === 'fixed') {
| elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]);
| } } })();
| err4nt wrote:
| I rewrote this to be a little more succinct:
| document.querySelectorAll('body *').forEach(tag =>
| getComputedStyle(tag).position === 'fixed' &&
| tag.remove() );
|
| - you can use `forEach()` on the NodeList that
| `querySelectorAll()` returns
|
| - you can use `remove()` directly on the DOM node you
| want to remove
| Kiro wrote:
| What happens to sites where a fixed element is part of
| the UI? Confirmation modals etc.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Things break? I use a similar bookmarklet, but I only
| ever use it for reading articles which have zero need for
| any dynamic features. Give me the text, images, and get
| out of my way.
| Veen wrote:
| You can do just that in Kagi. It lets you boost or block
| sites from search results.
| Groxx wrote:
| They do it because they have been _sold a story_ that it
| works. It 's easy to show short-term gains, and hard to show
| long-term damage... and nobody gets paid today for showing
| damage months later. Short-term marketing incentives are
| horrifyingly destructive.
|
| Does it work? In some areas, yeah, I believe it does. But
| most are cargo-culting a dark pattern that loses them what
| might otherwise be excellent customers, sold by people trying
| to justify their marketing position, and companies whose
| business incentives are perfectly aligned with selling snake
| oil.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It focuses far too much on numbers; in the case of newsletter
| signups, it's conversion rates. If interactions with
| newsletters is > 0, it's worth having a newsletter; if
| conversion for these popups is > 0, then it's worth having a
| newsletter pop-up.
|
| It's like an often quoted thing; Linus Tech Tips was
| criticized for having "reaction faces" in their thumbnails,
| and they said that while they don't like it, they had the
| numbers to back up that it was effective... to boost numbers
| and therefore revenue, I guess.
|
| In the case of my current employer, they focus on NPS, Net
| Promoter Score, a wooly abbreviation [0] indicating how good
| they are doing based on the question "how likely are you to
| recommend X to a friend". Number goes down in case of
| outages, number goes up in case of good service. That's the
| main thing they focus on, not individual stories, users,
| whatever, but NPS.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score
| tyfon wrote:
| I stopped watching and blocked the linus channel (and may
| others) due to the faces.
|
| But I guess I am only one and the many likes these faces
| for some reason.
|
| It is also probably a failure of optimization where one
| started doing it and made a tiny bit more money than the
| other. Then the others had to do it to keep up, now all
| have the sucky faces and they all make the same amount as
| before while doing something they don't really like.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| What they don't take into account is the secondary and
| tertiary effects of doing things like this. I stopped
| visiting channels that did the faces, LTT among them, and
| I also (usually) insta-close any video where the
| presenter is making a completely fake 'why don't you tell
| me about it in the comments' calls to action.
|
| The things is that your numbers might go up and your
| audience might grow, but these tactics work because you
| are appealing to the _trend_ at the time. People see
| stupid face and click and the trending metric goes up and
| you get more hits -- same thing with user interactions on
| comments.
|
| However, two months later when someone is trying to find
| a video about how to hook up their AMD CPU De-hot-an-izer
| to a radiator and they see Linus making a Macauly Culkin
| Home Alone face they pass, and you lose a potential
| actual long-term subscriber.
|
| Also, people with standards tend to be really happy when
| those standards are at least partially met, and tell
| other people about it. On the flip side, people looking
| for their youtube 'stupid faces video fix' tend to forget
| what they saw 10 minutes later.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| At work, I deal with enterprise software, and I agree that
| the focus on numbers (and NPS) can drive things the wrong
| way.
|
| In my personal time, I own an ecommerce company, and there
| it absolutely makes sense to be purely numbers-focused. The
| thing that matters is getting someone to buy, and getting
| an email address is almost universally the second most
| important thing, because it's the best road to getting
| someone to buy.
| m463 wrote:
| I'm reminded of Feynman's book "Surely You're Joking, Mr.
| Feynman"
|
| _We went into the bar, and before I sat down, I said,
| "Listen, before I buy you a drink, I want to know one thing:
| Will you sleep with me tonight?"
|
| "Yes."_
| cryptonym wrote:
| Marketing thinks "OMG, people subscribing the newsletter are
| returning to the website way more often than regular ones".
| Then by showing this newsletter pop-up down everyone throat,
| they successfully get X% more subscribers. Much engagement,
| much success, poor UX, annoying for everyone.
|
| Maybe people subscribing to that newsletter are the most
| interested and you shouldn't bother everyone with it for the
| sake of few subscriptions.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| If they are relying on fooling people into thinking you have
| to enter your email address to read the article... why don't
| they actually try to require you to enter your email address
| to read the article (perhaps after reading the first few
| screens), instead of just implying it to those who can be
| fooled? They could do this, right?
| lawkwok wrote:
| I've seen a few websites recently with a pleasant newsletter
| experience.
|
| The signup field is a few paragraphs down the article and as
| you scroll to it, the article dims (but is still readable) and
| highlights the newsletter section. As you keep scrolling the
| the dimming fades out and you can read the article again.
|
| This is much less jarring than a pop up and is placed after the
| reader gets to read at their pace.
| aimor wrote:
| You don't think Google did this on purpose, do you?:
| https://ibb.co/JvY26s2
|
| Am I seeing double?: https://ibb.co/0y2xLWX
|
| Web layouts have *evolved* in a bizarre way, especially when
| businesses are paying for results and the user experience comes
| second. Popups (or whatever the cute new euphemism is) are an
| easy way to add new garbage to a site while separating the
| garbage from the content. Cookie banners, logins, paywalls, and
| more!
|
| https://ibb.co/yFb9QBd
| brightball wrote:
| Fwiw, I have a substack and I don't like the email pop up
| thing...but it does work.
| arbitrage wrote:
| OK, I'll bite. What are you doing with those emails, then?
| Are you blasting out spam to them? Do they engage? Are the
| analytics better for those who have subscribed to e-mail
| compared to those who haven't?
|
| What does the data show?
| brightball wrote:
| So I just took over responsibility to reboot a polyglot
| conference in Greenville, SC that will happen this August.
|
| In the interest of time, I needed to communicate a lot with
| a lot of people to keep people informed, raise awareness,
| etc before I have time to properly build a new site so I
| setup a substack blog to do it. You can see it here:
|
| https://blog.carolina.codes
|
| So far, I've used it to...
|
| - Announce the conference reboot
|
| - Poll the community for best dates and structure
|
| - Announce the official date and venue
|
| - Feed all of the social media accounts created for it
| (with dlvr.it)
|
| - Announce call for Speakers (open til May 25th)
|
| - Announce call for Sponsors
|
| - Additional community information (we're trying to help
| get local meetups moving again as a side effect)
|
| Early on there's been a ton of information to distribute
| and feedback to gather, so it's worked well. The substack
| email list is the primary communication channel and we've
| got about a 50% open rate with very high engagement from
| about half the list. I use the scheduling features to make
| sure I never sent more than one thing per day, on weekdays
| only.
|
| I'm learning the marketing side of this as I go, so I'm
| trying to be very wary of things that bother me. On the
| flip side, the defaults for a tool like dlvr.it will post
| multiple times a day to social channels which seems very
| spammy but it also seems to work. I've never been very
| social media active because I don't like doing that type of
| thing.
|
| Spreading the word on this stuff is hard though, so I've
| got to balance my own desire to not bother people with the
| real need to get the word out around this conference. We
| did have one fun social media challenge for programmers
| where people could create variations of a code payload
| about the conference in their favorite language. I'm
| looking for fun things like that to engage people when I
| can.
|
| https://blog.carolina.codes/p/code-header-challenge
|
| The bigger the list gets, the less I feel the need to keep
| spreading the word because I feel better about being able
| to reach people with the important things when I need to.
| Now I'm far enough along that people are starting to spread
| the word for me and connect me with potential sponsors, so
| that's helpful.
| metadat wrote:
| This use case is very different from the usual blogs
| hosted at substack.
|
| The subscriber popup modal actually sounds perfect for
| event coordination sites.
| synergy20 wrote:
| I subscribed to about 10 weekly newsletters and I love them.
|
| it's the pop-up "subscribe me now", along with the cookie prompts
| really made surfing experience miserable.
|
| just leave a subscription button somewhere on the page, if I like
| it I can opt in to subscribe, do not push me with your pop-up
| please.
| vpaulus wrote:
| [flagged]
| davidgerard wrote:
| One day Google will start penalising lightboxes, and you'll be
| able to hear the anguished screams from space.
| coding123 wrote:
| Google should just delist sites that violate spammy shit.
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| So many replies here that are essentially "I hate them too, but I
| use them because they work"--i.e., "I am a hypocrite because
| capitalism."
| datadeft wrote:
| It would be great if there was a website like HN where I can go
| and it has all the news from the companies I am interested in and
| based on my subscription it would also recommend what else to be
| aware of.
|
| HN fulfils this role for now.
| cvwright wrote:
| It would be cool if there was a "syndication" format for sites
| to post summaries of all their new content, so then you could
| have a reader on the client side to collate the news feed of
| the day.
|
| This syndication format would need to be really simple though.
| :)
| drcongo wrote:
| Many years ago I made TabClosedDidntRead.com - a collection of
| invasive overlays - to highlight this trend when it first started
| (and wrote it up [0] though much of that probably doesn't stand
| up so well now). I had to stop collecting them after a few months
| as it became most sites rather than some sites, and things have
| only gotten _much_ worse since. It looks like TC;DR is no longer
| up, presumably I just lost hope at some point.
|
| [0] https://andybeaumont.com/post/the-value-of-content/
|
| Edit: It seems the Tumblr is still up, just not with the custom
| domain - https://tcdr.tumblr.com
| kermi wrote:
| Ironically with a "We use cookies!" overlay making me instantly
| closing the tab
| jhoelzel wrote:
| it shouldn't. It is your opportunity to actively decline the
| tracking of the website.
|
| And if you actually do click the settings tab on some of
| them, you will see just how many trackers clickbait sites
| integrate and that will give you at least a choice to opt
| out.
|
| The GDPR laws im europe are part of the healing process of
| the internet, therefore not at all compareable with the
| "please subscribe to my newsletter" popups.
| cubefox wrote:
| Interesting take.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| The publisher also could avoid tracking cookies.
| MereInterest wrote:
| I agree, though will add that the GDPR does not require
| active rejection of tracking. Rather, outside of some
| narrowly defined use cases, tracking is only permitted when
| there is explicit consent from the user. If you ignore the
| GDPR banner, or block it with a filter, the website does
| not have your explicit permission and is not legally
| allowed to track you under the GDPR.
| jhoelzel wrote:
| see here is the loophole, if you block the banner
| altogether they will still track you under the disguise
| of "legitimate interest" vs when you actually deactivated
| the stuff or use the "reject all" button that the better
| providers provide, you will, at least for the bigger
| publishing houses, opt out.
| MereInterest wrote:
| That's what they currently do, yes, but it's not really a
| loophole, so much as willful misunderstanding. Legitimate
| interest covers things like IP logs for the purpose of
| network security, and certainly doesn't cover user
| tracking for the purpose of targeted advertising.
| jhoelzel wrote:
| while i completely agree with you, your information will
| still end up in some database unless you actually do
| click to opt out
| timw4mail wrote:
| Doesn't make them less annoying though.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Cookie banners with [Accept] [View settings] buttons are
| dark. But these are just HTML forms; even if there's a
| [Reject] button, I've no reason to suppose it has any
| different effect to [Accept]. And no - I'm not going to
| check the HTML source and parse all the Javascript, or
| crank up the network monitor to find out.
| sparsely wrote:
| Nice blog post although the call out to Medium has sadly not
| aged well!
| drcongo wrote:
| Yeah, that part aged so poorly I had to move the post.
| ianai wrote:
| It only takes some people to accept the newsletter/messages to
| make it worth it, unfortunately. Probably the reason the
| practice could ever stop would be the marginal cost of the
| messages or newsletter to rise above engagement. That's
| probably much higher for a newsletter than the push
| notifications.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Yep, if I get interrupted before I've even had a chance to see
| what's on the site, I frequently just close the tab.
|
| Lots of content out there. Very little I really have to read.
| nicbou wrote:
| I love that Tumblr has an app banner and a cookie banner.
| Ironic.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| There is exactly zero percent chance that I will subscribe to any
| newsletter when I haven't read even the first article on your
| site fully.
|
| Maybe if I see myself coming back to the site for insightful
| stuff, then I might consider a newsletter - but even that I'll
| subscribe to using my RSS reader (NewsBlur).
| neilalexander wrote:
| There's a zero percent chance I will subscribe to a newsletter
| willingly even if I love your articles. I try very hard to keep
| the signal-to-noise ratio of my inbox tuned because otherwise
| important things get lost in the deluge. I don't want your
| articles pushed to me on your timeframe, I want to consume them
| in my own time and for that an RSS reader is perfectly
| adequate.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > There's a zero percent chance I will subscribe to a
| newsletter willingly even if I love your articles.
|
| Same. Mostly because of tracking. According to what's been
| getting published in various internet marketing sites, one of
| the primary reasons why newsletters have become so popular
| for sites to do isn't about the newsletter -- it's about
| getting the email address (that's also a reason why more and
| more sites are requiring an account even when it doesn't make
| technical sense). That's a decent identifier that allows you
| to be tracked across sites.
| qwertox wrote:
| > Same. Mostly because of tracking.
|
| Then there are the rare cases where you do subscribe, but
| every link in the email is a tracking link. Because they
| need to know when and from where you clicked on that link.
| SMH.
| eviks wrote:
| That's an easy issue to fix: just move all these
| subscriptions to a separate mail tag/folder (skipping inbox),
| and read them whenever you like
| Taywee wrote:
| There's a sizeable portion of the population for whom RSS
| would be perfect, but they don't know it exists, and if you
| tried to get them into it, would be baffled by the complete
| lack of interface (remember when Firefox would show an RSS
| icon near the URL when a site had an RSS link in the header?)
|
| A newsletter is useless to you, but a lot of people like
| them. I agree that popups aren't the way to push it, though.
| A simple newsletter link in the header of the site is more
| than good enough. I don't care how good the "conversion" rate
| is, I don't like harassing people who are just visiting my
| site for the first time.
| hoseja wrote:
| RSS feels intentionally sabotaged.
| criddell wrote:
| If the pop up listed two options - email subscribe or rss
| subscribe - I don't think I would be nearly as irritated and
| would probably use the rss option a lot.
| Semaphor wrote:
| My switch between RSS and E-Mail is if I (mostly) want to
| read everything. RSS means I'll see every single article. But
| for some (mainly backblaze, actually), I don't. I want to
| read some, so I'm subscribed to their newsletter that gives
| me a summary of all recent posts every once in a while.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Reminds me of the days of going to radio shack and their
| insistence on having your name and zip code. One professor of
| mine recommended providing a particular zip code in Alaska with a
| name that was ridiculous or even vulgar. If your marketing teams
| want my info, they'll need to pay for it.
| sharemywin wrote:
| I think the whole theme of this article and thread is don't waste
| your time trying to sell to developers. they block your ads,
| don't buy your stuff, won't even sign up for your free newsletter
| to see if you add any value there. generally don't even believe
| in advertising and marketing. Most of them would rather build
| instead of buy, which is useful as a developer, but not great to
| form a business around.
|
| The exception is Free Tiers so they can convince they're bosses
| to use your enterprise tier.
| shmde wrote:
| The only "good" newsletter popup modal is on Josh Comeau's
| websites.
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