Help with Pop-Up on Home Page?

[suzanne]

Hi,

Does anyone know of any good reference material on how to best go about implementing a pop-up that will load when a customer hits my home page? I would like it to be "smart" so that it doesn't pop-up again and again if the customer has already viewed and closed it.

Any helpful hints or links would be most appreciated.

S

[AmericanBulldog]

I would do a search for free javascripts or try a site like hotscripts.

You want a javascript pop up with a cookie so you can set it to pop only once a day.

[tedster]

You might try the nifty Javascript search here:
[javascript-2.com...]

Searches all the top online libraries of free scripts.

[donfox]

Several points to consider:

1. What purpose does the proposed popup have? Many people find them annoying, and you should not annoy people who visit your site, or they will likely leave it and go elsewhere.

2. Many people use software or browser settings which will block popups, so they will not see it anyway.

3. Many people do not have JavaScript, or surf with it turned off, so they will not see it either. I could even teach you how to generate a popup using only HTML, but popup blockers may also prevent those.

4. Even if they enjoy popups, they do not use a popup blocker, and they have JavaScript on, you still cannot guarantee they will see it only once. Typically, you would need to set a cookie, and many people set their browsers to toss their cookies upon closing. The next time they visit your site, they _will_ see it again, even if only ten minutes have elapsed. You could force people to log in, and expose them to the popup one-time-only based on their login, but people do not like sites forcing them to log in, so they again will likely leave.

As you can see, I highly recommend you avoid using popups! I cannot think of any good reasons to use them, but plenty of reasons _not_ to use them. ;)

[suzanne]

Thank you all for the suggestions and advice. I am not a fan of pop-ups, but it's been an ongoing request where I work for some time. I'm just trying to figure out a decent compromise that will work well for individuals who may want to take advantage of the promotions featured inside the pop-up, and will not annoy those who do not like them.

I think I've got some good information to get started with now -- it seems like the JS option with a cookie set to expire after a day may work the best. If anyone has additional ideas/suggestions - feel free to let me know!

Suzanne

[Wild_Cujo]

We had an ongoing nag from bosses to put a popup window on our site. We politely told them no, and left it at that. If the promotions are that good I would suggest taking up a little space on the homepage itself to show the promotion, maybe a flashy graphic to click to get more info. Generally customers are more apt to just close it without paying attention to it. Also assuming you use a database if you already create a user ID and have sessions just put it as a session variable. It just depends on how you handle sessions and what, if any, application language you are using.