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I personally hate them and want nothing to do with them ever, but some would say that they are very good to use for marketing. I just dont see any cases that they would be useful, in most cases all my friends, who could potentially buy something from one of my sites, say they are annoying and make them click off the site faster if there were any on the site.
I really need to hear from both sides on this issue. Those who hate them and those who have a success with them. Thanks.
I use a pop-under on one of my sites - although it is strictly to remind users to sign up for the site's newsletter. It only pops once per browser session. It has been effective, and because people tend to visit many pages throughout the site, and throughout browser sessions, many have commented how great it is that it only pops up once (most of my competitor's pop-ups/unders pop once per page view)
However people are more tolerant of pop-ups that promote the site they happen to be visiting (ie. a newsletter popup, a promotion or contest announcement, etc).
Visitors tend to be far less tolerant of third-party pop-ups, and especially third-party pop-ups that are hosted on a remote server. I hate visiting a site and having the page freeze while it is waiting to contact a remote server to load an advertising pop-up - it seems those are always the slowest servers around. I have ceased visiting several wonderful websites because of these delays.
And just about everyone cannot stand the pop-ups that will spawn additional pop-ups after you close the first one.
I think with pop-up stoppers becoming more popular, and especially with the introduction of that feature to the Google Toolbar (I know many who downloaded the toolbar just for that feature alone) that the effectiveness of pop-ups is going to decline rapidly.
One pop up/under is ok, but 3rd party is not.
I am not 100%, but I dont think the new google toolbar is able to stop all the pop ups. I tried it for 2 weeks and they still slipped by.
I would say that the end of pop-ups & pop-unders era has arrived with the entry of Google Adsense.
Of course, there would be many who would still continue with pops, but intelligent and smart webmasters who want their surfers to be regular & happy would get rid of them asap.
With Google adsense now taking care of the publishers by providing good amount of revenue, webmaster wouldn't hesitate removing pop-ups.
but I dont think the new google toolbar is able to stop all the pop ups.
You can allow pop-ups from certain sites. I wonder if maybe you have some sort of spyware that is giving you pop-ups, because the toolbar cannot stop those kinds.
From the Google Toolbar help file on the pop-up blocker:
Some software, including free music-sharing programs such as BearShare or AudioGalaxy, display pop-ups at random intervals or based on something you type into a web page. You may have these programs or others like them installed on your computer without even being aware of it.
I haven't had a single pop-up since downloading the toolbar, and it has successfully stopped over 600 of them so far :)
This mean that some of the sites I review appear brain-dead -- nothing apparently happens because all the action, results, etc take place in a pop-up that I don't see.
Of course, they might be dead for another reason. Whatever. I move on and review the next site on my list
About once every couple of months or so, I power up another browser and go check some of the apparently brain-dead sites.
So my bottom line is that, in many cases, it takes me a lot longer to review sites with pop-ups that are essential to the navigation.
Other pop-ups, adverts etc, make no difference to my edit cycle -- I don't see them, and the site works without them.
I suspect a lot of people with pop-up blockers will walk away under similar circumstances -- that's a lot more serious than them not seeing the prompt for a newsletter.
