Dropdown Promotions - Amazon Style

Does it work? or annoy customers and bots.

[Herath]

We are considering to add Jacascript drop down 'Featured item of the day' on our front page.

Amazon, newEgg and several other successful sites had been doing this for awhile now and we see more and more sites borrowing this idea.

What are the pros and cons here? Some that comes to my mind are:

Cons:

Big Chunk of Javascript on your front page.

Some people might not like moving/flashing things as they enter the site.

Pros:

A great way to show featured items to returning customers

Please post your 2 cents about this.

[hannamyluv]

They are using the DHTML pop-ups to replace the regular ones that are now being blocked. They will probably have the same effect as regular pop-ups. Slightly annoying (but not terribly so as lang as you don't abuse it) but rather effective.

You could probably put the JS in a seprate file and have it refer back on the page to save some lines.

[Herath]

Anybody else trying this?

[MatthewHSE]

As a user I'd hate it, but I doubt Amazon would be doing it unless it works.

[danieljean]

A simple DHTML window that appears in the middle and slides back / minimizes into a corner or below its nav element shouldn't be too bad.

The customer can ignore it. The JS code shouldn't be that heavy (<1-2k if you have a decent coder), and can be in an external file for future visits.

I will be trying it soon :)

[hannamyluv]

We are planning on trying it soon too. The next version of IE has a built in pop-up blocker. We have several purely informational pop-ups (like "we're sorry, that item can not be shipped express") that will be toast when it is released.

[MatthewHSE]

I dislike things like this that try to sell me something, but I can see their use as ways of displaying requested or useful information. In fact popups are some of the most efficient ways of presenting some pieces of information to the user. I would be interested in knowing where I can find a good script that will help me get up to speed with this technique. Ideas, anyone?

[Robino]

I hate those things. I think most people do.

Amazon can get away with things most companies can't. Their checkout procedure is slower than most sites. Most sites would go down in flames if they tried something like Amazon's "Share the Love" feature.

People generally know what Amazon is before they go there. You don't want to make a bad first impression on people visiting your site.

But, if you do try it, be sure to share the results with us.

[Herath]

Other than Amazon, I have seen many other merchandise sites doing this. A good medium size example is newegg.com

I am beginning to believe if we do this in a very simple / small size sliding DHTML window, it will not do any harm, but good.

Can somebody point to a light weight DHTML example code that would do a sliding window?

Thanks.

[maluka]

I hate those things, too. They turn me off to both the site and the advertiser. Instant boycott.

[hannamyluv]

Whether you like them or hate them, for the general audience they are effective. People wouldn't have used pop-ups out the wazuu if they weren't.

These really aren't as bad. Many that are being used only intrude for a second and go away. There is also the added benifit that they go away when you leave the page, so no one can do the timed pop-up garbage or the lingering pop-under that's really annoying

I am sure that these will be abused as well, but for now I think they are a nice compromise

dynamicdrive.com has a few scripts you can look at.

[Robino]

People wouldn't have used pop-ups out the wazuu if they weren't

And look where pop-ups are now!

I try to offend the least amount of customers/potential customers as possible. I think it's pretty clear that MANY people dislike pop-ups, drop-downs, etc. And these people that don't like them are probably more Web savvy and perhaps deep-pocketed than most.