Beyond email: how to leverage popups to drive multi-channel engagement for ecommerce businesses

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Ecommerce stores often struggle to engage their intended audience. No matter which niche you’re in, you likely have intense competition.

For customers, having a few options to choose from is great. They can compare the offerings from different sellers and make informed decisions. However, having too many options may be overwhelming.

This can be one of the key reasons why customers hop from one ecommerce platform to another, struggling to make a buying decision. The abundance of options ends up causing confusion, making it challenging for ecommerce businesses to engage their respective audiences.

Likely, individuals visiting your ecommerce site may not make a purchase on their first visit. And you can’t just hope that they’ll find your website again if they want to come back in future.

So, it’s best to come up with a way to engage your audience when they visit your ecommerce site and stay connected with them even after they’ve exited.

Leveraging popups is a highly effective strategy for this, and they offer a wide range of benefits.

Popups help you increase returning visitors to your website, improve ecommerce conversions, and boost customer loyalty. They also help you design personalized email campaigns and engage your target audience.

In this article, we’ll explore different types of popups and how you can leverage them to engage your target audience.

So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Types of popups best-suited for ecommerce businesses

The average conversion rate in the ecommerce industry is around 3.65%. Strategic selection and placement of popups may help you grow your conversions significantly.

To engage your target audience, you can choose from a variety of popup types to get the desired results. 

Cart abandonment popups

Cart abandonment is one of the biggest challenges faced by ecommerce websites around the globe. Around 70% of people abandon their carts and do not complete the purchase.

There are multiple reasons for people to abandon their carts. However, 60% of them are due to additional costs added at the checkout, such as shipping costs and taxes.

Leveraging cart abandonment popups can be an excellent strategy here and help you grow your conversions with ease. If someone is about to leave, you can set a popup to appear with special discounts, incentives, and offers like free shipping.

Through cart abandonment popups, you can convince your customers to complete their purchases and lower your cart abandonment rate. 

Exit intent popups

Exit intent popups display promotional messages when a visitor moves the cursor to appear as though they’re about to leave your site. This represents a visitor’s intent to exit the website without taking any action.

Exit intent popups are optimized a bit differently for mobile devices due to the absence of cursor movement. They generally trigger on mobile devices when a visitor tries to switch between active tabs or goes for the back button.

These popups are used to make visitors keep exploring the information published or consider the call to action. 

Promotional popups

Promotional popups are generally used to promote certain products or announce seasonal offers on ecommerce stores.

The core purpose of these popups is to score more conversions through seasonal marketing campaigns or increase the sales of a particular product listed.

These popups leverage a sense of urgency or the fear of missing out to convince people to make a purchase and help ecommerce businesses generate more revenue.

Mobile popups

Mobile popups are overlay boxes that display promotional messages or inspire visitors to consider a particular action, and they appear only on mobile devices.

Like desktop popups, they can be used to grow an email list or boost conversions. They may also be used to distribute free resources and engage the intended audience.

Giveaway popups

Although popups are one of the most effective ways to grow your email list, some people may be reluctant to share their personal information. Offering an incentive can help them feel more comfortable to do so. Giveaway popups do exactly this — in return for the information you’re asking for, the visitor may be able to win a prize.

Social proof popups

One reason for people’s hesitation in buying from a new company is the fear of being scammed or making a bad purchase.

In these instances, they rely on the reviews or recommendations of other customers. 

This is where social proof popups come in to help ecommerce businesses build trust by showcasing the experiences of their happy customers.

These popups display social proof, like positive comments and reviews shared by the customers of an ecommerce site, to reassure potential customers that they’re in safe hands.

Gamified popups

With gamified popups, ecommerce businesses take their promotional campaigns to a whole new level.

These popups offer an interactive experience to visitors, giving them a chance to win exclusive prizes and discounts. In the following example, visitors can win a discount or free shipping

These popups are an excellent strategy to grab attention, foster engagement, and encourage visitors to consider making a purchase.

To claim the prizes, visitors have to provide their contact information, which serves as an excellent tactic to grow a company’s email list. 

Product recommendations popups

Not all popups need to ask for an email address. Ecommerce stores often use product recommendation popups to offer visitors a seamless navigation experience.

Here, you recommend products that visitors may be interested in buying, saving them time looking for what they need and increasing your conversion chances in the process.

You can leverage these popups to display the latest additions to your Shopify store, or the most frequently purchased products by your visitors on your Etsy shop.

It’s an excellent way to offer a seamless experience to your visitors and grow your website conversions.

How to leverage popups to drive engagement

The following process guides you on how you can use popups to drive engagement and significantly increase your conversion rate.

Know your audience

The prerequisite for engaging your target audience is getting acquainted with their needs or preferences.

You need to know what piques the interest of your visitors and dictates their decision to purchase a particular product.

Based on these insights, you can come up with personalized messages to display through your popups and engage your target audience.

Define buyer personas

Once you’ve gathered useful data about your customers from their past buying history or other reliable sources of information, the next step is to create buyer personas.

Buyer personas are customer profiles that represent different characteristics of an audience you want to engage. These characteristics can be demographic and psychographic, dictating an individual’s buying behavior.

Defining buyer personas makes it easier for you to engage a particular audience segment and market your products to them.

Choose the right type

There are a number of popup types that you may choose from to engage visitors.

Choosing the right type increases your chances of success and helps you grab the attention of your target audience.

It’s best to identify the challenges you’re facing to grow your conversions and select a suitable type to overcome the obstacle.

Time things right

The timing of your popups is crucial and increases your chances of engaging your target audience.

Display them too soon or too frequently, and you may end up causing more harm than good. The last thing you want to do is annoy your visitors. So, you need to time things right.

Timing is extremely important when displaying entry or exit popups. But even when you choose to leverage other types, displaying your popups at an ideal time significantly improves your chances of getting the desired results.

Tailor your popups

To engage your target audience, it’s best to leverage your buyer personas and tailor your messages or offerings to the needs and preferences of each audience segment. 

You can’t simply come up with generic or bland messages and expect them to engage your visitors. You should personalize your messages in a way that resonates with them.

You should also factor in the things that dictate the actions of the intended audience when designing your popups.

For example, if you’ve noticed that a lot of your customers abandon their carts due to the shipping costs, offering free shipping upon detecting the exit intent serves as a viable strategy.

Offer value

No matter how good you are with words, they may not always get you the desired results. Sometimes, it’s best to offer value to engage your audience and inspire them to consider taking a particular action.

This is the reason why we readily see ecommerce stores offering discounts and special offers to engage their respective visitors.

Final thoughts

This article showcases how leveraging popups serves as an excellent strategy for ecommerce businesses to drive engagement.

We discussed different types of popups that you can consider using to grab the attention of your visitors and the key steps to foster engagement through popups. 

Author Bio

Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.