Should you have a pop-up on your site?
October 8, 2019
Your website is an opportunity to showcase your brand. It should explain what you do, and exactly what you can offer consumers. To keep visitors interested, remember, less is more. It should convey your brand's message in a simple, direct way. But this minimalist approach doesn't mean you can't share more information with your customers.

Pop-ups are a fantastic way to do this. However, as Google clamps down on pop-ups it considers “disruptive”, many web designers are confused about how to use them. This blog will show you the pros and cons of pop-ups and offer best industry practices to use them effectively.

Types of pop-ups

While all pop-ups may seem alike, there are three distinct types which serve different purposes. These include:

Modal - It's the most common pop-up type. It can appear on-screen while you're browsing a webpage, slide onto the page or be there from the outset.

Interstitial - This overlay pop-up is designed to grab your full attention. As such, it covers the entire screen when you enter a website.

Notifications bar - This is the most common style of pop-up. The ad is affixed to either the top or bottom of the screen.

Pros of pop-ups

As mentioned previously, Google is tightening restrictions on pop-up advertising. So, it may seem best to avoid them entirely. However, when used correctly, they can drastically improve visitor numbers, translating into greater profit. Here are the top five ways pop-ups can enhance your website.

Attention-grabbing -Consumers' attention spans are shortening, so they don't have the patience to read entire webpages. Precisely worded, micro-messages delivered in pop-ups give consumers all the information they need.

Draw focus -Pop-ups are designed to provide added value to visitors. So, their eyes will be immediately drawn to an ad promising a special offer or exclusive opportunity.

Versatile - Not all online visitors are the same. Understanding that consumers respond differently to advertising, pop-ups can appear at different times during the visit, including: on entry, after scrolling through content, triggered by certain actions (i.e. clicking on certain links, etc.), or upon exiting.

Increase conversion - A recent Sumo study found that pop-ups have an average conversion rate of 3%. If designed according to customers' wants and needs, however, pop-ups can convert up to 9% of website visitors.

Cleans up your site - Pop-ups designed to match your consumers' wants, needs and browsing habits can present a lot of valuable information in a compact way. It's the ideal way to deliver important messages while keeping your site aesthetically pleasing.

Cons of pop-ups

If used incorrectly, pop-ups can drive visitors away from your website. Here are the key ways the ads can backfire.

They're annoying - They can be an instant turn-off for many visitors who are just looking for information.

Content blocking - And, as they are typically the last element on the webpage to load, people have usually started reading before the ad appears.

Forcing consumers to take action - This is perfectly fine if they convert. However, if they're not interested, it creates a major intrusion.

Potential lead losses - Your pop-ups may generate some leads. However, you will undoubtedly lose others by interrupting their browsing session.

Increased bounce rate - Many web users consider pop-ups to be an intrusion. So, the most common action is to leave the website altogether.

Damaging to brand reputation - Most of the time, web visitors consider pop-up ads to be spam. This approach does not tend to inspire consumer confidence in your brand.

Pop-ups do not work on mobile sites - As these ads are not compatible with a mobile optimised site, Google has recently banned them. We consider this ban to be a good thing since, with pop-up ads, many websites would not even be able to load on mobile devices.

Best industry practice for using pop-ups

There are, of course, certain circumstances under which pop-ups can add value to your business. For instance, they can ensure you generate solid leads. If pop-ups are an essential part of your marketing strategy, here are the current industry guidelines.
  • Don't use pop-ups as a design element. An unnecessary interruption not only wastes customers' time but also decreases their trust.
  • Design the pop-up to naturally fit in with the rest of your site
  • Ensure the ads are responsive
  • Write short, persuasive copy
  • If you want to collect visitors' contact information, only ask for their email address
  • Unless it's part of your brand's personality, do not be passive-aggressive when writing calls to action. Otherwise, simply write "yes/no" CTAs. And, ensure your CTAs positively encourage people to take action.
  • Always ensure the pop-up's content is relevant to the webpage it appears on.
  • If at all possible, avoid placing a pop-up on the homepage. Keeping this page free of advertising allows visitors to familiarise themselves with your brand. Having said that, Google does permit you to add a privacy policy to your homepage.
  • Remember, Google does not allow over-sized modals, interstitials or pop-ups on the homepage of mobile optimised sites.
  • You can design a different type of pop-up ad for each device type.
  • Always ensure website visitors can get out of the pop-up ad easily. They should be able to either click outside of the area or click on an "X" button on the top right-hand corner of the ad.
  • To prevent customer frustration, time the pop-up to appear at the right time during the site visit. The ideal time is usually when a user is about to leave the site.
  • Set frequency limits on your pop-up ads. This will ensure that customers won't see them on each page they view, or every time to visit your website.
  • If you think visitors won't mind the interruption, place pop-ups in the centre of the page.
  • Always use a "sticky bar" to share details of a special offer
  • To lessen intrusion, place the pop-up on the side of the webpage, and finally;
  • Apply audience segmentation to the creation of pop-ups. This way, the messages will be targeted specifically to your demographic.

Pop-up ads are a fantastic way to share valuable information or encourage repeat visits to your site. For more advice on creating pop-ups your customers will respond to, call or email the experts at PupDigital today.

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The Client AGA Air Conditioning is a Canberra-based heating and cooling specialist delivering residential and commercial installation, servicing and maintenance across the ACT. AGA had built a strong reputation through quality workmanship, referrals and customer service. What it needed was a digital and acquisition sy stem that matched the standard of the business and its growth ambitions, one built to support serious, sustained investment rather than one-off campaign spend. PupDigital was engaged in a multi-year partnership to bring the website, conversion tracking and paid media strategy together into a single, connected acquisition system. The Challenge AGA was already a trusted local provider, but its website and advertising weren't working together as one system. The site needed to better communicate the quality of the business and give prospective customers a clearer path to enquire. At the same time, the advertising account needed to become far more commercially disciplined. 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The Results Following the website launch in May 2025, AGA's Google Ads performance improved substantially against the preceding period: Conversions up 14% 18.71% conversion rate, a 77% improvement Impressions up 22% Monthly ad investment scaled 300% across the partnership The standout result was conversion rate, not raw traffic volume. The campaigns didn't need to chase the largest possible audience. They became more focused on reaching people actively searching for AGA's services and directing them into a stronger website experience. The result was a materially higher percentage of visitors taking meaningful action, a more efficient acquisition system, not just a busier one. Broader Business Growth: A Harvey Norman Commercial Contract Throughout the partnership, AGA continued expanding its residential and commercial workload, including securing a significant commercial contract with Harvey Norman Commercial, alongside a growing volume of rough-in and fit-off work. 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Heating and cooling demand shifts significantly through the year, and customer intent moves quickly between installation, servicing, evaporative cooling and gas heating, each with different commercial value. Residential and commercial enquiries needed to be treated differently, and the business's own capacity to take on work had to be factored into how aggressively the account was scaled. It's the kind of complexity we see all the time working with trades, services, and building and construction businesses. It's genuinely where we do our best work. A broad, static campaign was never going to cut it here. The goal wasn't more traffic, it was a system that turned demand into real, valuable enquiries, built to scale as the business did. Our Strategic Approach 1. Rebuild the Conversion Experience The first priority was improving what happened after someone clicked an ad. PupDigital designed and developed a new website that better reflected AGA's positioning and made its services easier to understand, with: Clearer service pathways for residential and commercial customers Improved mobile usability and more direct calls to action Tighter alignment between ad campaigns and the landing pages they led to Simplified enquiry journeys The website was built as part of the acquisition strategy, not a separate branding exercise. Every campaign needed to send customers to a page that matched their intent and made the next step obvious. 2. Improve the Quality of the Data Better optimisation depends on measuring the right things. PupDigital strengthened conversion tracking across the site and ad account, including enquiry forms and tracked phone calls, and critically, stopped treating every conversion as equal. AGA's feedback made clear that phone calls often represented stronger opportunities than lower-intent web actions. 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Scaling Investment With Confidence As performance and enquiry consistency improved, PupDigital progressively scaled AGA's monthly ad investment, growing it 300% over the course of the partnership. This wasn't a case of increasing spend and hoping volume followed. Every scaling decision was informed by conversion performance, search demand, lead quality feedback, seasonal opportunity, and AGA's real capacity to service new work. Growth in ad spend only compounds when the wider system, website, tracking and campaign structure, can convert that investment efficiently. Building that system first is what allowed AGA to keep increasing investment with confidence, rather than second-guessing where the budget was going. 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Landing a contract like that comes down to the quality of AGA's work and reputation, not an ad campaign in isolation. What it does show is the broader trajectory of the business during our partnership, and the part PupDigital played in making sure AGA's digital presence could keep up with, and represent, that scale of growth. Winning commercial-level work like this means having a website and digital presence that looks and performs the part, and that's what we focused on throughout. The Business Impact The most valuable outcome wasn't any single campaign result or website metric. AGA moved from a fragmented digital setup to one connected system for attracting and converting customers, and gained: A website that reflects the quality and scale of the business Clear visibility over what's actually driving enquiries, not just what's easy to report Granular control over service-specific and seasonal demand Confidence to keep increasing investment because the system converts it efficiently A digital foundation that supported the business's move into larger commercial work This is the throughline in how PupDigital works with trades, services, and building and construction businesses: advertising is never managed in isolation. It's shaped by the type of work a business wants, the enquiries it actually values, and the capacity it has to deliver, because that alignment, not spend for its own sake, is what drives real business growth. Conclusion AGA Air Conditioning shows what's possible when a website, tracking and paid media strategy are treated as one connected system, working together, rather than three separate pieces bolted on side by side. PupDigital's role was never simply to drive more clicks. We rebuilt the customer journey, strengthened measurement around what actually matters, aligned campaigns with seasonal and commercial priorities, and built a structure capable of supporting significantly increased investment, investment AGA could scale with confidence because the underlying system was built to convert it. The result: a 77% improvement in Google Ads conversion rate, a 300% increase in monthly ad investment, and a stronger digital foundation that helped support AGA's move into larger-scale commercial work.
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