It happens more and more that I read an article on a website, like 404 media just a minute ago, and in the middle of reading a "subscribe to our mailing list" popup steals my focus.
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It happens more and more that I read an article on a website, like 404 media just a minute ago, and in the middle of reading a "subscribe to our mailing list" popup steals my focus. And I find myself more and more just closing the page instead of exiting the popup and continuing to read. So like... idk, neat but unnecessary way to lose a reader I guess. I'm not even mad about it. I just honestly don't have the patience or time for this anymore. I'll probably click another link if it comes across my feed here and then it'll steal my focus again and I'll remember and close the page without finishing the article. I just don't seem to care enough these days.
@talon Popups are generally annoying. When I had an all-ads site, it had 0 popups, and that absurd site actually made a little money. If it had popups, I doubt anyone would bother with it. These just tick me off. "I just got here! Why would anyone in my situation subscribe?" I agree. They are a nuisance very capable of leading to lost revenue.
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It happens more and more that I read an article on a website, like 404 media just a minute ago, and in the middle of reading a "subscribe to our mailing list" popup steals my focus. And I find myself more and more just closing the page instead of exiting the popup and continuing to read. So like... idk, neat but unnecessary way to lose a reader I guess. I'm not even mad about it. I just honestly don't have the patience or time for this anymore. I'll probably click another link if it comes across my feed here and then it'll steal my focus again and I'll remember and close the page without finishing the article. I just don't seem to care enough these days.
@talon @WeirdWriter That's why I love themarginalian.org
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I don't know how this happens visually but with a screen reader... imagine you're reading an article, then the popup shows up, and behind the scenes someone unlocked your mouse wheel and flung the page all over the place and scrolled all the way into next year. So you close the popup or you jump back up and now you have to figure out where you were because pressing escape or another sensible key you'd expect to close some kind of dialog or popup doesn't put your focus back where it was, I think in this case it put me right at the very bottom of the page beyond the copyright info. So yeah nah thanks. I think I'm good.
@talon the better option would definitely be to have the invitation to subscribe at the end of the article, which makes way more sense in terms of user experience.
I have no data to determine whether it would impact subscriber acquisition negatively, but I cannot fathom stopping mid article to go subscribe to a newsletter. -
It happens more and more that I read an article on a website, like 404 media just a minute ago, and in the middle of reading a "subscribe to our mailing list" popup steals my focus. And I find myself more and more just closing the page instead of exiting the popup and continuing to read. So like... idk, neat but unnecessary way to lose a reader I guess. I'm not even mad about it. I just honestly don't have the patience or time for this anymore. I'll probably click another link if it comes across my feed here and then it'll steal my focus again and I'll remember and close the page without finishing the article. I just don't seem to care enough these days.
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I don't know how this happens visually but with a screen reader... imagine you're reading an article, then the popup shows up, and behind the scenes someone unlocked your mouse wheel and flung the page all over the place and scrolled all the way into next year. So you close the popup or you jump back up and now you have to figure out where you were because pressing escape or another sensible key you'd expect to close some kind of dialog or popup doesn't put your focus back where it was, I think in this case it put me right at the very bottom of the page beyond the copyright info. So yeah nah thanks. I think I'm good.
I agree! Most browsers have "reader view" which can be a useful hack to avoid popups. Not a perfect tool as it sometimes obscures poorly-accessible content, but an option nonetheless.
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It happens more and more that I read an article on a website, like 404 media just a minute ago, and in the middle of reading a "subscribe to our mailing list" popup steals my focus. And I find myself more and more just closing the page instead of exiting the popup and continuing to read. So like... idk, neat but unnecessary way to lose a reader I guess. I'm not even mad about it. I just honestly don't have the patience or time for this anymore. I'll probably click another link if it comes across my feed here and then it'll steal my focus again and I'll remember and close the page without finishing the article. I just don't seem to care enough these days.
@talon I browse with my hand on the escape button, as this usually works stopping such pop ups (newsletter, google login, etc). However lately, more and more sites are starting to ignore it
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It happens more and more that I read an article on a website, like 404 media just a minute ago, and in the middle of reading a "subscribe to our mailing list" popup steals my focus. And I find myself more and more just closing the page instead of exiting the popup and continuing to read. So like... idk, neat but unnecessary way to lose a reader I guess. I'm not even mad about it. I just honestly don't have the patience or time for this anymore. I'll probably click another link if it comes across my feed here and then it'll steal my focus again and I'll remember and close the page without finishing the article. I just don't seem to care enough these days.
I also notice that a request to allow tracking cookies is generally followed by a request to sign up or pay for access
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@dhamlinmusic yeah, but that also breaks a whole bunch of other pages, and then I'd have to go and enable it for the pages I'd want it on for and disable it for the ones I don't, and honestly at that point I could also just stop reading the page and move on. I know I should probably keep it off, but I use a lot of pages that require JS, so it might be counterproductive.
@talon @dhamlinmusic I agree that broadly turning off JS breaks too many things but I turn it off for specific websites - most often news websites. The best part is that modern frameworks mean that this often gives a much cleaner experience than with JS on because ads and pop-overs don't load in. Lastly, depending on your browser you can generally do it natively within the browser (no extension needed).
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@talon @dhamlinmusic I agree that broadly turning off JS breaks too many things but I turn it off for specific websites - most often news websites. The best part is that modern frameworks mean that this often gives a much cleaner experience than with JS on because ads and pop-overs don't load in. Lastly, depending on your browser you can generally do it natively within the browser (no extension needed).
@talon @dhamlinmusic just to add, on my phone with Firefox I've installed NoScript but default it to off and then just turn it on for certain websites. Not perfect by any measure and I agree with the sentiment about it being tiring to be endlessly nagged.
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