Exit Intent Popups: More Conversions for Online Shops

Exit Intent Popups (also called Exit Intent Layer) are dialog windows that are displayed to the visitor shortly before leaving a website. They differ from other popups primarily in the trigger. To anticipate this: If you want to increase conversions and at the same time offer the visitor a comfortable user experience, exit intent popups are the means of choice.

Online shops can thus win back customers who have abandoned their shopping cart, generate newsletter subscribers and increase the Average Time on Site – without annoying the visitor. On the contrary, if the Exit Intent Popups are backed by intelligent software that personalizes the content and tonality of the message, the visitor will perceive the contact as a service. The result is a win-win situation for both the online shop and the shop visitor.

How do Exit Intent Popups work?

Everybody knows it: You click through a website, consume the content and unexpectedly get annoyed by a popup. In contrast to other popup triggers, Exit Intent Popups avoid this annoying factor. In order to understand the difference to other types of popups and to become aware of the advantages, we take a closer look at the different triggers.

Mouse-Out-Trigger

The Mouse-Out-Trigger is the trigger for Exit Intent Popups. It only triggers the popup when the visitor wants to leave the website. There are different triggers depending on the device. The simple reason for this is that there is no mouse cursor on smartphones, for example. Technologies on desktops and laptops detect when the mouse cursor moves and is about to close the tab or window. On mobile devices, however, the trigger can be the back button or a tab and app switch.

Time-Delay-Trigger

In contrast, the Time-Delay-Trigger activates the popup after a previously defined time. This trigger mechanism is intended to ensure that the visitor has a certain amount of time to look at the website. However, the user experience is greatly impaired by this trigger. From the user’s point of view, the Time-Delay-Trigger is often a reason to leave the online shop itself.

Scroll-Trigger

The Scroll-Trigger, on the other hand, displays the popup when the visitor of a website scrolls to a previously defined point. When this point is reached, each website operator can decide for himself. This trigger ensures that the visitor has shown enough interest before a popup is displayed. However, this trigger mechanism does not take the user experience into account either. For example, if a visitor looks at the products of an online shop and scrolls down further, a popup triggered by the scroll trigger will most likely disturb him.

What do I need Exit Intent Popups for?

The application area for Exit Intent Popups is diverse and always depends on the objective. Depending on whether it is an online shop or a magazine/blog, website operators use the Exit Intent Technology for different purposes.

1. More Conversions: Increase Sales

Without exception, every online shop is confronted with visitors who add products to the shopping cart without completing the purchase. With the Exit Intent technology these shopping cart abandoners can be converted into paying customers. By using the technology, online shops achieve more conversions without annoying the visitor and thus taking the risk that the visitor leaves the website.

Since shopping cart abandoners belong to a segment that is characterized by very high buying interest, Exit Intent Popups perform particularly well. This is where popups with personalized content can be used to convince the cart abandoner to make a purchase after all. Depending on the shop visitor and the reason for abandonment, this can be, for example, an individual voucher code or the offering of telephone, whatsapp and e-mail services.

2. Expanding existing customer base: Acquire Newsletter subscribers

Whether online shop, travel agency or online magazine: newsletter subscribers play a special role for many websites when it comes to customer loyalty. Generating them often turns out to be difficult. On the one hand, you want to reach as many visitors as possible in order to win them as leads and convert them into customers. On the other hand, you don’t want to disturb the user experience by displaying a popup in the middle of the buying experience, which might lead to an annoyed abandoner. Again, Exit Intent Popups offer a risk-free solution that allows website operators to collect email addresses without annoying visitors.

To ensure the best possible results, the content should also be personalized when generating newsletter subscribers, because a voucher code is not always the right incentive. Since visitors differ greatly from one another, incentives must be based on individual needs. Sometimes it is the fear of missing something (“FOMO”) or simply a suitable information that can be used to attract a newsletter subscriber.

3. Content Marketing: Higher time on site and more interactions

In addition, Exit Intent Popups can refer to a wide variety of content that the visitor then consumes. This can be e-books, blog articles or even prize competition. This not only increases the length of stay, but also the engagement. Positive effects can be seen at various points:

Better ranking: The longer a visitor is on a website and the more interactions take place, the more likely the page is to rank higher on Google. This is related to the fact that Google assumes that the search intention has been satisfied if the visitor stays longer and interacts more.

More satisfied customers: The more interesting and especially relevant content your visitors consume, the more likely they are to remember your website positively. This increases the probability the visitor will return again and thus become an existing customer.

Mobile Device compliant Exit Intent technology

Online shopping on mobile devices is becoming more and more accepted, as numerous statistics prove. In 2019, 58% of German online shoppers made at least one purchase on a mobile device. This trend is also visible in the share of mobile transactions and in global mobile commerce sales: For example, the number of mobile transactions increased from 40% (2017) to 48% (2018) within one year.

Reason enough to focus on technologies that support the trend towards mobile commerce in order to reach as many shopping cart and page abandoners as possible. What does this mean for exit intent popups?

Instead of the mouse movement (Mouse-Out-Trigger), the back button or a tab or app change signals that the visitor is about to leave the shopping cart filled.

Popups must be compatible on all devices – whether desktop, smartphone or tablet. In concrete terms, this means compatible buttons and responsive popup sizes.

How often should Popups be displayed?

Even though Exit Intent popups only appear when the visitor leaves the site, some thought needs to be given to the frequency popups.

For example, if it is an existing customer, you can strongly expect that he will return to the shop within a short period of time. Exit Intent Popups should therefore not appear too often, regardless of whether they generate newsletter subscribers, prevent shopping cart abandonment or refer to interesting content. In this way, you ensure a discrete contact that strengthens the user experience.

In the background, customer-centric Exit Intent technologies prevent visitors from being shown the same content over and over again. In addition, regardless of the content, no more than one popup should appear within 24 hours, as otherwise the contacting might appear annoying, which of course must be prevented.

Exit intent technology allows website operators to use targeted popups without being annoying. If the content is also customized to the individual needs of the visitor, the conversion rate can be increased significantly. The condition for this is an Exit Intent technology combined with a intelligent algorithm.

The uptain® ALGORITHMUS uses intelligent data processing to determine important customer characteristics, the individual reason for abandonment and incentives customized to the customer. On the basis of this information, the visitor – whether it is a cart abandoner or a potential newsletter subscriber – is sent an Exit Intent Popup that is exactly customized.