Would the fact that you ran an online promotional campaign with a discount voucher, from the PC Mech Live Ustream feed - which coincided with the (re)implementation of the pop-over form, on the day that the increases began, have anything to do with it by any chance? Is it all accomplished by using the pop-over alone; or with the assistance of other marketing campaigns?

Is that the Seesmic plugin you're using for recording video comments?

Not really, because that Ustream promo I did did not promote the weekly email list at all.

Are you guys getting paid to promote Aweber’s popover form? I noticed Darren Rowse published a very similar chart and waxed lyrical about the wonders of the Aweber popover. I was toying with the idea of using the system…but am now a bit dubious about signing up.

No, David, I’m not getting paid. I wish I was.

I’m not really sure why you would be hesitant to try it because two bloggers talked about the benefits. Seems to me that’d be a good thing.

Sorry, I guess I was just being paranoid, and the fact that Darren is listed as your #1 Friend in the sidebar made me a bit curious, especially as your Aweber link has some kind of ID that looks like an affiliate type link in the URL. A lot of bloggers talked about Entrecard and agloco and other wonders…didn’t mean they were worth trying though…

Yes, my Aweber link is an affiliate link and I’m sure Darren does the same. But, neither he nor I would have any credibility if we typed stuff only for the buck. I think you will find universal respect for Aweber as a company, though.

Okay, that’s good to know

I found a plugin that allows one to create editable and nicely controlled popovers from MaxBlogPress (although that requires an email subscription and inserts a text link unless you upgrade to the Pro version). Are there any others out there that do the same job?

There probably are, but I’m not familiar with them off hand. The pop-over form I used was built into the Aweber system.

The last one I used (my prior version) was programmed manually. You can probably search Google and find code for creating them yourself. It is basically just a DIV layer, hidden by CSS, that uses javascript to bring into view. IF you know a little code, its not hard to do it yourself.

Thanks for your insight. I sent your blog over to my team so they can see how implementing the pop over will help them.

So far as I am concerned this is only one side of the stats, are you paying for it on the opposite side? How many visitors are clicking off the page without reading anything because of the pop? I do a lot of usability testing and its very well established that when a user hits a site they’re looking for something specific and nothing throws them off or frustrates them more than an unexpected detour like a popup/over. Obviously the goals of your site may be different and you probably just need to balance the trade off in loss of the users who are frustrated with the need to build the email list.

I guess my thinking is that all too often people look at things like this very one sided and often forget the level of unspoken frustration that these sorts of design changes can have.

Its my experience that I never sign up for a mailing list through a form like that. I have to find something of value on the site first and so if its my first visit (or first in awhile) I’ve not been given a chance to evaluate the value of one more email in my inbox. I find that the links at the end of a post are far more enticing. This of course only applies to me.

If you have time to invest in it I’d be very curious what the opposite impact to your bounce rate has been. I doubt its huge as most will click through it but I bet theres a trackable change in that aspect however minor it may be.

It’s hard to tell, Doug. According to Analytics, there might be a slight 1-2% uptick in bounce rate, but it is negligible. And the traffic to the site has most certainly not decreased.

I think what it comes down to is this:
(1) This site needs to make money, build lists and operate as a business or it will go offline.
(2) The mailing list is important to that.
(3) I have a 7-day cookie on the pop-over so as not to annoy repeat visitors.
(4) While you click the links at the bottom of the post, my stats show that you’re in the minority.
(5) Affect on traffic has been none and I’ve received zero complaints.

So, at the end of the day, I do what I gotta do. This isn’t a charity. And I believe I’m being very respectful in the way I have it set up.

I would totally agree, just curious what the stats said about it. It seems sometimes to me that many bloggers and web developers take actions like this without weighing both sides or measuring the effects of various changes like this. There’s very much a fad/trend following effect on the web that ends up with sites eliminating core users because of not considering all the effects.

I figured that it wasn’t a big effect and the upswing in subscribers looks like it was very much worth the addition. I’d love to hear general stats at some point about whether or not the upswing in email subs actually produces additional income (or meets whatever other goal you have set for it) or not.