Video: Build Your List Faster With a Lightbox Web Form
New Features - Justin Premick - April 8th, 2008 - PermalinkAs attendees to our web form webinar know, getting website visitors to notice your form is a critical part of building your list.
Many people supplement their inline web forms with various types of popup and popover/hover-style forms.
Today, we’re happy to announce a new type of popover form that AWeber users can use to grab visitors’ attention and present them with an opportunity to subscribe.
Read on for more details and a short video.
Lightbox Forms: Focus The Reader’s Attention on Your Signup Offer
You may already be creating popover-style forms in AWeber that slide or fade into your web page. They’re a great alternative to traditional popups for getting people to consider signing up to your email newsletter.
The new lightbox forms further focus your visitors’ attention on your form by “greying out” the remainder of your page until the visitor either subscribes or closes the popover form (which is easy for them to do - they just click “close” or hit the ESC key on their keyboard).
We’ve seen examples of this form in action (and the results they produced) at marketing conferences that we attend, and wanted to offer you the same ability to focus subscribers on your signup forms.
See How Lightbox Forms Work: Watch a Short Video
To see how these forms work and how to create one, watch the 1:53 video below.
They work just like the other popover forms:
Plus by greying out the screen they draw the viewer’s attention to the signup form (since it’s the only thing not greyed out).
Pretty cool, right?
Not Using Popover Forms Now? Give Them a Shot!
If you aren’t at least testing popover/hover style forms with your site now, I strongly recommend you do so. While they don’t work for everyone, they have the potential to raise your opt-in rate significantly, meaning you get more subscribers from your existing website traffic.
Do you use popover forms now to build your list? Try the lightbox forms out against your current ones and see if they raise your opt-in rate!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 5:58 pm and is filed under New Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment response, trackback from your own site, or permalink.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I’m using one here - http://www.searchmarketingvideos.com/. Click on any of the videos and you can see one in action. I thought it was better for the user to trigger the action, rather than do it unexpectedly.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Intersting… but I’m still skeptical. The fade-in lightbox *looks* pretty, but pop-ups still have a cheese factor for me - and possibly my subscribers. I love everything aweber allows me to do with my list, but I’m going to need a better argument for using the maligned pop-up.
Thanks for the cool video - I love the multi media stuff you guys are doing!
April 9th, 2008 at 6:03 am
WOW! I was totally going to pay this guy like 60 bucks for this - i’m so glad aweber does it for me. Can’t wait to test it out.
My question is this.
When google comes to visit your site and you have this option installed, will they see your page or this optin offer?
Thanks!
April 9th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Great stuff. Pop ups are so effective but I really like this lightbox effect so will start trying it out.
June, the lightbox is displayed as Javascript and search engines can’t read Javascript so it will just ignore that line of code.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Hello,
I’m curious as to if anyone has tested the differences between the "pop up", "Pop In", or the exit pop up.
I’m finding a better response when using an exit strategy when the site visitor is leaving a page or site and gets the pop-up.
I, like some others, am not crazy about a pop-up being the first thing that… well pops up!
Or is it just me?
April 9th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I will be checking this feature. I have not tried pop-ups because of the negativity in the industry about SPAM and popups.
Maybe it is about time to try popup option.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
My company has run many tests with these style pop-ups for our clients…
In some markets they decreased the opt-in rate, in most they dramatically boosted it.
We did some eye-tracking studies and with the lightbox forms it forces your prospect to read the box instead of just closing it out right away.
It might also have a "wow" factor for site visitors, but there’s no way to really test that.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
This is so cool and easy to set up. I’m split testing it now at my blog:
http://rogerhaeske.com/?page_id=179
I was going to pay extra money to make such a lightbox creator. No more need for that.
Thanks so much for adding this
April 9th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Thanks for your answer Justin - I totally forgot about the javscript search engine connection - cheers bud!
April 10th, 2008 at 3:10 am
What would be cool is if you added a feature such as this:
When you set the form to appear on exit, you should be able to not display it when the visitor leaves the page by clicking your order link for example.
You should be able to configure - if the user leaves the page and goes to Page XYZ on my site - don’t display the form.
I’m not sure if this has already been done. Or if you can even show the Lightbox form on Exit.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Awesome. This is a great feature and saves us a LOT of time.
Thanks!
April 10th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Thanks all for your comments!
Jennifer,
The only argument I can offer is… for some people, popups, popover/hovers, lightbox forms, etc. work. For others, they don’t. All you can do is try it and see if it works for you. That’s why we offer split testing
Paul,
Exit popups may work better for your visitors. It’s all about the testing.
Re: not having forms appear immediately when someone goes to the page — you can put a delay on the popover/hover forms as well as the lightbox ones - so if you didn’t want people to see it for say, a minute after they were on your page, you could have it wait a minute before appearing.
B,
You can modify your order link to make the exit popup not appear when someone clicks that link.
So instead of looking like this:
<a href="http://www.example.com/order.html">
your order link will look like this:
<a href="http://www.example.com/order.html" onclick="exit=false">
April 10th, 2008 at 8:44 am
In regards to this comment:
You can modify your order link to make the exit popup not appear when someone clicks that link.
So instead of looking like this:
<a href="http://www.example.com/order.html">
your order link will look like this:
<a href="http://www.example.com/order.html" onclick="exit=false">
If you have say have 100+ links on each page this would be needed on all links yes?
April 10th, 2008 at 8:49 am
For those of you with a cringe factor about using the light box, how about using it to provide a free give-away to your readers?
I haven’t set up a light box form yet, though I think it’s a terrific way to offer your readers a gift that they will not want to miss!
Anyone else got creative ideas that we can all use to try out this wonderful new option provided by Aweber?
April 10th, 2008 at 8:54 am
I think the idea of redirect a user back to landing page after they fill in the opt-in form will reduce the percentage of verified subscriber (for those who use double opt-in method). Reason why is that, they might check their email later and happen to forget the verification email that were send earlier.
Normally, when we redirect user to thank you page we educate or inform them to immediately check their email for verification email thus increase the verification percentage.
What do you think?
April 10th, 2008 at 9:31 am
I also want to know will Google penalize you for using this new pop? I see many sites using it, so it is unclear to me.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:39 am
This is a great addition, Justin… I just have one request.
How about allowing this lightbox method to be used as an exit pop-up?
So, just create an option that - instead of showing up after x number of seconds - causes it to show up when they click away from your page/site.
I have some other ideas, too, but I think this one would be the most useful for now.
Thanks
April 10th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Hi Mike,
Not totally sure how we’d do that since unlike the exit popups we do, the lightbox form isn’t actually a new window that appears - it’s a part of whatever page you put it on (just like text/images/etc you might have on there).
So once someone closed their browser window, we wouldn’t have anything to put the form on.
Can you clarify how you see a "lightbox exit" form working? Thanks!
Andrew,
Potentially, yes. I suspect there’s something you/your web designer can do to save some time there but as I’m not a programmer myself I don’t know what that would be. Anyone else have an idea?
Munawar,
That’s a possibility, yes, and I don’t know that I’d always use the “redirect to landing page” option. Keep in mind that you don’t have to use that option — you can send your subscribers to a thank-you page just like on any other web form if you prefer that.
Victor,
I think you’re referring to Google’s rule about not putting popups on your AdWords landing pages — I don’t know whether or not that would apply to this type of form, but if you’re concerned, then don’t use it on your PPC landing pages. Just use an inline form on those and use the lightbox forms on say, your homepage or another page where you’re getting organic traffic.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Where can I access the form?/ I am an affiliate not yet a customer.
Kindly advise.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Ahh, the age old marketing dilemma. Do I use a tactic I don’t personally like (pop-ups) and live with the less-than-optimal results or do I put my feelings aside and test my way to the highest conversion rate possible?
Me, I NEVER assume what my customers may or may not like. (And no one likes advertising by the way)
I test every method to see if it works in my situation. Right now pop ups work better (up to 10 times better in some cases) than no pop ups AND there is no adverse reaction later after they start to read my valuable autoresponders.
But, like Jennifer no one has ever said, "Man I love your pop ups, I have to do business with you!"
So for my money you’d be crazy not to try this out!
April 10th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Great discussion.
To ensure subscribers know they need to look for the confirmation email, couldn’t you mention that on the lightbox sign up page?
This would negate the need for a thank you page and get them back to the content they came to see initially.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:31 am
I like this! i just am not sure where or what message to use on an e-commerce site such as mine(selling blankets). Any ideas anyone??
April 10th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Can HTML code be used for lightbox? Also, can custom fields be used?
Reply appreciated.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Michelle,
Great point, you could try that in the form headline. Let us know how it goes if you do!
John,
You’ll need to use the one-line JavaScript that we generate for the lightbox form to put it on your site (just like our other popover/hover style forms).
You can certainly add custom fields to this form just like any other form you create in your AWeber account (I just happened to not do so in the video).
April 10th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Jeremy,
I was curious if you intended that a visitor to your site could not watch any videos if they just closed the lightbox?
I’m a subscriber to QYDJ and I don’t know why somebody would NOT want to sign up or login but I wanted to make sure that’s what you meant to have happen.
Can’t wait for your Black Ink project. Just trying to figure out how I’ll get one of the 1,000 spots.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Justin, is there any reason why the lightbox appears at the top of the screen in IE but in the middle of the screen in Firefox?
This is a real problem for me as it goes behind my menu at the top when it appears.
Also, I have an image set to appear which comes out in Firefox but not it IE.
Have a look at this test page on both browsers and you’ll see what I mean:
http://www.eyeonspain.com/currency-card1.aspx
I’m really keen to use this facility so any people would really be appreciated. I’ve spent many hours on this now!
Thanks
Justin (the one in Spain)
April 10th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I’ve added it to one of my newest sales pages to try it out. I have a signup form at the bottom of the page. Being at the bottom, its not real obvious but my main goal is to get them to buy the product so this new technique should help.
I’ve kept the signup form at the bottom of the page so we shall see which one works best. I set mine to show up after 15 seconds - I don’t want to chase anyone off the page right away. You can check it out at http://www.sportycrabtraps.com/
Thanks for adding the improvements - this is why you guys are the best!
April 10th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Justin,
Thanks for asking - we did test the lightbox forms in IE prior to releasing this and hadn’t had any issues.
I took a look at your web page and the form on it and think the issue is being caused by something on your page.
I put your form onto a test page and it centered just fine in IE as well as Firefox.
We’re trying to find a way to update the lightbox feature to try to keep those other scripts you may have on there from affecting how the form displays in IE. You may also want to examine some of the other content/scripts on your page to see if any of them might be contributing to wider display issues.
Thanks for the heads-up!
April 10th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Thanks Justin
I will take a look and see what could be affecting it on out page.
However, I did notice on that on Roger’s site above http://rogerhaeske.com/?page_id=179 his lightbox is also aligned at the top in IE so this could become quite a common problem!
Anyway, I’ll take a look at my code and if I find anything which may be of interest I’ll post it here.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
I just finished reading your response to Justin and figured I better check my page in IE.
Sure enough when the lightbox is supposed to show (after 15-20 sec) my page is freezing up. It renders fine in FF but locks up my page in IE.
I am running a couple other scripts.
One for livehelp
one for my sliding "buy it now button"
and one for adsense.
Do you have any suggestions on how to get it to function properly on the IE page?
April 10th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Interesting:
I am replying to the 1st post from Jeremy Palmer.
Can anyone explain how it is done?
QUOTE
I’m using one here - http://www.searchmarketingvideos.com/. Click on any of the videos and you can see one in action. I thought it was better for the user to trigger the action, rather than do it unexpectedly.
UNQUOTE
Thanks/Regards
April 12th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Hy to all
I had, like expected, problems to open those pages you folks posted here and which are using this new form.
My IE browser always show an error message and I have to shut down the page. This happens with every form of pop up, so as with this one.
And here my question : Like me, millions are using pop up blockers because they DONT LIKE pop ups. So if you find now a way to bypass the settings of their browser, you can get around the technical hurdle, but they STILL dont like pop ups. Take that as a fact.
So what’s the conclusion to this - they will leave your page.
I use In-line forms ONLY, as I will let my visitors decide if they wanna benefit from my offer or not. YES, opt in rate is perhaps lower, but like with everything - it’s quality what matters.
If you place a in-line form below a page, like at this one here
http://www.how2resolve.com/insidewa.htm
you can be sure that who sign in is really interested to get what you offer, has read through your page.
I maybe redesign the place and put a special in-line form at the top with a additional fast mover bonus for who opt in over this one, have to think about this.
My point is, use your experience and creativity to get Leads over the form placement and the offer is way better then over a pop up.
Ultimately the only pop up that really don’t annoy me is the exit pop up, anyhow I never decided to opt in to one of them.
I love AWeber and this service and I like that you try to improve your offer and options, but ultimately it’s the customer which decide what we should do on our pages.
April 12th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I am usually skeptical about site pop-ups, but needed a change onsite to increase signups, and WOW! This has worked. Its only been 20 hours since I tried the new Lightbox web form, and I have seen 45% sign-up rate. I understand more time is needed to asses the real success, but just wanted to say Thanks!
If I see any drastic changes I will let you all know. One thing I did do is set it to come up after 20 seconds, as the average time on my site is 28 seconds (I know, thats a whole other area that needs work). Just saying to check your stats for average time on site to set the lightbox to come in!
Have a great weekend everyone!
April 13th, 2008 at 12:37 am
How can I include graphics to have visitors subscribe to a newsletter or get a free eBook?
April 14th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Debbie,
I just checked out your website -"sportycrabtraps.com" it’s a great sales page. How well has it been converting for you? Seems like an excellent product for a fishing niche.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:46 am
[…] Video: Build Your List Faster With a Lightbox Web Form - Email Marketing Tips on the AWeber Blog Read More Post a Comment […]
April 14th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Rich
Thats a good question. Its a new site and new page (less than one month old) in a very narrow seasonal niche so I think its doing well.
Sales conversions are at 3% so far this month.
Optin rate went from 1.6% when I had the optin box only at the bottom of page to being 6.2% using the pop in box.
I tried the grey box feature - which is really cool but it was freezing the page in IE. It worked great in FF.
I would loose my IE customers if I left it up so I switched it to the pop in optin box instead.
I need to experiment to see which script is interfering with the grey box feature. I’m running livehelp and a floating buy button so it could be either of those.
I may test it out on a client page - we are starting a new campaign this week for her newest instructional DVD
I may put it on her other sales page http://www.ladybugwreaths.com/bows/
and see if I can get it to work there.
As for sportycrabtraps.com being a good product for a fishing niche, you’re right and I’ve been planning to create a fishing hub site but haven’t taken the time to do that yet.
We are still market testing this product since its such a narrow niche.
BTW - I checked out your site - Loved the Craigs list Gold Digger Ad you posted. Glad I’m a "plain" girl - I wouldn’t want her worries - LOL. If I can offer a suggestion to you… take the spammy comments out of your comment section - it will look much better.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Good job aweber. I actually used this style popup on a few of my ebay stores to promote my products. I assume you guys are using something like the jquery javascript routines.
I will have to test to see how well this works for getting visitors to register before viewing the rest of the pages on the site.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
This can easily be the best thing ffrom Aweber.But, maybe a little too agressive.I checked one of the comments site and almost run away.So pople will sign or you will lose visitor…. To think twice of the effects.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
How can I implement on a wordpress blog website?
April 21st, 2008 at 8:21 am
Ling,
You’ll need to edit the appropriate file (probably header.php) in your WordPress theme and place the lightbox form JavaScript underneath the opening <body> tag in your HTML.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:53 am
Hi there,
This looks like a great feature which I’m considering implementing on my blog. My question is will this form keep displaying when people re-visit my blog or have already subscribed to my newsletter?
I would be OK for it popping up for first time visitors. However, I can see existing readers of my blog getting increasingly frustrated if they have to close this form everytime I they want to read new posts.
Tom
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:18 am
Tom,
As with all over the pop-up and pop-over forms we offer, you can set the lightbox to appear once per visitor, or once per every X number of days so repeat visitors don’t begin to see it as an obstacle to accessing your site.
Check out the Knowledge Base article on pop ups for instructions.
Keep in mind that not everyone who would potentially subscribe to your list will do so on their first visit, so you’ll want to be sure to have some in-line forms on your site as well to cover more bases.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Hello,
What I would like to know is how the person at Search marketing videos does to trigger the form with a click and
how he can recognize his subscribers. There is something that says at the top "Already subscribed to our free newsletter? Login"
You click on login and you’re redirected to a window that asks for the visitors email address.
I think this is really awesome. I would like to do the same thing to restrict access to certain parts of my website and blog.
Also is there a way to make the pop-up or lightbox appear only once even if you place the script on all the pages of your site. This way no matter what your entrance page is anyone is asked for the subscription.
Thanks!
April 29th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Laura,
Re: putting a lightbox form on every page…
You can set any type of pop-up (e.g. pop-over / lightbox) form to appear only once per visitor.
If you put that form on every page of your website, as long as your visitor has cookies enabled, it will display only once, no matter how many pages they view in their visit, or for as long as that cookie remains stored on their system. And I think the cookie is set to expire something like two years after its stored.
The problem is, if cookies are not enabled in their browser, they will see that form each and every time on every page they view.
Because of this, my recommendation is to not put the pop-up form on every page of your site, as it would effectively make the site unusable for the minority of visitors who disable cookies.
That is, unless you or a developer adds some JavaScript to your site that checks for cookies before having the browser load the form.
Hope this helps.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
[…] Build Your List Faster […]