Quick Tip: Engage Your Visitors with a Promotional Pop-Up

Engagement is all the rage these days and it’s easy to see why. Making a connection with an online visitor to your website or social media account is a good way to inspire a desired reaction from them.

Whether it be a comment on the latest picture you posted on Instagram or enticing them to purchase your store’s newest item, starting off with positive engagement is the way to do it.

One of the neatest ways to increase engagement on your Squarespace website is through their Promotional Pop-Up feature.

A quick warning

A promotional pop-up is just what the name suggests: a window that appears on a visitor’s screen after they arrive at your website. The pop-up is at its best when it gives a visitor a good deal on your service/product or encourages them to learn more about what you offer on your site.

The pop-up is at its worst when it does just about anything else. Using them requires walking a fine line. How many times have you visited a website and been met with an annoying barrage of pop-ups advertising unwanted services, subscriptions, or notices about ad-blockers?

I think we’ve all been there 🙄

You’ve got to be really careful when using a pop-up. No matter what it offers, it’s a distraction from the main reason why someone’s visiting your site. It’s up to you to make sure that you’re giving them a good distraction.

Using the Promotional Pop-Up tool

Let’s get to it. In the main Squarespace menu, go to Marketing and then Promotional Pop-Up. You’ll be met with a stripped-down editor window giving you many design options for your pop-up, as well as a preview of what visitors will see on your website. First things first, if you want to use this feature, then turn on the Display Pop-Up toggle at the top of the menu.

The rest of the options include a way to change the layout of the pop-up, what action your visitors can take with it, what content it holds, how and when it appears on your site, and a style editor.

Your layout choices include several different options, from small windows that appear in the corner of your website all the way up to a full screen window that appears over the entire site. I’ll be going with a small window.

The Action menu gives you two options: have the pop-up act as a newsletter sign-up screen or encourage a visitor to click a button that’ll lead them to wherever you choose. This can be a shopping page for your latest product or a sign-up page for a new course you’re offering.

The Content menu is as it suggests. Here you’ll be able to include headline and body text that’ll appear in the window.

The Display & Timing menu lets you fine tune where and when the pop-up appears. Do you want it to show up on a particular page? Should it appear after a certain amount of time? When should the visitor see it again?

The Style Editor menu is similar to the site-wide style editor. Here you can adjust the appearance of the pop-up’s text, buttons, and animation.

When you have everything dialed in how you want it, exit the menu and let the pop-up do its work.

I love the Promotional Pop-Up feature for both its usefulness and how good it looks. Squarespace has clearly put a lot of effort into making this feature look great and work even better.

As I mentioned before, if you choose to use a pop-up, then please make sure there’s a good and clear intention behind it. There are few quicker ways to annoy your visitor’s these days than by interrupting their time with something you think is more important.

The Promotional Pop-Up can be a powerful tool to help increase engagement and/or sales, but it needs to serve your visitors first.

Pop it up, cats.