Internet and Businesses Articles

First Generation - The Popup

Popups, if you're somehow, strangely, not familiar with the term, are those little windows that open when you visit certain sites.

Popups are secondary browser windows that are opened up using JavaScript code. The properties of this new browser window are set in such a fashion that the new window does not have a address bar, status bar or the menu.

Until about a few years ago the popup was considered to be the biggest breakthrough in advertising on the web.

When they were first introduced they were a great success and click-through rates went through the roof.

Exit the banner ad - enter the popup.

Web marketers could interrupt whatever a visitor was viewing, by launching a secondary window on top of the first to draw attention to his advertisement or opt-in list or any other item that he wished to get the attention to.

After a while like most good marketing tools, popups started getting abused. Popups would open secondary popups and eventually by just visiting page that has a single popup in it, you would end up with a barrage of say about 15-20 popups. This was exploited by unscrupulous marketers to the fullest, especially those hawking porn sites.

Of course, webmasters who were in tune with the sentiment of visitors, soon began to use cookies to track if the popup was already shown and ensure it was not shown more than once per visitor.

Frustrated visitors soon began complaining about popups.

Popups are your problem? - Get a popup blocker.

Looking at the need of website visitors, software companies soon came up with popup blocking software. These applications read all the code that's going to the browser and if they find any JavaScript in the page code that's trying to open a window, BAM, it deletes that part of code. So Bye Bye popup!

Generation Two - The PopUnder

Not to be left behind, web marketers came up with another version, the popunder, which still launched a secondary window but placed it below the primary window. In most cases, the visitor didn't even notice this popunder until they closed the primary window.

Of course this was less intrusive, but a pain nonetheless and you don't get an award for guessing what happened next.

Yes you guessed right, the popup blockers soon started blocking popunders as well.

Generation Next - Enter Hover Ads

What the beejeezus are Hover Ads? They are floating ads that popup blockers can't stop.

The technology that creates Hover Ads is not new. In fact, it’s been available to web designers for at least 2 years now as DHTML (that's Dynamic HTML to those who don't know).

These ads cannot be seen by older browsers like Internet Explorer 3.0. But since most netizens are using browsers (IE 4.0 and above) that are capable of displaying this code this type of advertising has started enjoying a rise in usage.

Hover Ads are DHTML layers which can be selectively moved and displayed over the primary page that's being displayed. The basic code is still JavaScript, but since a new window is not being opened, the popup blockers can't figure out that an advertisement is being displayed.

These layers can be animated, moved around, made to appear once per session, shown after a delay, etc.

So that makes you ask "Why should I switch from regular popups to Hover Ads?"

The one and only compelling reason. Popups can be blocked! Hover Ads can't.

So the bottom line is, if you use popups as a part of your online marketing strategy you're losing out on a lot of potential revenue, coz what they can't cant see they can't buy!

Some statistics that make Hover Ads a compelling technology to use:

* The Alexa Toolbar can now block pop ups (10,000,000 Users not seeing your AD).
* The Netscape 7.0 Browser has a built in popup blocker( almost 52 million users never seeing your popup ad).
* Earthlink provides its users with a popup blocker( prospects who cant see your ad:5,000,000.
* AOL released version 8.0 with Popup Blocking capabilities. (Total Subscribers: 35,000,000).

Bottom line: 40 million customers never see your advertisement!

Hover Ads, on the other hand cannot be stopped by blocking software. Their technology is regular JavaScript that runs well in all modern environments, so they are relatively safe to deploy on your site.

"So how can I add Hover Ads On my Website?"

If you are looking for a free way of doing this then there are freely available JavaScript snippets that you can put to use on your site today without buying any fancy software.

A sample of code can be obtained from CodeLifter.com

The drawback here is that you would need in depth knowledge of JavaScript coding, which not many people know about.

Another approach is to use high end HTML editors like Dreamweaver which have DHTML scripts included under the "Layers" menu. Then again, Dreamweaver is an expensive software.

Any other easier option you ask?

One software that quickly automates the creation of Hover Ads, using a simple 3 step interface is the Hover Ad generator.

The Hover Ads created using this software can be fully customized and are very professional looking.

I especially like the opt-in style Hover Ads which lets your prospects sign up for your opt-in list by simply clicking a button. You subsequently receive a mail with their name and email-id.

I'll let you look up the other four styles on your own.

Summary

If you use popups on your website, chances are pretty good that they are being screened away by some software or another. Perhaps even by your visitor's ISP - without any active attempts on your visitor's part to block them. You'll need to do something about this situation and soon.

"So, what choices do I have?"

1. Do nothing. Pray that your content is good enough to attract visitors.

2. Visit CodeLifter to get your FREE layer generator script. You will be stuck with one style, though, if you just cut paste. If you know JavaScript you can modify it as per your liking.

3. Use Dreamweaver or your HTML editor, if it has layers support.

4. Check out Hover Ad Generator . They offer a FREE trial.

Satyajeet Hattangadi is the Owner of Novasoft Inc, a software solutions provider, who specialize is affordable customized software solutions. http://www.novasoft-inc.com/