What is a Popup?
Popups are windows that suddenly pop up in the foreground of a visual interface.
If you’re one of those who still think that popups are evil, then it’s time for you to change your mind.
There are many proofs that they work.
You just have to know how to use them. If you use the same popup on every page, your conversion rates may be low.
The problem with generic popup campaigns is that they’re not optimized for different pages on your site.
Imagine if you could show your popup to just the people who are most likely to buy from you.
That means you can focus on converting your audience rather than wasting money showing popups to every visitor.
When Should You Use Popups?
Popups should only appear on pages that hint at specific types of content or offers that may be of interest to the visitor.
There is a common fear among digital marketers that displaying popups can cause visitors to leave and will create a bad user experience.
But the truth is that popups can be highly effective and lead to high-quality leads and conversion.
Yes, you read that right, popups convert, but only when they are used at the right time and place.
Any pop-up you display on your website should be relevant to the visitor and presented creatively and amusingly.
Often, the short attention span of your website visitors is not because they are uninterested in your content or product but because they have no idea how to navigate the site or where to begin.
In such occasions navigational popups can be the best solution to enhance your users' exprience. Just take a look at the example below:
Moreover, when readers and viewers are focused on a particular task, they are prone to something known as "inattention blindness", meaning that they fail to notice something obvious.
This is exactly when you need popups to interrupt them and, with an eye-catching overlay and call to action, grab their attention and help them to navigate to your desired destination.
What are the Popup Use Cases?
Now, we'll discuss some of the most effective popup use cases and give you different examples on how to use them to achieve the best results.
Here are some of the best popup use cases you can take advantage of for your e-commerce website.
1. Informational Popups
2. Gathering Email Popups
3. Cookie Popups
4. User Login Popups
5. Lead Magnet Popups
6. Limited Time Promotion Popups
7. Product Recommendation Popups
8. Cart Abandonment Popups
9. Testimonial Popups
10. Feedback Rating Popups
11. Phone Call Popups
12. Coming Soon Popups
13. Social Media Popups
1. Informational Popups
Not every visitor to your website is familiar with your brand or product. In this regard, you should act proactive and keep them informed of the latest updates and products.
Asking how? Using informational popups.
Informational popups are simple messages that you can send to your store customers.
They can be purely informational, like sending out a notice about changing your store hours, or they can be linked to a call-to-action, such as offering a discount on an item when the customer purchases another product.
2. Email List Popups
Email popups are the most used types to gather emails addresses from visitors.
The main goal is to convert targeted visitors into email leads and give the best user experience.
This will give you the chance to connect with them on a personal level and offer your products/services that suit their needs.
There are many ways that you can use a popup to collect emails from prospects. You can:
- Offer Free Shipping
- Promote Free Webinar Invitation
- Offer Free E-Book
Using multistep popups help increase sales conversions because they allow you to connect with your customers in real time.
This way, by seting up a success popup to pop after your initial popup, you ensure the recipients that the process is successful and direct them to the right place.
- Use Gamification in Your Popup
Using spin the wheel strategy for your popup can gamify and incentivize your campaign and result in a great number of sales and conversions.
- Offer Instant Discount Code
You can also use a full screen popup to capture your users' attention and offer them an instant discount code to make them share their email address immediately with you.
3. Cookie Popups
To comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ePrivacy Directive (ePR), EU, and California cookie laws, you must store cookie consents from your visitors.
Cookies consent refers to the interaction between your site visitors and a consent management platform (CMP) that allows them to choose whether or not to allow cookies to collect their personal information.
In most cases cookie popups are the best solutions to inform your users that you save their data.
Here is a good example of how Mercedes’s homepage show cases their cookie popup:
You can use many GDPR cookie consent tools, including the Popup Cookie Creator, a free tool that allows you to quickly create Popups for your website.
4. User Login Popups
Similar to gathering email popups, user login popup will also gather email data from prospective customers.
Additionally, you will improve the user experience (UX) by providing them an easy login.
This will simply enroll using the popup and they can continue browsing the site.
5. Lead Magnet Popups
A lead magnet is a product or service that you give away in return for a piece of information such as email addresses or phone numbers.
Offer Freebies:
Schedule a Meeting:
Promote New Products with Free Shipping:
6. Limited Time Promotion Popups
One of the best ways to induce a sense of urgency in customers is to use limited-time promotions.
You just have to know what triggers your audience the most and then use it as a plan to persuade them to interact with your popup.
You can easily create a promotion Black Friday popup or Halloween with an easy to use popup builder and schedule your campaign between specific dates.
7. Product Recommendation Popups
If you display your products in a way that appeals to customers, it is more likely that they will buy additional items.
Product recommendation popup is a great way to promote your seasonal marketing campaigns and give your visitors new ideas.
Using this popup use case you can increase the amount of money your customers spend on your store.
If the customer clicks "no", they still have the option of picking one of their items or adding something else. If they select "yes", then an overlay that shows product recommendations will be displayed over the page.
8. Cart Abandonment Popups
your visitors need to know why they should choose you over your competitors so you better offer your potential customers value before they leave.
Cart abandonment popups are great way to prevent your visitors from navigating away.
You can give a discount or coupon code upon subscription.
You can prevent cart abandonment masterfully with exit popup technology and display your win-back offer at the right time to boost your revenue
According to MOZ, the average eCommerce site loses about 70% of its potential sales due to abandoned carts (or roughly $14 billion).
For many reasons, shoppers leave their carts and never come back. This is a very serious problem that all marketers encounter.
You can take a look at our post for cart abandonment statistics for more information.
9. Testimonial Popups
Nine out of 10 people trust what a customer says about a business more than what that business says about itself.
That's the power of social proof!
A testimonial is an authentic recommendation from a customer or client.
It's a type of marketing content that can build trust and credibility for your brand, as well as humanize it.
Content with a personal touch will be more believable than content that is purely factual.
Customers want to know that you're genuine and they'll respond better to testimonial and review popups that show the human side.
10. Feedback Rating Popups
In order to get a better insight into customer opinions, you should ask customers how likely they are to recommend your product and service to their friends. This way you can get valuable data and emails.
You can also use the Yes/No Questions on the feedback popup.
Asking yes/no questions to visitors allows them to answer quickly and easily, which encourages them to provide feedback.
This type of question makes it easier for the visitor to respond because they do not have to explain why they like something or dislike something.
You can collect post-purchase feedback from your customers with popups as well.
11. Phone Call Popups
Even if some visitors aren't ready to make a purchase yet, that doesn't mean they aren't interested.
You can gather phone numbers with an eye-catching SMS popup, reach out to them via phone or SMS, and give them a special offer to persuade them to take action.
Alternatively, you can let visitors call you directly via pop-ups to close more sales quickly.
A user-friendly phone call popup lets customers type in their phone numbers, request a callback, and not have to leave your site.
12. Coming Soon Popups
Popups can be a great way to announce a product or feature that will be launched soon.
This will ensure that more people see the announcement and it helps with building a customer base.
When creating a popup for your website, it’s important to remember that different types of popups work for different businesses and websites.
Take a look at this example for items not being in stock yet. You can gather emails to inform customers when the stock is available.
The visitor has a chance to get notified when their favorite item is back in stock, and the business has a chance to grow their email lists.
13. Social Media Popups
You can drive traffic from your website to your social media platforms and increase your user engagements with popups.
You can direct users to follow you on Instagram, link to your Tiktok account, or even Twitter.
This way your users will feel more connected to your brand, ultimately becoming loyal customers.
Conclusion
There are many different types of popups that can be used to increase your conversion rate and it all depends on what you want to achieve.
You can learn more about popup designs best practices and sign up for our services if you need help creating your own popups today!
There are still dozens of other popup use cases you can make use of.
Popupsmart makes it easy to choose the right popup type for your needs, and no coding skills are required.
So why not try it out and give your e-commerce website a boost in sales and conversion?
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Timing is Important in Popup Engagement?
Having the popup appear at the right time makes a difference between a high or low level of engagement.
By displaying a popup too soon, you can annoy your visitors by interrupting their experience on a page and most likely ignoring your popup without even looking at it.
Are Popups Really Effective?
Yes, they are. A well-designed popup with witty and sincere language eliminates distractions, make your customers interact more, and greatly simplifies the decision process.
You can also take a look at these related blog posts and lean more about popups:
- How to Improve Your Organic and Google Ads CTR With 11 Tips
- Best Popup Overlay Examples to Boost Conversion
- Best Popup Message Examples To Get Inspired
Frequently Asked Questions
What is pop-up used for?
A pop-up is used to grab a visitor’s attention at the exact moment it matters and guide them toward a specific action, such as subscribing to a newsletter, claiming a discount, downloading a resource, completing a purchase, or getting help navigating the site. In conversion-focused marketing, popups work best when they’re targeted and relevant—shown based on behavior (like exit intent, time on page, scroll depth, or cart value) rather than displayed to everyone—so you can present a timely offer (e.g., “Get 10% off before you go”), reduce confusion (e.g., “Not sure where to start? Choose your goal”), or accelerate decision-making (e.g., “Limited stock” alerts). Done well, a popup isn’t just an interruption; it’s a helpful prompt that prevents visitors from missing something valuable and keeps them moving toward the page’s intended outcome.
When to use popups?
You should use popups when they highlight something urgent, important, or easy to overlook—especially when a visitor is focused on a task and may not notice key information (“inattention blindness”). Practical moments include: when someone is about to leave (exit-intent popups offering a last-minute incentive or helpful resource), when they’ve shown engagement (after scrolling 50–70% of a blog post, offer a related checklist or email course), when they hesitate (after spending time on pricing pages, offer a demo or live chat), and when they’re close to converting (in-cart or checkout popups that clarify shipping, returns, or provide a small incentive). The guiding rule is relevance: match the popup to the page’s intent and the visitor’s behavior, limit frequency so it doesn’t feel spammy, and make the call to action clear (e.g., “Get the guide,” “Book a demo,” “Continue shopping”), so the popup improves the experience instead of disrupting it.
What are the benefits of a pop-up?
The benefits of a pop-up (on a website) are that it’s flexible, fast to deploy, and highly measurable, letting you present targeted messages without redesigning your entire site. Popups can increase conversions by surfacing the right offer at the right time (discounts, lead magnets, free trials, webinar signups), capturing leads you’d otherwise lose, and guiding visitors who don’t know what to do next with navigational prompts. They also support testing and optimization: you can A/B test headlines, timing, triggers, and offers to learn what your audience responds to, then iterate quickly. From a business perspective, popups can lower acquisition costs by improving the conversion rate of existing traffic, segment leads based on what they clicked or selected, and personalize experiences across different pages (blog vs. product vs. pricing) so you’re not relying on one generic message for everyone.
Do I need a license to do a pop-up?
Whether you need a license to do a pop-up depends on what kind of “pop-up” you mean: for website popups, you typically don’t need a special license, but you may need to comply with privacy and marketing laws (for example, GDPR/UK GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, and email rules like CAN-SPAM) by getting proper consent for tracking cookies, clearly explaining how you’ll use data, and honoring unsubscribe requests. For physical pop-up shops or pop-up events, requirements vary by city/state/country and by what you sell, but commonly include a general business license, a temporary retail permit, sales tax registration, venue permission/lease agreement, signage permits, and health permits if you serve food or beverages; you may also need liability insurance and fire/code compliance for the space. The safest approach is to check your local government’s small business or licensing office and the venue’s rules well before launching, because “temporary” doesn’t always mean “permit-free.”
What is Popup use cases template?
A “Popup use cases template” is a planning framework you can copy and fill in to design popups that match specific pages, audiences, and conversion goals instead of using one generic campaign everywhere. A solid template typically includes: the use case name (e.g., “Exit-intent discount on cart page”), goal (lead capture, purchase, demo booking, navigation help), target audience/segment (new vs. returning visitors, traffic source, product interest), trigger (exit intent, scroll depth, time delay, click, inactivity), placement and format (modal, slide-in, top bar), offer and value proposition (what the visitor gets and why it matters), message and CTA copy, page(s) where it appears, frequency/capping rules (how often per session/day), success metrics (conversion rate, revenue per visitor, email opt-in rate), and an A/B testing plan (variants to test and hypotheses). Using a template keeps popups relevant, reduces annoyance, and makes it easier to scale campaigns across different parts of your site while staying consistent with your brand and user experience.
What is Free popup use cases?
“Free popup use cases” usually refers to no-cost ideas and scenarios you can implement with basic popup tools or built-in features, focusing on smart targeting rather than expensive customization. Examples include: newsletter signup popups on blog posts after a reader scrolls, a simple exit-intent popup offering a best-selling guide or discount code, a “new visitor” welcome popup that directs people to top categories, a cart-abandonment reminder with shipping/returns reassurance, a back-in-stock or price-drop signup popup, a content upgrade popup (download a checklist related to the article), a webinar/event registration popup, a quick survey or feedback popup (“What stopped you from buying today?”), a cookie/consent and preferences prompt, and navigational popups that help visitors choose a path (“I’m here to: learn / compare / buy”). The key to making these free use cases effective is to tailor each popup to the page intent and visitor behavior, keep the copy short and benefit-driven, and set frequency limits so the experience feels helpful rather than repetitive.
