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Create an Exit Popup

Lisa Fockens Updated by Lisa Fockens

Exit popups are a crucial digital marketing tool that can convert potential exits into valuable interactions. They offer benefits like increased engagement, valuable feedback, and improved conversion rates.

Depending on your business goals, you can use them to showcase discounts, collect valuable feedback, promote newsletter subscriptions, or offer free consultations or trials. The following guide will explain how to set up and optimize exit popups using Wisepops on both desktop and mobile devices.

Setting up an exit popup with Wisepops

To configure your popup to display upon exit, follow these steps:

  1. Open your desired popup and navigate to the display rules section.
  2. Go to the Trigger section
  3. Select the 'On Exit' trigger

And voila! Your exit popup is set up.

How do exit popups work?

On desktops

On desktop devices, we use mouse movement tracking to identify potential exits. When users move their cursor toward the browser's controls area (highlighted in the screenshot below), we interpret this action as an indication of their intention to leave, thereby triggering your popup.

To preview your exit popup on your website, simply replicate the mouse trajectory as if you were on the verge of closing your tab or browser. Here's a practical illustration:

On mobile devices

Detecting exit intent on mobiles involves two primary signals.

Signal 1: Back Button Pressing

Mobile users often leave a website by pressing the "back" button until they return to the previous site (such as Google).

Our built-in mobile exit intent script triggers popups when visitors press the back button or scroll up slightly. To set up popups that trigger only when the back button is pressed, follow these steps:

  • Open your popup in the builder.
  • Navigate to the Triggers section.
  • Select On Exit and uncheck the box labeled "Activate scroll up trigger on mobile & tablets".
Note: Chrome on Android requires an interaction on the page for the back button override to work. In other words, if a visitor presses the back button immediately after landing on your domain for the first time, the exit campaign won't appear. We recommend activating the scroll up gesture detection to increase the chances of displaying your campaign.
Signal 2: Scroll Up

On most smartphones, including iPhones and Android phones, the URL bar disappears when you scroll down. To type in a new URL and leave the page, you have to scroll up slightly. This is another signal we use to trigger exit popups.

The trick here is to find the right balance for scroll sensitivity. If it's too sensitive, the popup will trigger as soon as the user scrolls up a bit. If it's not sensitive enough, your popup may never appear.

Watch this quick demo to see how scroll up and back button pressing can help detect and anticipate exits on mobile devices:

Note: Exit campaigns don't trigger for web views, such as the Facebook browser. In-app browsers always display the navigation bar, making the scroll up gesture irrelevant. It's also impossible to override the back button behavior in these cases.

How to optimize the precision of your exit-intent popup

To optimize the precision of your exit-intent popup, we advise harnessing visitor insights and utilizing data from Google Analytics. Specifically, determine the average number of pageviews per session before users exit your site.

Leverage our trigger delay functionality to fine-tune the timing of your popup's appearance to align with this data. For example, if your analytics reveal that users typically visit around 5 pages on your site before exiting, you might set the delay to trigger after 3 or 4 pages. This tactic will enhance the precision of your exit intent trigger, thereby boosting its effectiveness.

For an even more sophisticated approach, consider examining the 'average time on page' metric. This additional layer of insight can help fine-tune your strategy, ensuring your popups are timed perfectly to capture users' attention just as they're preparing to leave.

.For more tips and advice on increasing conversions, check out our article about exit popups.

If you have any questions, please get in touch.

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