[Sigia-l] how user-initiated pop-ups affect the user experience

[Laurie Gray]

Anecdotally, there have been a number of times that I have had to
CTRL+click to bypass Google's blocker on legitimate popups.

There have been a few times that I have been involved with website
testing that used popups that were user initiated. One of them involved
a computer hardware manufacturer's site. Popups were accepted without a
problem when the popup content contained pertinent information to the
page topic e.g. the user clicked to learn more detail on a product, etc.
I don't have precise numbers, but I can say that none of the
participants batted an eye. The only caveat I can present is that this
testing was a couple of years ago, when the use of advertising popups
was not as widespread as it is today.

Laurie Gray
Senior Usability Specialist
HumanCentric Technologies, Inc.


-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Katherine Lumb
Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 12:26 PM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] how user-initiated pop-ups affect the user experience

Hello all:

I'm putting together a POV on the use of pop-ups to display relevant
information within a process path.

I need to know:

1. Up-to-the-minute numbers on user attitudes toward *non-advertising*
pop-ups. I've got tons of information on how much people hate pop-up and
-under ads... but are they as frustrated with "legitimate" pop-ups in
other contexts? Is there any evidence of transference; that is, is
annoyance with pop-up ads affecting users' tolerance for pop-ups in
legitimate contexts? Is there any qualitative/quantitative data on how
user-initiated pop-ups affect the user experience?

2. Is any research available on what happens when users w/ pop-up
blockers try to navigate sites w/ pop-ups intergrated into the process
path, or use tools/features that are pop-ups? Google, Yahoo, etc. say
their pop-up blockers spare "legitimate" pop-up windows, but has anyone
heard of pop-up blockers rendering tools or processes unusable? What
percentage of pop-up blocking tools are not intelligent enough to
discriminate between legitimate, user-initiated pop-ups and ads? If so,
are there any trends yet as to how sites are handling this growing
issue? 

I'll be grateful if anyone can point me to good sources for this data.
I'll share my POV document when it's completed.

Thanks much!

K

Katherine K. Lumb   Experience Planner
p 646.756.8976    f 646.756.8951 klumb at semaphorepartners.com

........................................................................
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Semaphore Partners    www.semaphorepartners.com


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