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Do you enjoy encountering online pop-ups? Most likely not. Nobody wants to be continually interrupted while browsing a website. Opening a website in the UK exposes you to an obstacle course of pop-ups that ask you to accept cookies, sign up for a mailing list, and interact with a chatbot. Some even have autoplay videos with loud music, slowing down the site.
Pop-ups are the antithesis of a positive user experience (UX) in the tech world. Not only are they annoying, but they also tend to be manipulative. Closing them down intentionally becomes a challenge. Sometimes, opting out of their prompts requires navigating to a new site. After encountering hundreds of these notifications, you’re more likely to skim through them and search for ways to get rid of them quickly, even if it means sacrificing your privacy.
The root of these unpleasant design choices lies in the multibillion-dollar digital advertising sector, which still serves as the default method of supporting online content. Pop-up windows were originally created to appease advertisers.
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to interview Ethan Zuckerman, the man who invented pop-up windows. Zuckerman, now a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was part of the founding team of Tripod.com in the late 90s. Tripod hosted user-generated content supported by advertising. However, advertisers were apprehensive about having their ads displayed next to potentially conflicting content. Zuckerman’s solution was to separate the two into different windows, allowing ads to appear in front of the page without being directly on it. “Your homepage is in one window, the ad is in a different window,” he explained. “Everyone will be happy.” Spoiler alert: no one is happy.
From an advertiser’s perspective, it was a stroke of genius. Their ads became more attention-grabbing. However, internet users loathed them. This divergence in perspective can be applied to website design as a whole. Cluttered and unappealing pages often result from prioritizing ad space. In contrast, clean and user-friendly sites may not appeal to advertisers or contain the text that search engine algorithms prefer.
Even after browsers introduced automatic ad-blockers, pop-ups continue to proliferate. That’s because they have evolved to be overlapping elements within the window you’re currently viewing.
My least favorite type of pop-up is the cookie consent pop-up. Cookies are code snippets that allow websites to track your online activity and collect data. They serve as the foundation for personalized advertisements, explaining why you often see ads for products you recently viewed or purchased. If permitted, cookies will follow you everywhere, monitoring the websites you visit, the products you buy, your IP address, and your geographic location.
In recent years, there has been a pushback against this invasive tracking. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires companies to inform internet users when their activity is being tracked and give them the option to opt out. However, companies oddly chose to implement this through pop-ups. Most of these pop-ups are designed to make it easy for users to accept tracking and cumbersome to opt out.
Last month, the Information Commissioner’s Office and Competition and Markets Authority in the UK announced their intention to examine website designs, including pop-ups, to assess their negative impact. A complete ban on pop-ups seems unlikely. However, before you can read the ICO’s thoughts, you’ll need to click consent on the cookie pop-up that appears first.
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