alt Hacker NewsI started an e-commerce brand on a Shopify site. I swore to myself I would never put up one of those stupid things that pops up "Someone bought X product an hour ago!" messages in the corner of the screen.
I ended up trying it. Boosted conversion rate meaningfully. Worth the price I pay in mild self-loathing.
Chesterton's popup, I guess.
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This reminds me the clickbail title and thumbnail on YouTube. One of my favorite channel apologized for it but explained that the difference compared to NOT doing this is phenomenal and they can't afford stopping.
Out of all the annoying website things, always thought that one was pretty tame. Almost feels like a spiritual successor to the visit-o-meter. Obviously as long is it doesn't put a (1) on my tab or makes a noise and doesn't steal mouse focus.
Genuine curiosity - is the pop up vaguely factual or sort of randomly generated?
Is there a law of society / business where everything we hate is on average something that made the society able to function ? it's similar to chesterton but it's not a fence, it's the tree we live on.
I actually kind of like those, though I've always been suspicious that those events are fabricated because that's the sort of thing marketing people would do.
This is not in the same sport let alone league as the things demoed in OP.
That's the real problem. Being aggressively annoying works. Dark patterns work. Popups that grab your attention work. Flashing text conveying urgency works. Thumbnails with open-mouth YouTube-face work. Moving buttons around so people mis-click works. Tiny [X] buttons that make people accidentally click an ad work. You're never going to convince someone to stop doing something that is making them money.