Hi @rich-brooks

A floating side box is not a bad thing – but a pop-up box over the content you came to view, is a very bad thing. 

Not looking at this from a developer view but from a consumer view, I usually just blip out and don’t bother with the website content, at all.  I hate those sign-up boxes that hide the page content.  AND I don’t sign up for those. 

At Forbes they have a whole page before the content that you have to click through, then you have to click the title of the article before viewing the content.  I tweeted and G+’d the 2013 Investment Guide from there this morning and almost dropped the whole thing, because 2 clicks to get to the article is two clicks too many.

No, a sign-up box should be there but not so obtrusive that the customer/viewer has to deal with it in order to view the information.

Eileen 

It’s a little annoying, but statistically they work much better than just having a sign-up on the side. You can always include a sidebar sign-up widgets AND the pop-up.

If it exists (and I’m not sure it does), I’d suggest adding an email signature box that only pops up if the person who visits is not subscribed yet. That way, the box only pops up one time (if the person opts to signs up).

Kathy Bernard
Getajobtips.com

@rich-brooks Pop up boxes – very annoying and extreamly effective. They will raise you optin rate by 7%! One should have a side bar optin also. In my experience pop up should be disabled when you’ve signed up for the list as long as you don’t clear the cookie.MailChimp has its own pop ups sub forms you can use or you can use a plugin for WP.Goin to add a pop up to my site today because of this discussion.

I, too, find pop up windows extremely annoying but do believe they are effective. What I have seen on The Economist’s page is a subscription box that floats up from the bottom of the page to approx 1/4 of the page. So it’s hiding a part of the article but not everything (and especially not the beginning of the text) and it goes away again after a certain time without clicking.

@rich-brooks I’m not a big fan of the pop-up boxes; however, after reading through the responses, they do seem to be effective. 

My issue is when, even though you’re a subscriber, the box still appears. SME’s pop-up isn’t so bad, while Bulldog Reporter’s pop-up blocks the content until you close it (I’m a subscriber).  I agree with @kathybernard about having a pop-up and sidebar because after reading an article or two, I may decide it’s worth a subscription.Here’s an interesting article: Opt-in Email Newsletter Popup Best Practices for 2012 - http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2012/01/opt-in-email-newsletter-popup-best-practices-landing-page-optimization-shoemoney/

We’ve tested using a slide-in  and not using it several times. Invariably, the number of signups goes up when there is slide in.  We don’t make ours cover the entire screen though. We have it positioned to one side of the pages.  There is also a separate signup option in at least one place on every page of the site, so once the signup slide-in closes there’s still a way to signup for the email list.