I'm more getting at the facy that this is a link to reading an article
Not a link to a who-can-get rid of the popup the best contest
We're the people that build these systems and this is about design and usability and when you open a can of cola you would be upset if it were worms because it said cola on the front
I wonder how many hours of peoples lives are lost to trying to control the computer to get it to do what it said it was doing on the tin, rather than what is in the interests of the politics or the profit
I correlate it to the same level as clickbait and I'm sure their are other humans out their that get the same taste in their mouth when using the internet, and then go on to do other things instead, which means that they are potentially missing out on learning something vaulable in the future, because of an impression your design made in the past.
People should think more about the psycology of design and what the goal of the message of the content their sending is and try not to give into logic like this:
I publish my papers online, they are academic and educational; I want more money. I add ads or political messages onto the website that was before purely educational because it will help me aquire money. You are no longer selling a delicious can of cola but a terrible can of worms
Stock firefox, default tracking protection. I received a single nag about free articles that was easily dismissed. One first-party subscription ad at the bottom of the right column, another at the bottom of the article. No other ads of any kind.
I got two. For those that don't know, a good portion of these nagging modal windows play nice in the sense that pressing ESC closes them - good to be able to instantly dismiss them without having to hunt for the close button. The first one I saw could be closed with ESC, the second one required clicking "Close".
I wonder if anybody at Harpers ever looks at the numbers to decide if the popups should stay? They should have a minimum success rate that, if signups drop below, they get rid of the popups.
I'm not sure what you mean. For every thousand times it's displayed, how many times does the person viewing the page just close it and not act on the offer? If it's less than some very low number (maybe 30%), don't show it.
Or maybe show it after the article has been scrolled all the way to the bottom. It's a long article and at that point you know the reader might be interested in seeing more from you.
You're assuming Harpers is optimizing for not nagging people. That is not the case at all. They are optimizing for collecting email addresses. If you do not want to enter an email address and bounce they lost nothing, you weren't going to provide an email anyway.
