Complete Guide to Exit Intent Popups with 16 High Converting Examples

Exit intent popups can help you sell more product, grow your email list, and keep people on your website longer. Today we’re diving into how they work, when you should use them, best practices, and providing high converting examples of 8 different types of exit intent popups. 

How Exit Intent Works and How an Exit Intent Popup Can Grow Your Business

How Does Exit Intent Work

Exit intent works by monitoring the movement of the user’s cursor and triggers a popup when they show intent of leaving your website, either by closing the browser tab or returning to the search page.

Intent on mobile can be triggered by one of the following actions:

• Scroll up instead of down
• Scroll through a certain percentage of the page
• Press the back button
• Switch between tabs
• Leave the page sitting idle
• Stay on the page for a specified length of time

When to Use Exit Intent Popups

Exit intent popups are used to either get the user to stay on your website longer or provide them with enough incentive to give you their email address, allowing you to nurture them back to your website. 

Exit intent popups should not be used if the user has already provided you with their information before the popup is triggered. If you do, you run the risk of annoying the website visitor or frustrating them if they made a purchase and then a popup offers them a discount. 

Do Exit Intent Popups Work?

For most websites, you can expect an increase of 5-10% in people providing their email addresses before they leave your website. Popups are not a magic bullet for conversions, they are a last ditch effort to get an email address from a website visitor. 

Best Practices for Exit intent Popups 

Have a Goal

You need to be clear on what the main goal of your exit intent popup is.  Why? Because you can only measure the effectiveness of something against a goal. How effective is your popup at achieving your goal?

Your goal might be to get them to complete their purchase. Download a resource. Provide an email address. Check out a new product category. Gather information through a quick survey.

Many of these might include getting an email address. But the email address is not the main goal. Does the email address transfer to action? Is your messaging communicating value to people that will achieve the end goal? Having a huge email list full of people who will not take action doesn’t provide value to your company. 

Elements of a Great Exit Intent Popup 

Targeting – Who is the message for? And how should you speak to them and where should the popup appear to get them to achieve your end goal. Popups can be targeted based on specific URLs, customer segment, etc. 

Copy – An exit intent popup should be powerful. Craft a headline that grabs your website visitor’s attention. Keep the description short and sweet and communicate value.

Call to Action (CTA) – Your call to action should be clear and concise and tell the user exactly what you want them to do.

Image – Use an on brand image to grab website visitor’s attention. 

Different popups for mobile and desktop – Like other website elements, not everything on your desktop website will look right on mobile. If you use the same popup for all visitor, you might end up with a popup people can’t close on mobile and hurt your conversion rates. Make sure you have separate popups for desktop and mobile visitors.

A/B Test – Test, test, and test again. All of the above items can and should be A/B tested. 

Things You Shouldn’t Do with Exit Intent Popups

Unable to close or camouflaging the X – Your goal is not to get an email at all costs. Making a popup impossible to close unless the form is filled out will only frustrate website visitors and hurt your brand.

Conversion Shaming – We’ve all seen the popups where you have to click on something such as “I don’t like free stuff” or “No, thanks, I don’t need to work out” or “No, thanks, I don’t want to be healthy”. Conversion shaming is bullying people into signing up for your email list. No one likes a bully.

Asking for too much information – How much information do you really need from a person? You only need their email address or phone number for SMS. Keep forms to as few fields as possible. The more information you ask for, the fewer people you will have to complete the form. 

Irrelevant Offers – Your offer needs to be relevant to the intended audience. Consumers have expectations for personalization these days. Displaying a popup that has nothing to do with their actions on your site is a good way to get them to bounce forever. 

16 Examples of High Converting Exit Intent Popups

Complete Your Purchase Offer

Incentivize a website visitor to complete their purchase.

Project Repeat – Project Repeat’s cart abandonment popup entices shoppers to complete their custom quilt purchase at an even better price than what was just displayed in their shopping cart. The word instant helps conversions as the coupon code is automatically added to their shopping cart. They don’t have to leave your website for their inbox to find the code.

Rothy’s – Rothy’s cart abandonment popup does several things at once. It entices people to check out right away with $20 off their purchase. It grabs their email so the website visitor can be added to abandoned cart email flows. The popup also collects first-party data to be used for email personalization by asking what the website visitor is interested in.

Save Your Cart for Later

Asking your website visitor to make a purchase when they are getting ready to leave your website is a big ask. Instead, you can simply ask to save their cart for them, i.e. “Hey, I know you’re not ready to purchase but how about we save your cart in case you change your mind”.

Death Wish Coffee – Death Wish Coffee exit intent form slays. It combines the soft ask of we’ll save your cart for you while creating a sense of urgency to complete their purchase with a coupon code only good for Today.

Nordstrom – If you’ve ever shopped at Nordstrom online you know their product catalog is huge and unless you write down a product or save the link changes of finding a specific product again is low. Save My Cart exit intent popups work really well for stores with large product offerings, if you only sell one or two products customers may not see the value of saving their cart.

Offer Free Shipping

Have you ever checked out on a website only to find shipping was more than you thought? We’ve all been there. Offering free shipping to bouncing buyers allows you to capture people who are bouncing solely because of shipping costs.

Globe In: As shipping costs have increased, fewer stores are offering free shipping. Globe In offers free shipping to those getting ready to bounce from the check-out page. The benefit of an exit intent popup offering free shipping on the check out page is some shoppers are willing to pay for shipping, and this is only shown to people abandoning the page.

TOMS – Again, not everyone offers free shipping. TOMS offers free shipping to those abandoning their website. Sometimes a shipping discount of $6-12, will convert better than a percentage discount coupon worth more. Why? If you offer a 10% discount, which is about $6-12 on your Average Order Value (AOV), and then charge the same for shipping, buyers are unlikely to think they are getting a deal and may even feel cheated.

Offer a Discount

Most website visitors are not ready to purchase yet, but they know they will be in the future and will often sign up for a discount for later use. This allows you to nurture them towards a purchase. When offering discounts, consider how often you offer discounts and whether the website visitor is going to think what you’re offering is actually a good discount. If you have 20-25% off sales listed on your social channels, website visitors are unlikely to convert if you offer 10% off their purchase. Make it worth it!

Chubbies – If your website offers free shipping, a percentage discount can be great to push bouncing visitors to convert or at least give you their email address. Chubbies offers a 20% discount to website visitors.

Carbon 38 is an apparel brand which rarely offers discounts, and when they do, they are often dependent on people making a high total order value purchase. Therefore, Carbon 38‘s 15% discount seems pretty amazing to website visitors.

Ask Visitors to Enroll in Your Loyalty Program

Loyalty program members are more likely to make a purchase, more likely to become repeat customers, and 46% have increased purchases with a company specifically because they offer loyalty points and rewards. Loyalty works.

Madewell is doing everything right with this insider program exit intent popup. It clearly explains member perks and allows you to use Apple or Facebook to sign up in a click. Allowing registrations through social networks makes signing up a breeze.

Offer a Giveaway

Most people visiting your website are not ready to buy right now. Especially if you have a higher ticket item. A discount might not interest them because they know they’ll forget about it by the time they are ready to purchase. However an exit intent giveaway popup offers them the chance to get soemthing for free and gets the person on your email list so you can nurture them. Win/win.

The best thing about this giveaway popup, from Alastin Skincare, is the recurring giveaway. By entering to win, visitors are entered into a continuous weekly giveaway. This gives A-List subscribers a reason to stay subscribed. If you choose a recurring giveaway, you’ll want to continually remind subscribers they are entered. You can achieve that by listing last week’s winners in your weekly emails.

Skull Candy is doubling down on this exit intent popup with a discount and a giveaway. Some people might not care about one or the other. The dual offer casts a bigger net and allows you to capture more people.

Point Them Towards Other Products or Category

You don’t always have to offer a discount or reward. Often keeping people on your website can be as easy as saying, “Hey, you should check this out too!”

Patagonia is almost synonymous with sustainability and quality. They attract people interested in the same. Letting people know they also sell used items interests 3 kinds of buyers – 1) Those who care about sustainabilty and the earth’s resources. 2) Those who appreciate the quality of patagonia items and know used will still meet their needs. 3) Those who don’t want to spend the money on a new item.

This popup from backpacks has one goal, keep the customer on the website and hope something peaks their interest. Triggering a popup based on the category or product the website visitor was viewing accomplishes the goal.

Newsletter Subscription

Who wants to sign up for your newsletter? More people than you think.

 Poopourri is doing to things right here. 1) nailing the humor their brand is know for. Who doesn’t want to “Join the Potty”. 2) Offering access to super secret sales – exclusivity almost always wins.

Entice them with a Free Resource

Be helpful. Think about how you can help solve the immediate needs of your website visitor. What do they want/need? To make a purchase? Eventually. But right now they are likely in the research stage or may not even know what they need. Meet their immediate need with a resource and you’ll have the opportunity to nurture them to a purchase.

Image looking online for an engagement ring and feeling overwhlemed with the options and not knowing where to start. Enter the Rookie’s guide from Long’s Fine Jewelers. Most men are probably feeling like a rookie at this point and are thankful for the help. As long as your resources addresses the customer’s pain point it will convert.

Snack Nation‘s offer isn’t quite free, you still have to pay for shipping, but a quick look at the pictue and you know you’re getting far more than $9.95 in snacks. You also get to sample the product. Snacks delivered straight to your door — who wouldn’t want that.

Test it!

Hopefully we gave you a few ideas of how exit intent popups can be used on your website to capture more visitors. As with everything though, test it, A/B test different asks and offers and see what allows you to capture the most bouncing website visitors.