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I work in web dev and it kills me every time to set up this stupid UX.
Honestly, this biggest problem is these damn pop ups actually work for conversions. If people would stop filling the pop up forms on the sites they would fade to obscurity but for every annoyed dev who closes the pop up asking for an email, there is 10 normies who give up their email or create an account or complete a purchase.
Static email sign up forms in the header or footer of a site are lucky to see a 1% conversion. The average pop up conversion rate in 2024 was 11%.. The highest preforming pop ups in this analysis had a 43% conversion rate, that is INSANE for web conversions. And those stupid gamification spin the wheel pop ups that I personally hate the most, have a 13% conversion.
“tHiS wEbSiTe Is BeTtEr In ThE aPp!”
Bold of you to assume people know the difference between an app and a website.
The App:
One WebBrowser component.
A straw to slurp all your location and contact data.
Annoying notifications.
There was a booth at my farmers market (I know) that bragged about how they can turn any website into a app.
And I wanted to (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻) their table
“STICK TO GROWING TURNIPS YOU FUCKING RAT BASTARDS”
I was astonished when I first learned that hardly anyone enters web addresses anymore, then it made sense when I realized that almost everyone browses on their phones and uses the app versions of whatever they scroll, which is really only going to be somewhere between three and a dozen sites anyway, people don’t just “surf the internet” anymore, they scroll content aggregators and social media feeds. People hate making choices or having control, they want to turn off their mind and just be fed sensations and experiences.
Because of this most people don’t really know HOW websites and networks work, when I explain things like how cookies work, how to refresh a page, how to navigate to specific parts of a website by changing the address, how to search the web for alternatives, etc. I get looked at like either an annoying nerd or some kind of wizard.
Missing step of CAPTCHA asking you to click on motorcycle images, only for you to fail at least twice
Me just trying to fucking pay a utility bill:
“Honey, could you come in here and tell me if this looks like the edge of crosswalk just visible behind that car? I have one chance left and can’t mess this up!”
Oh my. This was my yesterday trying to sign up on Meetup.
First it was click crosswalks. Then stairs. Then motorcycles. Then the sign up failed. 5 minutes of my life so I can RSVP some stupid ass event.
What a shit experience.
Or writing the exact characters in the obfuscated image only to be told it’s not what you seen.
Lifehack: Use the audio prompt and just put in ANY similar number of random words you hear. It fuzzes AI training data at same time. Works every time.
What’s literally traumatizing are the scumbag sites that wait a little bit before showing you an email popup.
Like, I’ll be reading something and then BLAM! I’m immediately taken out of my focus and have to, for the 1 billionth time (and counting!), refuse to give them an email address.
Fuck everyone who encourages this bullshit. Fuck everyone who actually gives them emails. It’s likely an extremely low percentage of users, but that’s all that it takes to ruin things for the rest of us.
Scumbag sites like that are actively contributing to lowering everyone’s standards and making us get used to a ‘new normal.’
it’s likely an extremely low percentage of users
its not, its actually a pretty high percentage, the conversion rate of pop up email form to static forms in the footer or header are like night and day. Static email sign up forms are lucky to see a 1% conversion. The average pop up conversion rate for emails pop up with incentive (like a discount code) in 2024 was 7%.
If people stopped filling out the pop up forms they would go away, but people still continue to bite so they live on.
They forgot the last step: delete the promo emails from the company you never signed up for
The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.
If you give some information to any for profit company you can be sure they will use that information and if you decline the permits they are going to keep asking until you eventually miss click.
For example if you fill shopping basked, but abandon it after filling your information they can contact you once as “a friendly reminder” about the cart and they can keep that information legally for few weeks until they must anomize the data. And if you at some point clicked something where you accept the marketing permits they can keep that information “as long as the company thinks it is reasonable to keep and/or revelant information for their operation.”
Source: Im part of the problem. Atleast for now.
The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.
Note: there are a lot of services now that will sneakily get your signature/acceptance without you realizing it. The latest one I noticed was at the pharmacy, where you normally sign for your prescription, it now has one or more options that pop up before you sign for your actual medicine, and if you read what you’re signing you see it’s permission to text you special offers and promotions.
ALWAYS READ WHAT YOU ACCEPT, IF YOU DON’T KNOW, DON’T SIGN IT. If you’re worried or pressured, just ask someone. We can’t keep discarding our rights and privacy because we’re worried about people in line behind us or worried how much time you’re going to lose at least SKIMMING the user licence agreement. You can save yourself a lot of junk and hassle if you at least make sure the accept buttons and signature fields are actually for what you want.
26: unsubscribe from the email promos that the site automatically signed you up to even though you didn’t check the Subscribe to newsletter box, which requires you to log into the site and find and uncheck all the boxes in the “contact settings”.
26a: Note that they will simply add more categories over time and helpfully subscribe you to each of the new ones whether you ever visit the site again or not.
Unsubscribe? You mean report spam
Unsubscribe is for real suckers only. When someone clicks that I always imagine some goon elbowing the guy next to him and saying something like, “look Keith we got another” unsubscriber" over here!" With a big goofy grin on his face.
If the email is from a legitimate business, they must have an unsubscribe button and it has to work. They get a little time before they are required to process the request, 10 days in the US, but I’ve usually seen it take effect immediately.
Don’t click the unsubscribe button in an actual spam email.
Not sure what you mean about legitimate businesses. I don’t really trust any of them anymore. Those unsubscribe pages are still full of traps and they often don’t keep you off new mailings that they can say you didn’t explicitly unsubscribe from because this is a new newsletter that they thought you might be interested in. If I didn’t opt-in, it’s spam, and I’d like to think that maybe me labeling it as such might contribute to filters picking it up for someone else too.
exactly. if i didnt purposefully subscribe to it, its SPAM.
Report spam? You mean deactivate single-use email.
Not sure I’d prefer the easy internet of the past though. I hope no one forgets websites used to store your password in plain text and just sent it to you if you forgot. Oh and password length? Any 4 characters will do! Buying online? Yeah just need those super secure 3 digits on the card please. There’s a lot of unneeded fluff today like the promos and cookie disclaimers could have been handled at protocol level. But what is there for security is generally good change, even if it makes the process more complex.
Ah yes, the “Private, simple or secure” web dilemma that will push everyone to embracing AI agents that will amplify the issues with the first three options.
I don’t know how this happens, but it seems like so many damned websites are broken when it comes time for me to actually use them. This is becoming an almost daily issue. So not only do we have to navigate terrible UI/UX applications, we also have to deal with frequent outages and novel bugs.
Wish I was kidding.
Friday: I had to log into an HR website to update my contact info, my login information didn’t work. The reset password link never sent me an email. Left a message with HR and still haven’t heard back. Later that day: Wanted to redeem some credit card points, button takes me to a 3rd party side, 3rd party site redirects to a message that says “we’re undergoing maintenance at this time please check back later”.
Saturday: Tried to make an online appointment with my primary healthcare provider. The form would not accept my phone number, for some reason, it would not pass validation. Eventually got through, selected a time slot from the list of available spots, went to submit and got a message along the lines of “your provider is not available during this time, please try again.” Later that day: Went to go read the news on one of the sites I have a paid subscription for. It hasn’t asked me to login for awhile, but on Saturday it did. No biggie, tried to sign in, but it kept giving me an error message about not having permission to view the site.
Sunday: Got a recall notice for my car last week. Went in to schedule the fix with the closest dealership. Went through a multi-page webform that took approximately 10 minutes to complete and then hit the submit button. Nothing happened. Clicked it again, thinking maybe it didn’t register. Nothing. Tried once more, nothing. A few minutes later, my phone rang, it was an automated call from the dealership asking me to hold for the next available representative. Moments later, another incoming call from the dealership, I switch over, same automated call asking me to hold. Then it happened again, another incoming call from the dealership. I ended up waiting on hold for quite some time (20ish minutes???) with no response before I finally just ended all the calls because I have shit to do.
Today (Monday): Tried to sign up for some insurance. Selected a bunch of options using the “compare” feature and then clicked the button. Nothing happened, so I waited. After maybe a minute, a pop-up appeared to let me know I was signed out due to inactivity. I tried signing back in, and this time it asked me for a code that it claimed to have texted to my phone number. Still haven’t gotten that text.
I wish I could say this is unusual, but it seems like a near constant now. What is up with this?
It sounds familiar. “Wait let me quickly do this online and we can eat.” Half an hour later: “OK I will finish this after dinner.”
“New password must differ from your current active password”
Missed the step towards the end were you have to switch browser and restart the whole process because “Firefox not supported” or you’ve an extension that’s a bit overzealous on blocking the checkout popup window.
Blocked an ad that fucked up the css so dramatically that the checkout button is now permanently stuck at -10% of viewport.
I tried to order chicken teriyaki so it would be ready for my wife to pick up en route home. Website requires a login. Make it. It doesn’t log in after creating the login, so log in again. Password wrong. Reset password. Finally get in. Get to last step and there’s no button to send the order. Fortunately, I’d wasted so much time that my wife was already there standing in line.
I assume it’s just formatted for mobile, but when I’m sitting at my computer, I’m going to use it, it’s always faster. Except when it doesn’t work.
Call next time?
The times I go in there they’re like “Use the website!” I feel betrayed.
And I wasn’t looking for solutions, just griping.
Blasphemy and heresy.
- cloudflare decides it doesnt like your user agent or IP or any of a myriad of other factors and denies you access completely, order has been cancelled
#2/9/14
you forgot that you need to select more options, scroll down, read every box carefully to make sure on doesnt mean off and off doesnt mean on, make sure you dont hit the button that ignores your choices and turns everything on anyways…
i fucking hate what this has turned into.
Don’t forget to reject notifications.
And sometimes deny location access.
Website wants to know your location
Yeah that shits annoying. If you have something you need my location for, I will give you my zip code and pick from “nearby” on a map myself.
Yeah, I’m absolutely going to throw my laptop out of the window someday.
