12 patternsPopup examples, and the case where each one backfires.
A popup is an offer, a trigger and an audience. Copying the offer is easy and copying the trigger is what actually matters — so each pattern below names both, plus the situation where running it costs you more than it earns.
The welcome offer
Trigger · Time on page, 5–10 seconds
Works: First-time visitors on a store with a clear entry discount.
Backfires: Fired instantly on arrival, where it reads as the price being negotiable before anyone has seen a product.
The exit catch
Trigger · Exit intent — cursor leave, or mobile scroll-up
Works: Anyone leaving a product or cart page without acting.
Backfires: In checkout, where interrupting a payment trades a sale for an address.
The scroll-depth ask
Trigger · Scroll depth, 50%+
Works: Long product or content pages, where depth is a decent proxy for interest.
Backfires: On short pages, where 50% arrives before anyone has read anything.
The cart saver
Trigger · Cart item added, plus an exit signal
Works: Capturing an address so an abandoned-cart flow has somewhere to send.
Backfires: On the cart condition alone, which interrupts people still shopping.
The threshold nudge
Trigger · Cart value below your free-shipping line
Works: Telling someone they are $12 from free shipping — the rare popup that is genuinely useful.
Backfires: When the gap is large enough to feel like an upsell rather than a favour.
The gamified capture
Trigger · Time on page or exit
Works: Impulse categories with small baskets. 5 formats available: spin to win, scratch off, mystery box, plinko, micro commitment.
Backfires: On considered, high-ticket purchases, where a prize wheel reads as cheap.
The SMS second step
Trigger · After an email is captured
Works: Asking for a phone number once, from someone who has already said yes to something.
Backfires: As the first ask, where it converts far worse than email and spends the goodwill.
The returning-visitor greeting
Trigger · Audience: has visited before, has not signed up
Works: Someone on their second or third session who clearly likes the store.
Backfires: When it repeats the same offer they already declined, unchanged.
The source-specific offer
Trigger · Audience: UTM source or medium
Works: Matching the popup to the campaign that paid for the click.
Backfires: On traffic from coupon aggregators, who already have a code — pure margin loss.
The subscriber suppression
Trigger · Audience: already signed up, or a marketing cookie present
Works: Not asking existing subscribers to subscribe. The most valuable popup is often the one that does not appear.
Backfires: Never. This is the pattern most stores are missing.
The idle re-engagement
Trigger · Idle timeout
Works: The reader who wandered off mid-page — a different, often better person than the one bouncing.
Backfires: With a short timeout, which fires on anyone reading carefully.
The announcement bar
Trigger · Always on, or scoped to a page
Works: Shipping cutoffs, sale windows, anything with a deadline that does not deserve an overlay.
Backfires: As a permanent fixture, where visitors stop seeing it within one session.
Why there are no screenshots here.
Every competing page in this category illustrates itself with screenshots of other companies' storefronts. We would rather describe the pattern than republish someone else's design, and someone else's brand, as our own illustration. It makes this page less pretty than the ones it is competing with — worth knowing before you decide it is less useful. Our own 30 designs are here.
Popup example questions.
Including why this page looks the way it does.
In ecommerce, a specific combination of an offer, a trigger and an audience — a welcome discount after five seconds, or an exit catch on a cart page. The design matters less than that combination, which is why the twelve patterns above are described by trigger and audience rather than shown as screenshots.
The ones that do not fire. A store that suppresses its welcome offer for existing subscribers, withholds discounts from coupon-site traffic and skips checkout entirely will outperform a store running a more beautiful popup at everyone — because the second store is paying margin to people who were already going to buy.
Because they would be screenshots of other companies' stores. Every competing page in this category illustrates itself with other people's customers' popups, and we would rather describe the pattern than republish someone else's design and someone else's brand as our illustration. It costs this page some visual appeal.
30 templates, each a complete design rather than a layout to fill in, and every one of them previews inside the builder wearing your own brand. The full list is on the templates page.
The suppression one, before any of the others. Decide who should never see a popup — existing subscribers, coupon traffic, people in checkout — and build that audience first. Every pattern above works better once it is not firing at the wrong people.