GuideSix kinds of website popup, by how much they interrupt.
The format is the container, not the content — any of these can carry a discount or a newsletter ask. What separates them is how much of the page they take over, and therefore how much the message has to be worth.
Banner
A strip across the top or bottom. Nothing is covered and nothing is blocked, so it can stay up — which also means it stops being seen. Right for shipping cutoffs and sale windows; wrong for anything that needs a decision.
Floating button
A persistent tab or bubble the visitor opens themselves. Converts far less than an overlay, and every conversion it does get is from someone who chose it. Useful as the quiet fallback after a popup has been dismissed.
Slide-in
Enters from a corner without dimming the page. The compromise format: noticeable enough to work, small enough not to feel like a wall. Pairs well with scroll depth.
Lightbox
The centred overlay with the page dimmed behind it. The highest-converting format and the one with the most downside — it is what people mean when they complain about popups, and what Google's intrusive-interstitial guidance is aimed at when it fires on arrival from search.
Fullscreen
Takes the whole viewport. Reserved for moments that genuinely justify it — age verification, a market or currency choice — rather than a newsletter ask.
Gamified first step
A game in front of the form rather than a different container: spin to win, scratch off, mystery box, plinko, micro commitment. It changes what the visitor does before the field appears, not how much of the page is covered.
Not to be confused with a pop-up shop.
Search the bare phrase and most of what comes back is about temporary physical retail — pop-up shops, pop-up events, pop-up restaurants. Same words, different industry. Everything on this page is about the onsite kind: an overlay on a website, triggered by behaviour, usually asking for an email address.
Popup basics.
Including the spelling question.
An element that appears over a page to show a message or a form, triggered by time, scroll, exit intent or an action like adding to cart. Worth distinguishing from a pop-up shop, which is a temporary physical retail space — the same words, entirely different industry, and most of what search returns for the bare phrase is about the shops.
None in meaning. “Pop-up” with the hyphen is the older and more formal spelling and the one dictionaries list; “popup” is the common form in software. Google treats them as the same thing, so pick one and be consistent rather than trying to cover both.
Six formats worth distinguishing, listed above, and they differ by how much of the page they take over rather than by what they contain. Any of them can carry a discount, a newsletter ask, a survey or one of the 5 games — the format is the container, not the content.
Historically, a separate browser window opened by a site to show an ad — the practice that got popup blockers built into every browser in the early 2000s. What ecommerce stores run today is an in-page overlay on their own site, not a new window, which is why blockers do not stop them. The reputation, unfortunately, carried over.
Lightbox, consistently, because it is the hardest to ignore — and that is also its cost. The useful question is not which converts best in isolation but which is worth its interruption for the job you have. A shipping cutoff does not deserve a lightbox; a first-order discount on an engaged visitor probably does.
Not inherently. Google's intrusive interstitial guidance targets content being obscured immediately after a visitor arrives from search, particularly on mobile. A banner is fine, a lightbox triggered on exit or after real engagement is fine, and a fullscreen overlay on arrival from a search result is the pattern to avoid.