Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Google Plus to Ditch “interstitials” Altogether

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Pop-ups that ask you “Get the App” on mobile turn off people so much that most of the users abandon the site completely as per a recent test by Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG). A Google blog post said that the Google+ team felt that these invasive pop-up ads termed “interstitials” provide users not so good an experience.

They did a test to find out whether Google+ should get rid of them completely. The team got the following results:

In 9% of visits to the mobile site, the “Get App” option was selected. But some percentages of users have already installed the app or gone through the entire course of the app store download.

69% of visitors to the mobile site left the page completely. Hence not only didn’t they visit the app store, but they also did not stay on the mobile site. While 9% taken independently may seem a good number of downloaders it is surpassed by the bigger figure of 69% deciding it wasn’t worth staying on the site. When the team put up a Smart App Banner in place of the “interstitial”, the results changed quite a bit. Here are the findings:

One-day active users to the mobile site rose by 17%. G+ iOS native app installs only experienced a 2% drop. The install numbers on Android were not reported as Google+ was preinstalled on most of the phones. As a result of this data, Google has made a decision to get rid of “interstitials” entirely. Disgruntled users would be happy if other apps did the same.

It is universally agreed that the pop-ups asking users to “Get The App” are of nuisance value. If apps want to attract and keep users on their site, it is better to eliminate those pop-ups completely. Otherwise, it will result in the majority of users become annoyed and frustrated and also lead them to completely abandon the mobile site.

Sources: businessinsider