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Google Studies How Bad Interstitials Are On Mobile
An anonymous reader writes: A Google study of their own Google+ site and app found that 69% of visitors abandoned the page when presented with the app interstitial. Google said it was getting rid of them and asked others to do the same. TechCrunch reports: "It's worth noting that Google's study was small scale, since the company was only looking at how an interstitial promoting the Google+ social service native app performed (and we don't know how many people it surveyed). It may very well be the case that visitors really didn't want the Google+ app specifically — and that Google+ itself is skewing the data. (Sadly Google is not offering comparative stats with, say, the Gmail app interstitial, so we can but speculate.)"
Wikipedia tells me that interstitial is short for Interstitial cystitis or bladder pain syndrome.
That too would get me to abandon the website.
The same thing could likely be said of all obtrusive advertising: it is a nuisance not a benefit.
It is truly an epic fail to believe that some random visitor to your website is going to want to install your app just to read a piece of content—particularly if that user got there through a Google search. Yet for some reason, just about every forum out there pops up one of these idiotic app interstitials when I try to view some random post on their site. I didn't go there because I want to be a regular visitor to the site, which means I sure as h*** don't want to install their app just to read the tiny piece of content that may or may not even contain the information I need to do whatever I'm trying to get done.
The right time to ask a user to install an app is when the user creates an account on the site. Up until that point, the user is probably an infrequent visitor and is unlikely to want to install the app. Even at that point, the user may not want to install the app, but at least there's some nonzero possibility that he or she might.
Of course, the real train wreck is that there's no standard for making websites' contents available for app use, which would allow a user to install one reader that can read content on any of the dozen sites that he or she might be interested in. There's really no chance of me installing an app that only lets me read content from one website, because A. it is unlikely to be much better than viewing the website (because probably the same people designed it), and B. I already have more apps than I can deal with anyway. But if every website I visit standardized on a feed scheme, along with a common authentication system and a common reply system, I could see myself installing a single app that worked with all of them.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'm one of those people who instantly turn off whenever I get an Interstitial. If I dont get taken directly to the page I wanted I'll mash the back button.
The main reason is that if I'm going to a site, I want a specific page and when you dismiss an interstitial 9 times out of 10 instead of taking me to the content I want to view, it drops me on the sites main/landing page.
Its the same with popup/popover ads. On mobile these are a pain in the arse to close and they interfere with the content I'm trying to view, so again I'll just mash the back button until its gone.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Bugging me to install the app and interrupting me for a survey or chat less than a second after visiting are all amazing ways to piss me off. I see most of this on sites where I'm already looking to be a customer. Don't interfere with me giving you business.
I had to look it up also.
An "interstitial" pops up before the page you want, or a few seconds after.
It's a speed-bump in reading the website: stop, grab the mouse, find the close mark, get rid of the thing, and continue.
It's basically adding mosquitoes to your browsing experience.
(Some of them don't even have the "X" corner icon. You have to choose one of the presented links to close.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
I *never* want the App. Native client = buggy memory hog that can introduce vulnerabilities and violate my privacy in even bigger ways.
Besides that, I don't want a separate app for each site or forum I visit, that's overkill. I'll get too many notifications and have to download a ton of client updates constantly. I'd rather just visit a site when I choose to (and not be bugged by notifications) and have it work properly and be working with the most up to date version right away.,
These useless apps are what people wish weren't included with their desktops, why would they want them on mobile?
Twinstiq, game news
It'd be nice if Google could detect and downrank these sites. They should probably also do that for any site that gives you a significantly different page if it detects the google webcrawler versus any other agent. And as long as I'm asking, also pages that require Javascript to render. Downrank the lot because clicking on them is just a waste of my time anyway.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
One common thing they do is grey out the background so the box draws your attention. Can we stop that somehow?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
For those who don't know WTF an interstitial is, it's basically a pop-up that appears in a web page that blocks access to the rest of the page until you dismiss it. It's not like a traditional pop-up windows that adblockers can block easily these days, but rather integrated inside the page that many blockers don't deal with.
I hate the stupid "hey we have an app!" block that takes up real estate at the top of the screen every freaking time I chance upon any one of a million stupid sites. No, I don't want the dedicated app for your website - I view it maybe twice a year! No, I don't want to install an app to participate on your forum! Nor do I want your website sending me push notifications on OS X, for that matter.
I understand that you can't figure out how to make a living from your website... but that's your problem, not mine. Maybe you need to get a real job like the rest of us.
#DeleteChrome
I wonder how many of these 69% abandonment were due to user error in trying to get rid of the damn thing. Especially on mobile platforms where the ad can take up the entire browser screen and the back button has no effect on it. When something unexpected happens and you end up on an unexpected page the logical thing to do is hit back. Unfortunately for this stupid advertising the back button has the result of leaving the page altogether to go to the previous one.
I'm quite bad at that. It takes a conscious effort on my part to make it past these popups the first time without accidentally leaving the page. I hope their statistics took that into account.
Actually I don't, I hope their numbers are over inflated and this stupid practice crashes and burns.
After years of abuse, I just instantly close a website now if it decides an interstitial ad is needed. Regardless of where I am browsing.
No content is worth the suffering, no video can have enough cats to justify the anguish.
I have no idea if my own droopy matters at all, but I like to think window closure after interstitial presentation is a metric tracked and at least I am increasing it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That word isn't in my vocabulary, but is that some kind of marketing wank's "web 2.0" shit?