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Google Studies How Bad Interstitials Are On Mobile

Posted by samzenpus on from the end-of-the-line dept.

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.)"

10 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. interstitial? by sinij · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wikipedia tells me that interstitial is short for Interstitial cystitis or bladder pain syndrome.

    That too would get me to abandon the website.

    1. Re: interstitial? by konohitowa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your sense of humor is even weaker than his google-fu.

    2. Re: interstitial? by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Funny

      Do you pronounce that google-foo or google-eff-yoo?

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  2. Same likely holds true... by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The same thing could likely be said of all obtrusive advertising: it is a nuisance not a benefit.

    1. Re:Same likely holds true... by ganjadude · · Score: 5, Informative

      thats not entirely true. some ads are welcome

      I recent got a new car (well new to me) and one of the things i want to do is get fitted seat covers as the interior is an off white and i am....well a slob

      so after looking for a few weeks i havent found anything that fits my needs (fitted, not leather or fake leather, and well made)

      well I noticed some ads all of a sudden starting to show up for fitted car seats and eventually i found what i was looking for because of google ads

      I will admit it is the first time ive found it useful, but when ads are done right, they are not a bad thing

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  3. No kidding. by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:No kidding. by Firethorn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      During your rant, I couldn't help but think, 'But they DO have a standardized app for accessing all the websites', and it's called the browser!

      This is interesting because I'm currently working to migrate our content into a 'responsive design' system that is geared to showing unbroken webpages, using the SAME site and code, on everything from fullscreen computers to the smaller phones.

      I'll admit, the content might not be as 'perfect' as if it was designed specifically for one or the other on the matching device, but it's pretty good on all of them and doesn't actually take much design work on the part of the individual site creators. Given that they're non-web experts that's a good thing. The point is to present the information, not make it perfectly pretty.

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  4. Re:Browsing with mosquitoes by Firethorn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a speed-bump in reading the website: stop, grab the mouse, find the close mark, get rid of the thing, and continue.

    Oh, how I hate these things! Ad-block doesn't even block them all(because they're often not ads).

    1. Download the app! Really? First time here, don't want to mess with that!
    2. Like us on X media! I haven't even read one article of yours yet! Have a 1 star because the first thing you did was piss me off!
    3. Do you want to sign up for our newsletter? See above, I found you on a random google search for information. NO.
    4. Are you willing to review our website? Sure. Part 1: Get rid of the immediate popoup!

    --
    I don't read AC A human right
  5. Dedicated app = buggy bloatware by HalAtWork · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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  6. How many people can't get rid of these things? by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.