UX rage on Cookies, Pop ups and Notification Trends

UX rage on Cookies, Pop ups and Notification Trends

Stop the barrage of pop up messages that ruin the user’s experience of your website.

A recent attempt at buying car parts online left me frustrated and empty handed. The first website’s pop-ups and notifications were so numerous and irritating I made a rule to immediately leave any website if I was bombarded with 3 or more pop-ups inside of 5 seconds.

The next five ranking websites I visited failed this basic ‘don’t be annoying’ UX test.

  1. This website uses cookies which we are going to try to force you to agree to by making a ‘no’ option too painful to bother with.
  2. Sign up to our newsletters
  3. Sale now on!
  4. This website wants to send you notifications

Someone shared this online recently. Not sure who, and it is a bit fuzzy, but the it demonstrates my point exactly.

As someone who runs a marketing agency I get it, data is hugely valuable in the art of winning and developing new customers, but at what expense.

Each notification is an irritant, damaging brand and it gives the impression that “this company is obsessed with selling”.

The cookie pop ups are the worst, so ask yourself “Does my website really need cookie pop ups and notifications?”.

There is legislation around this but, surprise, surprise, it has been hugely misinterpreted but the consultants who make a lot of money prescribing over engineered GDPR policies.

So I would challenge whether you need one at all. Ask an agency like Crush for a second opinion.

Also, think about how many times you check your analytics, and how much you really benefited from that data.

There are companies that genuinely do need cookies and a lot of customer data to operate. And they do need a cookie notice and your permission to avoid the attention of the ICO, but in my mind being sly about it is tantamount to being rude to you customers. Hiding the ‘Reject All’ button is devious, and is that a brand value you want for your company?

Our advice, take a step back. There is no hard and fast rule to the right balance of data capture and premium customer experience.

But please, as a user of many websites, use Common Sense.