How Not to Annoy Your Customers on the Buyer Journey

At GoViral our marketing work is built on a solid foundation: the buyer journey. Website tools like cookies, pop-ups and widgets can help you meet your buyers where they are, but too many websites today do too much.

Fortunately, there’s a way to stop annoying your customers. Keep the buyer journey front and center when planning your website strategy. This will help you meet your buyers where they are, rather than simply throwing everything and the kitchen sink at them when they walk through the door.

What Is the Buyer Journey?

Simply put, the Buyer Journey is a buyer’s path to purchase. Customers don’t just spontaneously appear. They move through a process of research and consideration before deciding to purchase.

There are five stages to a buyer journey. First comes Awareness that a problem exists. Second, Research to try to solve the problem. Third, Consideration of one or more options. Fourth, Purchase of a product or service that solves the problem. The final stage is Post-Purchase, when a buyer reflects on their purchase and has the potential to become a loyal customer.

To map out the most accurate buyer journey, you’ll need to identify your buyer personas. Head over to our Buyer Persona Guide to learn how. Creating buyer personas can be a helpful reminder that your potential customers are people, not numbers.

Now that we know how to start building our strategy, let’s take a look at the different types of pop-ups you might put on your website.

Make Cookie Notices Compliant and Unintrusive

Let’s talk cookies. Cookies are text files that collect information about website visitors, usually in an attempt to improve the user experience. Most websites that use cookies (hint: if you use Google Analytics, you use cookies) are required to notify visitors and explain how their information is used. In some areas, including Europe, website owners are required to get consent in order to use optional cookies (cookies not necessary for the functioning of your site).

When required, cookie notices must be displayed to every first-time visitor. This means you can’t segment your visitors based on where they are in the buyer journey. You might think first-time visitors are all in the Research phase, but some may have interacted with your brand through a different channel. Some even may have made a purchase already. Perhaps they purchased in person but never visited your website, or perhaps they cleared all the cookies in their browser and are starting from scratch.

The point is, the cookie notice is a pop-up that can’t be reliably mapped to the buyer journey. So instead, focus on 1) fulfilling regulatory requirements and 2) choosing a pop-up that covers as little of the page as possible. Consult your legal team to ensure you’re following regulations, and opt for a banner-style pop-up, preferably placed in the footer. A pop-up that covers your entire page obscures important information and is more likely to annoy your visitors.

Add Help Widgets Only Where Necessary

If you want to install a help widget on your website, consider which pages will attract visitors looking for help. Leave the widget off all other pages. 

Of course, consider your brand. If the entire purpose of your website is to provide live help, and this is clear to visitors, you’re probably an exception to the rule.

Place your help widget at the bottom of the page. Visitors typically read a page top down and left to right. By placing the widget at the bottom, you give your audience a chance to find the information they need first. Only after scanning the page will they reach help, which they can bypass if they no longer need it.

As far as the look of your help widget, make sure it fits your branding without blending into the page. Use contrasting colors to make sure the widget stands out for those who need it, as well as for those who just need to find the close button.

Target Newsletter Pop-Ups to Visitors in the Later Stages of the Buyer Journey

Are you trying to get more subscribers to your newsletter or other regularly published content? Newsletter pop-ups rarely make sense on the homepage of your website. 

Exceptions: maybe your website is a sub-site intended for loyal customers. Or maybe you’re able to display the pop-up only for visitors who have been to your site multiple times (or based on different parameters you set). Some Content Management Systems such as Hubspot allow you to target pop-ups in this way, which you should use to your advantage. 

Many marketers value newsletter sign-ups highly because you are collecting email addresses of people interested in your brand. Considering email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach buyers, you should treat the people behind those emails as respected, valuable contacts. Make sure to include a clear Call to Action on your newsletter sign-up, and enough clarifying information that visitors understand what they’re signing up for.

CASE STUDY: PharmaLedger

In February 2021 our client PharmaLedger came to us with a request. A consortium exploring blockchain technology’s application to real-world health care challenges, they like many brands were struggling to gain subscribers to their monthly newsletter.

They didn’t want to annoy their visitors with an intrusive pop-up, but we came up with a solution: a pop-up from the footer that appears only when visitors leave the site.

The chart below shows total newsletter subscribers, with a sharp increase after we made the pop-up live in February 2021.

Use Video Auto-Plays Sparingly

Do you have embedded videos on your website? Unless the primary purpose of your page is to play video, you should probably opt-out of auto-play. 

The key, once again, is to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. Why are they visiting the page in question? If it’s a landing page only accessible from a link that makes it clear they’re clicking to watch a video, auto-play is a great option! If your page serves different functions for different visitors (like most pages), leave it to the visitor to decide whether to play the video.

Video auto-plays can doubly annoy visitors with images and sound, so tread lightly. Remember, your website may allow you to track click percentages or how many seconds a video is played. This information is impossible to gather if the video auto-plays.


Want expert guidance on leading your customers through the buyer journey? Contact us to request a proposal.