There’s this recurring vision that I have of a conversation with a client. In my vision the client and I are discussing the use of popup windows and advertisements on his website. I’m trying to explain that popups won’t work as he expects them to, that most people have popup blockers now, that more often than not they make people mad, and that because of all this the message that is so important gets lost in the noise, and that most visitors will entirely miss the message, which may very well have been an important message.

Then he says to me…

You know what would be great? I’d love it if you could program a big hand that would come out of the user’s computer screen, smack them in the face, and grab their wallet. Then the popup window would close automatically.

The whole point of the web is that people are using the web to seek out information. This is not television, and you do not have a captive audience. Tick them off and they will be gone faster than javascript can open a popup window.

If your message is important, then it should be presented in a way that adds value both to the message and to the site that it’s on. The best way to do this is to arrange your content in a way that makes sense – most important content first, less important content second. Make it easy to find the content that people are looking for. Then make it look nice – this can be done very easily and quickly using CSS, without altering the meaning of the content (as you would using tables and other old-fashioned hacks for layout). The visitor finds what they’re looking for and you can be sure that your message will be received.