Popup usually means entry pop-up. An popup that is shown to a visitor usually as soon as the landing page loads.

The popup is an overlaying window, but often it blocks the visitor from seeing the web page’s content before further action is taken by the visitor. Sometimes this isn’t very user-friendly.

Entry pop-ups are extremely effective when getting visitors to subscribe to your offers or submitting their emails. This is because the popup gets visitors to act before they can do anything else on your website.

In some cases, visitors may have already seen the offers, or whatever messages are displayed, and in fact they shouldn’t have been shown the same message again and again. This is why using an entry popup can annoy website users.

A slight change can be made to the entry popup. The website detects the visitor’s web browser cookie. If the visitor lands on the website for the very first time, the popup is immediately shown. If she is a returned visitor, the popup is not displayed.

Another less aggressive version is to set a time delay on the entry popup. The entry popup can be delayed for loading after the landing page has been loaded for say 30 seconds. This less aggressive approach allows the visitor to take a first look at the website before being prompted for popup actions.