Dear people at Kitco, here’s some advice on how to bring your website philosophy kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Let’s get the DON’T items out the way first:
1) Do NOT force a pop-up on visitors. You are stuck in 2002, the rest of us live in 2015, so get with the freakin’ program and be aware how utterly intrusive and annoying pop-ups are.
2) Do NOT ask open questions, especially when you’ve just annoyed someone with a freakin’ pop-up. Because you get smart-assed replies like this one…
…and I’m 100% sure you’ve been receiving all sorts of lewd suggestions on how Daniela Cambone can improve viewer numbers as well (and I’m sure about that because some of you horrid animalist mining people have mailed me and told me what you wrote).
So, now to what you should have done, Kitco marketing dumbasses:
1) Stick a big fat banner on the top of your page: “Become a Kitco Privilege Member”. And on the banner there “FREE SIGN UP!”. Leave it there for a week or two and people who regularly come over will eventually voluntarily click through and find out what the gig is about. And you annoy nobody. In this way you avoid all the bad vibes from that freakin’ pop-up and the people clicking the big banner will likely sign up their mail address, because they’ll also be people who actually like the page and the service. Plus you’re offering them something FOR FREE. That might only be the chance to become a “member of the kitco family” or whatever, but it’s the entry point.
2) Once they’ve signed up, about a week later when you’ve harvested a few thousand mail addresses mail them and ask if they’d be interested in a service for which they pay a very small monthly fee and you offer them extra content, special services, whatever you want to throw in the package.
3) As part of the inquiry mail, give them a box in which they can offer suggestions. In this way you’ve just spared Cambone a whole lot of blushes and you’ve also received a few decent ideas.
Et Voila! You get your hardcore visitors loving you a bit more, you get your survey, you find out whether the fee paying service idea will fly and most of all you’ve not pissed any of your regular visitors off by doing it. Unlike your sad-face efforts this week.