Exit Intent And What It Is Worth

Exit intent is a popup triggered when the cursor heads for the browser chrome, or on mobile, by scroll behaviour and timing that approximate the same thing.

It works. It also irritates people, and whether it is worth running depends entirely on what is in the popup and what kind of site it is on.

Where it genuinely works

Ecommerce with an abandoned cart, which is the clearest case. The visitor has demonstrated intent and the offer is relevant to what they were doing.

A content site building a list, where the offer is more of what they were just reading.

A long consideration purchase, where the visitor is researching and a genuinely useful resource is a fair trade for an email address.

In each of those the popup is offering something connected to what the person was doing.

Where it does damage

On a service site where somebody was reading a case study, and the popup interrupts with a newsletter signup. The visitor was engaged and you broke it.

On a first visit with no relationship, where the message reads as desperate rather than helpful.

On mobile, where the triggers are guesses, the popup covers the whole screen, and the close button is hard to hit. Mobile exit intent is mostly a mistake.

On a contact or pricing page, where the visitor is already converting and the only thing an interruption can do is cost you.

When it fires twice, which is the version everybody has experienced and nobody forgives.

What determines whether it works

The offer, and nothing else.

"Join our newsletter" is not an offer. "10% off this order" is an offer. "The checklist we use on every project" is an offer if it is real. "Wait! Before you go!" is a pattern people have been trained to close without reading.

The honest test: would somebody give you their email address for this if you asked in plain text at the bottom of the page. If not, a popup does not change the answer, it just makes the asking louder.

Rules if you run it

Once per visitor, remembered, not once per session.

Not on the pages where somebody is already converting. Contact, pricing, checkout, and the thank you state.

Not within the first few seconds of a visit.

A close button that works, large, obvious, top right, and the popup closes on the escape key and on a click outside it.

Different offers on different sections, because a visitor reading about one service wants something different from one reading about another.

A real measurement of what it cost, not only what it earned.

Measure both sides

The number everybody quotes is the capture rate. The number that matters is whether total conversions went up.

Which means watching the enquiry rate, the time on site and the pages per session with the popup on and off. A popup that collects two hundred emails a month and reduces enquiries by three has lost money, because an enquiry is worth vastly more than an email address on a service site.

Run it as a test with a holdout, read it on the metric that pays, and be willing to turn it off.

The thing that works better

On most service sites, the better version of exit intent is not a popup at all.

It is the inline offer at the natural end of the content, where somebody who read the whole thing is deciding what to do next. No interruption, no trigger, no close button. Lower capture rate per visitor, higher quality, and it never costs you an enquiry.

Which is the version to build first, and the popup is the thing you test against it rather than the thing you reach for.

What this unlocks: a capture mechanism judged on total conversions rather than on the one number it was designed to produce.