Pop-ups, Splash Screens, and the Seattle Times

Posted in Writing 12 December 2011 16:45

I had a friend recommend an article to me today.

This article was on the front page of the Seattle Times website, so it was pretty easy to find.

It was impossible to read.

There were so many things happening on the website all at the same time that the text would scroll up or down a line every few seconds, presumably to make room for some fancy-pants “feature” that was going off somewhere around the edge of the screen. If I had the audacity to allow my mouse cursor to touch anything on screen, something popped up, or flew out, or splashed, or upchucked, or something. When all of that settled down, a pop-up opened, in spite of the fact that I have pop-ups blocked in both my browser and my anti-virus software. To be fair to the blockers, it was probably not something they’ve been told qualifies as a pop-up. It was probably Flash or something similar.

It had an X in the top right, so I hovered on that long enough to see that it was not a “Close this obnoxious window and let me get on with what I came here for!” button – it was a “Why certainly! Yes, of course I would love to go off to this advertising site and let them install a spying cookie—oops, sorry, I mean tracking cookie on my computer so that they can track my every move!” button. Not that it would have done them much good, even if it wasn’t my habit to check and see what mysterious little X-boxes do – I have tracking cookies deleted every time I close the browser, and most of them never get placed in the first place, so it was more the annoyance factor than anything else.

But that annoyance factor is pretty high. I hate walking into the few stores in my area that have policies in place (looking at you, Blockbuster) where everyone has to be “greeted” when they walk in the door. I think it’s an insult for them to assume that I am so sensitive that not being “greeted” by a total stranger is more offensive to me than to have that person simply go on doing what they are doing (usually waiting on another customer, who is put out by the interruption in an amount at least equal to what I might putatively feel were I not “greeted”). If these stores had policies telling their employees to come and hold signs in front of my face, advertising their latest specials or trying to get me to give them my name and address and home phone number and social security number and who knows what else, then my reaction to that bricks-and-mortar store would be the same as my reaction to the Seattle Times website:

Which is, I will never darken their virtual doorstep again.

I go to a website with a purpose in mind. That purpose, in this case, was to read a news article. And the Seattle Times runs a website with a purpose in mind. That purpose is to say to their advertisers “Look at us! Look at all the eyeballs we get to our site! Come and buy some eyeballs on our site.” I am under no illusions that the Seattle Times (or Blockbuster, or Mom-n-Pop’s Good Greengrocers) owes me anything. The bricks-and-mortar places are there to sell me things. I know that. The Seattle Times, whose site I can peruse for free, is there to sell advertising. I know that, too. Everybody needs to be paid for something, or we all have to go back to hunting and gathering. That’s Econ 101.

But when the invasive, intrusive, obstructive advertising comes between me and what I am there to accomplish, then you have gone too far. I can no longer obtain my end of the deal, which is the information in the article I wanted to read. When this happens, I have only one option. If I walk into your store, and your employees wave signs in my face, pluck at my sleeve, get between me and what I am there to get, then I will no longer reward you for being there. I will not buy the things I came to get. I will walk out.

And when I can no longer use the website of a newspaper to read the news, then I will walk out. I will not be eyeballs for your ads anymore. I will not be a tick-mark in your metrics anymore. I will be gone. I will probably be reading your news articles via Google News, in fact.

I have long said, and I will say it until the day I day, that big box stores do not “Put Mom and Pop out of business.” Mom and Pop (and Borders, and independent fast-food places, and everybody else) put themselves out of business by no longer providing what their customers need. They lose out to those who do meet the expectations.

Google and Amazon and all those other big names are succeeding, not because they are evil, not because they are bad guys, but because they meet the expectations of their customers. I expect to be able to actually read the news. Somewhere. Anywhere. I don’t care where. I do take sources into account, and I do try to read a lot of sources on any given thing before I decide what I believe, but those sources will be named in any good search engine.