You may have seen a page peel (or peel away) ad already: a web page that has a corner edge waving gently, with a short message displayed (“Click Me”, “What’s Inside?” etc) tempting you to move your mouse over to see what the heck is up.
This “mouse-over” action “peels back” or “peels away” the page to reveal a completely new message below, as if on a different sheet of paper (if you haven’t seen a page peel ad yet, you can do so here! You’ll need to use the Explorer browser though… this ad doesn’t appear to work in the FireFox browser).
As you can see, it’s a pretty funky effect!
Normally, page peel or peel away ads are displayed on splash pages and single page sales sites as an alternative to the more commonly used “popover” message. Based on Flash software, they can promote discounts, free special reports, free trials – anything and everything commonly used to obtain a visitor’s e-mail address so you can follow up with them after they have left your web site. The retailers of the page peel scripts, not surprisingly, claim they outperform typical “popover” ads.
I was interested in using page peel ads on UltimateFatBurner.com, to see if I couldn’t boost the number of subscribers to my newsletter. I was also curious to see how the page peel ads really measured up against the more common popovers.
I was already using Matt Callen’s Instant PopOVER software to create a slick “slide in” popover on the index page of UltimateFatBurner.com. However, I have a large number of pages that rank well with the Search Engines and serve as entry pages to the site. I figured I could use the page peel software on these pages. I’d offer my newly released free e-book, “Dirty Rotten Tricks; Supplement Company Lies That Cost You Money” as an incentive to subscribe to the newsletter.
I decided on PeelAwayAds Version 3.0 as the software I’d use to create these ads, made my purchase, and got to work.
The first thing I needed to do was have some custom page peel ads made (the software comes with a ton of them, but none of them were relevant to what I was doing). Once that was done, I implemented the page peel ads on 10 high-performing gateway pages (you can view one here with the Explorer browser), and tracked the results.
And how were they? How did the page peel ads compare to the regular pop over ads?
Well, see for yourself. For the three month period of Jan-Mar ’09 Google’s Analytics software reports traffic as the following…
1) Index page (where the slide in popover was displayed): 128, 501 page impressions
2) 10 top performing gateway pages (where the page peel ads were implemented): 290,796 page impressions
At the same, time, Aweber reports 359 new subscribers to the account associated with the index page and the popover, and only 331 subscribers from the peel away ads displayed on ALL 10 page peel pages.
This works out to about a .2% conversion for the popover, and a .1% conversion for the page peel ads (this includes a generous 20% handicap for possible FireFox browsers). So the page peel ads obtained half the results of the popover ad, despite being displayed almost twice as many times.
Not too impressive, huh?
True. But consider this…
The value of the tyical popover ad is that it cannot be ignored. It has to be addressed. The visitor absolutely, positively, unequivocally must act when that window slides in. She will see your marketing message, and she will make a conscious decision on whether to close that window off, or enter her e-mail address to receive whatever offer you are promoting.
That is not the case with the peel away ads. You are free to ignore them if you like. I thought they might receive a higher conversion rate because they still aren’t that common. I figured the curiosity factor alone would contribute to that.
Looks like I figured wrong.
Additionally, if a visitor doesn’t move her mouse to the flickering page in the corner, she doesn’t get exposed to your marketing message – which appears below the page that “peels back.”
Does that mean peel away ads are of little value?
No, I don’t think so. Obviously, any single page site with a mandate of making an immediate sale is probably going to stick with popovers messages (of the “unblockable” sort, like those generated by Matt Callen’s Instant PopOVER software, which I do recommend). I would be surprised if these don’t outperform the peel away ads in almost every situation.
But what if you have a large content site like I do?
Although I recognize the value of popovers, I find them annoying and intrusive, especially if the webmaster opts to have them display on all pages, over and over (I set a cookie, so my visitors only see my popover once every 30 days). So I only display one popover, on the UltimateFatBurner.com index page. But many of my visitors arrive to top performing content pages, and a great many of them never see the index page. Page peel ads offer me a non-intrusive manner to entice them to become newsletter subscribers.
Is it incredibly effective? Hardly. But considering I don’t want to irritate the heck out of them, it’s a worthwhile one.
Bottom line?
I will continue to run page peel ads on top performing content pages, regardless of their miserable conversion rate.
Before I depart, I would be remiss to leave without making a few comments on the PeelAwayAds Version 3.0 software I used for this test. First the good…
Thumbs Up: Instructions and installation guide are well-written and easy to follow. I’m not incredible technically-minded, but it was a breeze to install and get working. In Explorer.
Thumbs down: I couldn’t get the peel away ads to display in the FireFox browser, so I sent in a support ticket about a week before Christmas ’08 (I know they work in FireFox, because I can view them with it on the PeelAwayAds sales page.) I didn’t receive a response of any sort until about 6 weeks later, when a staff member sent me a note and asked if the issue had been resolved. I explained it had not, and would like it so. I’ve never heard from anyone again. On top of that, I immediately began to receive fairly aggressive marketing messages for products of dubious credibility and ethics (i.e., “scraping” software). I unsubscribed from the customer mailing list immediately.
All in all, my experience wasn’t stellar – but who knows, one experience is not necessarily indicative of everyone’s. Nonetheless, I would not recommend this product if you think you’re going to require some technical support.
After a quick couple of searches on Google, I found this much cheaper option for page peel ads, but can’t comment on the software personally, as I have no experience with the product.
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Hi Admin,
Loved the article – thanks for all the info!
Think you may be surprised as how many internet users now use Firefox and Chrome (which your Peel Away Ad for your UltimateFatBurner website wasn’t displying properly under). Just take a look at http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp and see for yourself.
Thanks again for the info,
Rich
It sounds like you tested the page peel ad with an optin form, but not with a click here button to another offer, or more information. I think you would get more accurate results if you made sure you had a version that works with firefox (the free one at my link works well with both) and did a three way test with an optin form, a link to click through, and a contact form respectively.
I really don’t know, but I imagine people have an aversion to actually typing something into a page peel area, simply because it closes up again, and there’s a subconcious feeling that the content is going to be lost. That quality of transience would actually be an asset if it’s a link to click. (Click here quick, before it gets covered up again!)
Will be very curious to see the results of any further testing you do!
Paul’s comments: Debbie – actually, I compared a page peel with a “click to another offer” to a simple drop in form. I agree that it would be unlikely people would type anything into a page peel ad, and did not use that option. And while it would have been useful to have software that worked with both major browsers (my analytics software shows 15-20% of visitors use the FireFox browser) nothing in my testing suggested FireFox users would be more likely to click page-peel ads. So all I’d gain would have a tiny percentage of additional visitors clicking on the page-peel.
Last, I can imagine several different testing options, despite the fact I only used two. The thing is, these are the two options I am using on my web site, and the two most common to the average net-marketer. My tests are only supposed to be reflective of common usage.