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Discussion on: I don't like exit intent popups.

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dmfay profile image
Dian Fay

It can be a security thing -- making sure the user knows they're leaving for an external site and that they shouldn't attempt to log in to your site unless they know they've come back. Steam does this, for one example, and it's not hard to think of other situations where the pattern could be called for (they generally involve the combination of money and personal information).

But there's a special place in hell for whoever came up with plain old nag screens.

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itsasine profile image
ItsASine (Kayla)

There's a difference between clicking an external link (which Steam and banks will do a pop up for) and just daring to navigate away from their content using built-in browser features like the back button or new tab.

This post seems to be addressing the later while the former is more of a solid security "if you do this, it's your fault" warning and may even self-dismiss after a couple dozen seconds.

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dmfay profile image
Dian Fay

As far as the user's concerned, they're trying to navigate somewhere else and something's interrupting that process. It could be different mechanically (although from what I know you could implement either the same way) but the difference that really matters is that one has a legitimate reason to interrupt, and the other does not.

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

It does, but the title is "I don't like exit intent popups".
I've been saved on a few occasions when typing a lot into, say, a Jira ticket over a few minutes and then trying to navigate away.

My best solution to this would be to be able to configure them in your profile with a setting such as "Warn me if I'm about to leave a page without saving my changes".