4. Dealing with Pop-ups There are two conflicting views regarding how newbies or perhaps even the typical web user deal with pop-up windows.
Some webmasters say that when they put their newsletter subscription forms in a window that pops up automatically when their site is loaded, their subscription rates rise markedly. As such, they recommend that you do the same, suggesting that your newsletter subscription rates will soar when you do so.
My experience with watching a few people surf the Internet was quite different. One of them got confused by pop-up advertisement windows appearing, and being unable to figure out how to go on from there, closed all the windows (which alas also terminated his dial-up connection) and had to start all over again. Another person was faced with a site that opened a hyperlink in a new window. After that person was through with that window, she found she could not use the BACK button to return to the original window. (She could not go back using that button since the original site was in a different browser window!)
In general, these people did not appear to do too well when confronted with multiple windows appearing. In fact, although they use their computer often to do word processing, play games and surf the Internet, it looks to me like they do not how to run multiple programs simultaneously and switch between them.
These observations (which are fairly recent) presents a problem for me as a webmaster. Although I make it a policy never to introduce pop-up windows in my site, I used to habitually code all my off-site links to open in new browser windows. However, in view of this discovery, it looks like I have the massive job of removing this "feature" from all my sites, since it is possible that the "typical" user doesn't know how to manage more than one window at a time.
As for the pop-up advertisement and newsletter subscription windows, all I can say is that if you really think you need that, you should do a test run on your site before you implement it site-wide. What works on one site might fail in another because the latter attracts a different crowd with a different level of expertise. If you can, try to garner visitor feedback as well as check the impact of those pop-ups on your advertisement click throughs and subscription rates. You should also see if it hurts the number of people visiting deeper pages on your site - this might be an indication that they got lost after they saw your pop-up.
5. Browser Start Page
The average user seems to rely on his start page which is usually set for him by default by his ISP. Since such users learned to access the Net from that page, and they access a search engine from that page, that start page becomes the launching pad from which they access the Internet.
Some sites apparently realise this, and thus try to get visitors to change their start page to point to a page on their site. This is easy to accomplish for visitors using Internet Explorer ("IE") since the start page can be changed with a script in IE. They provide a link to the script which the user merely has to click to change the start page.
If you are planning to create your own start page for your visitors, my suggestion is that you also put links to search engines on that page or perhaps even put a search box directly on that page (some search engines even provide you the HTML code to do this). This makes the page more useful to those users, thus increasing the chances that they will stick to your start page. That is, don't just stick your advertisements onto that page. Make it useful as well.
Note that the fact that they rely on the start page does not mean that they stay an inordinate amount of time on it staring at it. Bear this in mind before you persuade all your visitors to use your start page. You might wind up paying for the bandwidth each time they log on without correspondingly gaining from the advertising revenue.
The Average-User-Friendly Site
It is possible to take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the "average user" in the design and planning of your web site. Doing so not only produces a user friendly site, but also helps you accomplish the goals for your site.
