Even Overlays Can Be Annoying — Curate.Us to Drop Social Sharing Tool

Most content publishers know that pop-ups are a big No-No; they quickly annoy site visitors. Overlays, however, tend to be safer. Unless your overlay

Most content publishers know that pop-ups are a big No-No; they quickly annoy site visitors. Overlays, however, tend to be safer.

Unless your overlay is also an annoyance.

I was recently impressed by an overlay coded by Curate.Us and Repost.Us. When I selected text on a certain site, an overlay (without a lightbox effect) was cued to encourage me to share the copied portion or the full story through social media. It seemed like a great Word-of-Mouth hack, since it removed barriers to sharing and allowed publishers to track exactly what text was being shared.

However, when I called Curate.Us to get more information, I was informed that the company is actually get rid of that technology. They found that only 0.25% (that’s a quarter of 1%) of users posted copied text, and another 0.25% posted the full article.

This could be because the tool is great for people who are eager to share, but a real nuisance for visitors simply looking to copy and paste text into their own documents. Or for users thinking of copying and sharing a tidbit, but who still want to read the full article before doing so.

So once again, user experience trumps technological innovation. A good thing to keep in mind as you continue to tweak your sites to incorporate the best marketing hacks out there. And a great reason to always evaluate your innovations based on data, not gut instincts.

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