Ministry of Innovation / Business of Technology

No, I won’t install your app or subscribe to your newsletter

Op-ed: If I want your app, I'm not going to get it on my way to browsing your site.

You shall not pass without an e-mail address. And then some more stuff.

The Internet has lately upped its count of roadblocks and dead ends: obligatory e-mail subscription forms, Facebook page "like" prompts, and pages that masquerade as informational only to be a page full of ads. The individual, instantaneous outrage that an encounter with, say, one mandatory e-mail address request is infinitesimally small. But as this strategy of information culling or attention-grabbing rises, the Internetgoers begin to cry out.

One pop-up-shaming site,, specifically focuses on sites that tease you with their content before blocking it with some form that requires your attention (creator Andy Beaumont further explained the thinking behind the site in a Medium post). Sometimes they require an e-mail address, other times a social media interaction. Sometimes these things are optional—I can’t outright condemn a company for asking—but there are plenty of “membership” sites whose forms cannot be circumvented: Joss and Main, for instance, or Bespoke Post, the *mints (Shoemint, Homemint, etc.), or Fab in its olden days.

This is becoming an all-too-familiar request. It starts out innocently enough—an e-mail address! It just wants an e-mail address. An e-mail address is easy to give, and newsletters are easy to unsubscribe from. Better use a real one in case you actually like anything on the site.

But a “submit” later, and it turns out it’s not just your e-mail address that the site wants. Really, if you just give your full name and make up a password, the site promises, pinky swear, you’ll be able to get through to the actual material. You hand that over too, only to find yourself in the next few days on a 20-e-mail-a-week roller coaster ride, from which you can only get off if you unsubscribe by logging in using that password you’ve now forgotten. That's too much effort; you commit the e-mails to spam so they can backfill your Web e-mail storage for eternity.

Enlarge / Cannot browse without an account.

The drop-in e-mail form must be somewhat effective, given that an increasing number of sites are using it. But for every instance that results in a pleasant, productive interaction with a website that it’s a pleasure to see in your inbox, there are 10 more crowding in there whose space and time are not worth the one chair or gadget you wanted to check out once. Hence, this form becomes a dead end—seeing it means saying goodbye to whatever content remains behind it, or else saying goodbye to your ability to innocently browse anonymously. One HackerNews user commented on a post about that he keeps a bookmarklet to kill pop-ups such as these.

Perhaps as annoying as the form-request dead end is the mobile-design switchback, when clicking on a link from somewhere takes you anywhere but the intended destination. Another site, Crapshaming, highlights some of these problematic areas: for instance, a page requesting that you download the relevant app instead of using the site. Too often, when we respectfully decline, the browser takes the liberty of sending us to the site’s or service’s homepage rather than to the page we initially requested.

The problem with apps is that, particularly on iOS, they can’t open links from other sources. An app is not the solution to the problem at hand, which is accessing this one particular page on the site. Nor is it the solution to the problem of accessing the site going forward, unless the problem is "I want to use this site exclusively as a source but don't want to bother with a bookmark or typing the first few letters to autocomplete the URL."

Like the newsletter form, the app request is still a little coercive, with that tiny “…or continue to the mobile site” link. But there’s no way to explain to companies that no, we don't want your app. There’s no way to opt out of this notice, no way to ask the site to leave you alone about the app.

Not the way to get anyone to install an app. Honestly, at least.

The problem is that asking to install an app presumes a relationship. If the site is being accessed via a Google result, there’s no precedent for that request. We’re not friends, site and/or app. We’ve only just met. Maybe we have met before, but for the purposes of evading this encounter, I’ll sure pretend like we didn’t.

Just as spam is effective because the cost of producing it is practically zero and hence any positive effect is a net positive, asking to install an app costs little other than our annoyance. But a relationship built on the backs of people who agree to install an app because they are hoodwinked into thinking it’s the only way—or fill out an e-mail form because they don’t realize they don’t have to—isn’t going to last.

The app request also assumes the mobile app is so much better than the mobile site that it’s worth the cost of navigating away from the general browser to a dedicated location. Given that mobile design is still well in its infancy, that is… unlikely. Trying to shepherd customers into being beta testers for a half-baked app is not the best idea either.

Generally speaking, most people don’t want the app like that. Most people don’t want the newsletter like that. There are newsletters I've signed up for and enjoy, and I didn't get them from an unwelcome form. Each individual action of refusing these things is itself not so bad. But totted up to a few dozen times a day, I’m becoming relieved when a site doesn’t have a newsletter or app to cram in my face. This teaches us to look for the tiny X or the "get me out of here" link with no attention paid to what's front and center, and we bail when it can't be easily found. The Internet has, for the most part, my trust that when I click on something, it will take me where it says it will go (assurances that I won the lottery or that my PayPal account has been limited excepted); it’s sad when otherwise good companies erode it.

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174 Reader Comments

  1. When sites like that bug me , I just google the title or the name of the article which i want to read and I read it from other sites , I highly suggest this simple way of getting round it if you really want to read that bit of news or article .
    24 posts | registered
  2. This is why Adblock Plus and (occasionally) NoScript are permanently in my shortlist of must-have extensions/add-ons. Even for sites that I wouldn't mind paying for, these overlays are annoying beyond belief.
    758 posts | registered
  3. Quote:

    I'd say "no".

    I do data analysis & product work for sales/marketing at my company (and did such for other companies). Most decisions are not based on studies or research. They're based on "oh, I saw this other site do it, we should do it, too."

    No joke. Many ideas at my company rolling out of sales / marketing are basically someone throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it sticks. It's only later that we get complaints from customers, and have to rework a bunch of garbage.

    I tend to be a technical lead on many things, but I have a heavy human / sociology background (a case of "if social workers weren't paid shit, I wouldn't be doing data running right now"). I tell them ahead of time that certain things are a bad idea. They ignore it. Later I'm shaking my head in "I told you so" fashion, as we have to fix the faux pas they did.

    This will sound sexist, but a lot of this tends to come down from female execs. Some of them are shoe-addicts, shopping addicts, etc, etc. They online shop all weekend, then come in with a "great idea" to implement on our web-site. My company cells phone and cellphone service. They dream up service plans w/o even analyzing how they themselves use their own phones, then complain when we don't get any customers. Then we're reinventing the wheel to be something customers would actually want. The idea of "eat your own dog food" doesn't ring with these folks. It's nothing but dreaming up stuff based on wha tthey think people want in some pink-skied world or based on what competitors are doing (without knowing if it's working for the competitor or not).


    Also the idea of "you have to give folks something to get something" doesn't seem to register with them. You want customers to give you an email address or make a login? There has to be a reason. Using it as a barricade to entry is not a reason... that provides reason to go to the competitor.

    This was actually one of the good ideas we had. Some of our competitors were hiding their service plans until customer filled in details. EG: usually you need to punch in a zip code, so you can see service plans specific to your area. But, some competitors wanted your zip code, ph#, personal info... and then they'd show you service plans. Customers aren't dumb. They know you're setting them up for a follow-up sales call if customer browses and doesn't buy. We didn't do that. We showed folks what we have upfront. What we noticed (after some data analytics) was that about 1/2 the folks that show up to window shop come back and buy from us. We didn't have to do anything. They came back on their own. If you give customers what they want from the start, they will buy from you after comparison shopping. Boggles the mind when companies don't seem to understand that.

    Wow, Tundro, your posts that I've read today are very good and insightful.

    Your description of execs that just want something done without even knowing if it jibes with what they do goes to the heart of a suspicion (read: near-certainty) I've had for a while: namely, that these people live in a world where they get what they want so much that they just start believing that a) their shit doesn't stink; b) they're always right; and c) they deserve their position in life. Whereas the rest of us have to deal with these stupid (and apparently half-baked) ideas, regardless.

    I'm one of those people where if I get hassled, even if it's more work for me to go around the hassle, I'll do it. Give me what I'm looking for, give it to me straight, or GTFO. It's that simple.
    758 posts | registered
  4. DSF1942 wrote:
    Pokrface wrote:
    Quora. I've just gone ahead and blackholed in my DNS so that I don't have to even accidentally see their crap. No, I'm not going to link a facebook or twitter account just to read the site. Not now, not ever.

    Yeah, I've done that with a few sites as well, such as Expert Sexchange. Quora just recently joined the heap of shit I don't need to use.

    Well, it's preferable to an amateur sexchange I'd imagine.
    897 posts | registered
  5. This will sound sexist, but a lot of this tends to come down from female execs.

    What makes this worthy of note is that without this one sentence the entire rest of that paragraph would have been entirely valid, but singling out one gender automatically made it sexist. Male executives make exactly the same mistakes and show the same behaviors. I agreed with everything else you said in the comment, but here you went out of your way to produce a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bad move.

    I worked for a company that had two female execs and at least four men, and the men accounted for dumb ideas at least 70% of the time. The woman CTO actually shielded IT from a lot of stupid. The woman marketing exec authored plenty, but based on other experience I'm sure that's all marketing and no part gender.

    On the topic of the article, the popups would annoy me regardless, but what's far worse is that the app is usually less functional in every way. Often, it's just a container with the OS browser widget in it that loads the mobile site (with the slower, off-brand javascript engine). Even when it's an actual app, it's always less functional, and usually *far* less functional, than even the mobile site.

    My very favorite is when an idiot web designer sizes the popup so that it overflows the screen and you can see indications of a "close" button, but can't get to it. These people need to be forced to literally eat their own dog food.
    70 posts | registered
  6. If I'm browsing at home, I always take a screenshot of the gate, look up the sites registry and e-mail the person who registered with the screenshot and say as the subject "This is not acceptable."

    Now I wish I was an real programmer/developer.

    There ought to be an App for that!
    3427 posts | registered
  7. LuDux wrote:
    FrankM wrote:
    Nighthawk wrote:
    FrankM wrote:
    Before reading why these apps disgust me, please sign in with your Facebook profile:


    At least you can read Ars anonymously.

    I've had more than one IT-savvy person mutter something unprintable when I pointed out that Facebook tracks their browsing with those Like buttons on sites. How do you think it knows "Be the first of your friends to Like this page"?

    Install Ghostery - then you don't need to worry about being tracked.

    I just don't don't use Facebook :)

    That won't help you. Even if you don't use Facebook, that 'Like' still tracks you, compiles information about you, stores and cross-references that information so that they will have it ready to use if or when you ever do sign up for Facebook. If any of your friends use Facebook, they have probably tagged and named your face in Photos, and that name as well as facial recognition can be automatically correlated to other information about you that's already online.

    Thus, even if you never use Facebook, it's easy for them to compile an automatic database of information about you that they can in turn sell to other advertisers to provide targeted ads to you on other sites - such as, for example,

    Hence the usefulness of Ghostery

    I generally block every category except actual advertizing (ie. Analytics, Beacons, Privacy, and Widgets). I whitelist Disqus on some sites where I actually participate. I also use FlashBlock.

    This does, unfortunately, mean that some sites just won't work -- but I don't usually care. If I do care, I fire of an email. Perhaps more than one, over the course of a few months -- when I get tired of this, I send off a final "Why I stopped visiting your site at all, or even following links to it," email. Admittedly, very few sites are actually worth the trouble of more than one email.
    3427 posts | registered
  8. shav wrote:
    My favorite is the site that loads the content in the background but pulls up an overlay and form on top to request information. I simply open Chrome developer tools, remove the elements and continue using their site.

    In Firefox I use Nuke Anything Enhanced plug-in/extension.

    It gives you a right-click menu option (and roll-backs if you click the wrong spot) Don't know if there's anything similar for Android
    3427 posts | registered
  9. Xapns5oh wrote:
    My gripe is that I get so many e-mails even from ligit sites that I do not read them. Of course I can just click on unsubscribe but that does not work on the majority of sites.

    Also I hate the sites where you are reading something and the advertisement banner on time expands downward.

    Do these guys really think they will get us to support their ads by being a pain in the ass?

    Again, Nuke Anything Enhanced.
    I don't use AdBlock, because I agree that the ads are paying the freight -- but I won't put up with them actually getting in my way. (I suppose I could get into fiddling with GreaseMonkey, but that seems a lot of trouble -- unless I were to abdicate the decision-making responsibility to strangers on the net).
    3427 posts | registered
  10. rduncan10 wrote:
    Glocksman wrote:
    Perhaps I'm a luddite, but I can't freaking stand Facebook and refuse to sign up.
    At least eCommerce sites are smart enough to avoid annoying potential customers/viewers.

    I'm not sure I agree with your point about eCommerce site. A lot of them, including sites for really big companies, constantly interrupt your browsing with pop-ups that ask you to fill in surveys.

    Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I don't really believe that any of these companies really care what I think about them. I don't imagine the companies would change anything, even if everyone who filled in the survey expressed the same concern about one of their products or services.

    I think the surveys are just a form of marketing: an attempt to make you feel good a about the company because they give the appearance of caring about what you think. At worst, they are an attempt to get more personal information, and maybe even your e-mail address.

    What? My credit card, confirmation/contact phone number and shipping info isn't enough for them? Greedy little bastitches.
    3427 posts | registered
  11. Just in case you thought federal IT might be marginally competent, the White House's own database of rules and regulations also does the HOW ARE WE DOING? FILL OUT A SURVEY thing when you go there. Every goddamn time. It's not punishment enough for me to read all 200 comments on the FDA's pending rule for the handling of legumes?

    That's the price of dumping cookies every time you close your browser
    -- it's a pain, but it's better than the alternative.
    3427 posts | registered
  12. Nighthawk wrote:
    FrankM wrote:


    At least you can read Ars anonymously.



    Or Tracking Protection List in IE.
    868 posts | registered
  13. Grrr... got a popup on a website shilling a book. Went to an article for instructions on how to fix something, started reading -- then the content dimmed and a popup appeared informing me that the owner of the website had written a book, and did I want to go to Amazon to learn about it?

    No, I want to fix my problem and close your website.

    My Adblock list just got a little bigger.

    "No, I won't install your app or subscribe to your newsletter or buy your book" would be an appropriate article title.
    487 posts | registered
  14. pitmonster wrote:
    kliu0x52 wrote:
    B'Trey wrote:
    I have one email address that is only for signing up for things. If I like the site, then I go ahead and use my regular email addy. If I don't like the site, well, I never see anything until I login to my decoy email address the next time I sign up for something :)

    One of the joys of running your own mail server. A quick edit of the alias file and I sign up to SomeCrappyWebsite using the email address Easy to tell who sells your email address and another quick edit to the alias file and any mail to that address simply gets bounced.

    That's what I do, too.

    Most interestingly, there have been a number times when an e-mail address starts getting hard spam (like scams, phishing, etc.). That's when I know someone has broken into some website's server and stolen their e-mail address list. Only in one of those incidents did the website come out and announce that its data had been compromised. Another time, when I told them, "Hey, I think someone stole your mailing list.", they hadn't realized at that point that there had been a breach of some sort.

    You'd be amazed how many websites let you get past this by typing in the email address

    I'll have to start using root@ and see if that works.

    I find, substituting for the site you're trying to visit is better. That way they can spam themselves and report themselves at the same time.
    678 posts | registered
  15. More xkcd
    Profile Info
    mouse-over text:
    3427 posts | registered

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