Motivating and achievement-eliciting pop-ups in online environments: A user experience perspective

The main experiment tested the effects of a sequence of three pop-ups that were presented on a website. We had three conditions with different display times of the sequence of pop-ups. They were presented to 78 website-users for either 1, 2 or 3 s, and compared to a control group on subsequent motivation-related ratings. The results demonstrated that the website was stronger associated with achievement motivation if pop-ups were presented for only 1 or 2 s, compared with 3 s or the control group. This indicates that short presentations of pop-ups could activate achievement motivation in users of learning and business websites. It could be an important design guideline to flash shorter pop-ups that make online environments more appealing to users.