I have discovered a serious issue with OptinMonster not working / not displaying which I hope OptinMonster will rectify very quickly.
I was randomly testing one of my OptinMonster pop ups, which are usually excellent, when this happened:
What is frustrating about this is that rather than stay on my website, the website visitor is sent away from my site to OptinMonsters where they blatantly try and sell their software.
You can see this in action here:
The error message is hidden way over on the right hand side, and as we read from left to right, most people will not see it. If I am lucky they will hit the back button, but many will not. After all, it is not their fault that the OptinMonster code has stopped functioning and has taken them away from my website, is it?
The crucial point here is that I pay a substantial sum for OptinMonster every year, and when it is working, it is worth every penny, because it gets more people signing up to my email list than without it.
However, when it isn’t working as it should, it does precisely the opposite and gets less people signing up for my email list, and worse still, it actively sends them away from my website and tries to make them an OptinMonster customer.
Not Good!
What Makes OptinMonster Stop Working
I spent some time working out why OptinMonster stops working, and I found the cause.
Ironically, the reason OptinMonster stops working is due to one of the tools that makes OptinMonster so successful at increasing the number of people downloading my free resources and thereby going onto my email list: Split Testing!
OptinMonster allows me to create a pop up, slide in or inline tool, and then run a split test alongside it to try and beat my control.
As a small business marketing consultant, Split Testing is one of my favourite things to do. Rather than me taking an educated guess at which form will generate more subscribers to my email list, Split Testing proves which one works best by letting the visitors to my website decide.
Well, it does until OptinMonster Stops working, and this is why it stops working:
As soon as you change a winning test to become the control, the display code completely changes, meaning that anywhere you have been running this split test across your website is now broken!
How To Fix OptinMonster Not Working / Displaying
1. The Split Test Code Must Remain The Same
When I create a split test, the code absolutely must remain the same forever more.
It should never change.
As a marketer, I am going to keep running split tests for every one of my campaigns BECAUSE this is a smart thing to do and is one of the best pieces of functionality that exists inside OptnMonster (or it would be if it worked).
The split test code must remain the same.
2. If An OptinMonster Form Stops Working, Don’t Steal My Visitors, Leave Them On My Website
Next, if the problem is fixed above, but as happens with software from time to time, sometimes a form does stop working, then rather than steal my website visitor and send them to the OptinMonster page, they must remain on my site.
3. There Should Be Error Notices On The Campaign View In WordPress
Finally, when a form does stop working, OptinMonster should let me know inside the Campaign view in WordPress so I can head over and fix it.
Unlesss these improvements are made very quickly, I cannot see me continuing to promote OptinMonster to my audience, or even using it across my websites, as it becomes too unwieldy to use.
