How to Protect Both Your Site and Your Customers Using Popup Maker

Depending on your niche, protecting your site from unauthorized use and legal liability is an obvious part of your job as website owner. Unfortunately, it’s tough to know where to begin – especially when the wrong decision could impact your business negatively.

Fortunately, you can protect both your site and its visitors using popups. Prominently displaying certain notices to visitors will ensure your site is used only by authorized users, and will also help keep them safe from harm. Even better, you can do this simply, and without any security knowledge.

In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of website and customer protection, and explain how both tasks translate to improved user trust. Then we’ll show you four ways you can use Popup Maker’s various extensions to keep both your website and your customers safe, and increase their trust along the way. Let’s get started!

User Protection and Trust: Why It Matters

User protection is an all-encompassing term referring to the methods you use to protect your website’s users. These may include SSL certificates, malware scanners, and even popups.

For obvious reasons, protecting your users (both from external threats and by offering warning notifications) has many benefits. For example, user protection efforts (such as popups):

• Keep your website transparent, enabling customers to trust your operations.
• Show customers that you take security seriously, which can improve conversions.
• Keep your website safe from liability (in the case of age verification and cookie notices).

As outlined above, protecting your users contributes to a certain level of trust. This is absolutely crucial to your business, and it’s something you should strive to earn from your website’s users at every turn. Fortunately, you can increase trust with popups, and we’ll show you how.

How to Protect Both Your Site and Your Customers Using Popup Maker (In 4 Ways)

Popup Maker is a versatile plugin, and in addition to the many built-in features, you can also bolster its functionality though the extension library. Whether purchased separately or as part of the money-saving Core Bundle, the extensions mentioned below can get you off to a great start protecting your site and your customers. Let’s take a closer look!

1. Protect Against Underage Visitors With Age Verification Modals

Just as they sound, age verification modals are popups that require a site visitor to verify their age. These are commonly used on adult-focused websites, such as those with inappropriate content, gambling sites, and those dealing with alcohol and tobacco.

There are two main benefits to using age verification modals on your website. First, they can protect your site from liability (as age verification may be required by law). Second, they protect underage users from viewing sensitive or inappropriate content.

Popup Maker has a dedicated Age Verification Modals extension for this very purpose. Once installed, you can easily create popups that trigger on certain pages, and even customize the form:

To get started, select Popup Maker > Add Popup from your WordPress dashboard, which directs you to the Popup Editor. From here, click the Popup Maker logo in the toolbar, and select Age Verification Form from the drop-down:

There are three tabs to help customize your popup: General, Appearance, and Labels. You’ll want to focus on General, which is where you can select the main aspects of the popup, such as the age verification Type and the Required Age:

There are many other options to tweak that are beyond the scope of this article. However, they all serve to help you completely customize the popup to your website’s needs.

2. Inform Users About Site Policy With Terms & Conditions Popups

Terms and conditions popups are those that provide useful information – such as cookie notices – to site visitors. They’re important for some websites (especially in the European Union, as cookie notices are required by law), but may not be necessary for all.

However, these popups can provide benefits (even if not legally required). For example, you can use them to inform users what information your site collects, which helps to build trust. Additionally, you can use them to ensure the visibility of your site’s terms and conditions (protecting both your users and your site from misconduct).

To implement this on your site, you can use the Terms & Conditions Popups extension:

As before, once the extension is installed, navigate to Popup Maker > Add Popup in your WordPress dashboard. Scroll down to Terms & Conditions Popups Settings and Enable the feature:

You’ll now have a slew of options available, including Cookie Time (how often the notice should reappear), Force Agreement to View Page, and more. Choose as you’d like, and Publish. Now you’re ready to go!

3. Combat Phishing Attempts and Scams With Leaving Notices

Simply put, the purpose of ‘leaving notices’ – popups that inform readers they’re leaving a website – is to protect users from scams or other malicious attacks. Even when you’ve done your best to secure your website, hackers can still work their way in and ‘clickjack’ your links. This is when users click on a spoofed link that sends them to a website mimicking your own. Their sensitive information is then in danger. In addition, you could potentially be held liable for stolen sensitive information.

Popup Maker’s Leaving Notices extension is one of the easiest ways to protect your users and yourself, and can be set up in just a few clicks:

Once you’ve installed the extension and added the license to the Popup Maker plugin, create a new popup as usual. Then, simply click Enable Leaving Notice from the Popup Editor:

Next, you’ll need to activate a Click Trigger. You can set the trigger for specific links, or those containing certain strings. For example, if you use https across your entire website, create a trigger for links including http. This is just one way to implement leaving notices, but offers simple protection for you and your users.

4. Protect User Information and Site Security With Secure Idle User Logout

If you’ve ever visited a banking website, you may have ‘timed out’ of your session. This is similar to the Secure Idle User Logout popup, which protects your users by keeping sensitive information locked up if they leave their session open.

The two main benefits to using this extension include the protection of sensitive user information, and the prevention of unqualified access to your website’s dashboard or back end. When the session becomes idle, a warning popup appears. If the popup is not acknowledged, the user will be logged out.

Fortunately, this useful tool is quick and simple to set up. Once installed, head once again to Popup Maker > Add Popup. Scroll down until you see Secure Idle User Logout Settings:

Enable the settings by checking the Enable Secure Idle User Logout box. You’ll then see two more options appear:

As with the other extensions in our list, you have access of plenty of personalization options. You can fully customize the popup – including when it should be triggered, on what pages it should appear, and whether it should redirect users.

Conclusion

While popups are a great way to boost sales and increase visitor engagement, you can also use them to protect your website and your customers. These efforts can then translate into improved website credibility and, as a result, more conversions.

In this post, we’ve discussed the link between website protection and customer trust. We’ve also shown you four ways you can increase trust with popups. For example, popups enable you to:

1. Protect against unqualified site use with Age Verification Modals.
2. Inform users about site use terms with Terms & Conditions Popups.
3. Combat phishing and scams with Leaving Notices.
4. Protect user information and site security with Secure Idle User Logout.

Do you have any questions about popups and how you can use them to protect your website and your customers? Let us know in the comments section below!

Image credit: Pexels.