A lot has been said about the pop-over windows technology. A pop-over window is much like a pop-up window. It will suddenly appear to your website's visitors informing them about a special offer or urging them to sign up to your newsletter, e-course, mailing list etc. The difference between pop-over windows and pop-up windows is that pop-over windows cannot be easily blocked by pop-up blockers or related software.

Let's go through some facts about this useful technology.

Pop-Over Fact: Any business or individual can benefit from Pop-overs. Pop-overs, if used right, can increase response to special offers or newsletter sign-ups. It's not a coincidence that most major ISP's or Internet related companies use this technology to increase their sales.

Pop-Over Fact: It's not easy to block a pop-over window. Instead of opening a new browser window as the pop-ups of years gone by did, pop-overs remain a part of the web page as a mixture of HTML and Javascript. That makes it very difficult for a traditional pop-up blocker software to ban them and stop them from appearing.

Pop-Over fact: Pop-over windows are versatile and elegant. You can create various designs and styles. You can make pop-over windows that suddenly appear on the visitor's screen or slide from one side of the screen to the other. Pop overs can deliver special offers and advertisements elegantly and with a little more personality. That is why pop-overs are considered by many Internet marketers a highly effective marketing tool.

Pop-Over Fact: Offering your website's visitors special discounted offers and advertisements it's not the only way to use pop-over windows. You could use them in a thousand different ways. You could make a special announcement or relay your latest business news. You could display testimonials from your customers or survey your visitors and get their feedback. There's no limit to what you can do. It's up to you.

As I mentioned before, pop-over windows are active parts of a web page. That is why most pop-up killers or related software fail to stop them. But of course, in the Internet world everything is possible. There's got to be a way to block pop-over windows and that is if you disable Javascript in your browser. But this is an uncommon scenario since the majority of Internet users have Javascript enabled.

The answer is Yes if you are not careful when using pop-over windows to advertise products and special offers. Truth is that advertisements are somehow annoying for everyone. In the case of pop-over windows the chance of annoying your visitors increase since the advertisement will suddenly appear from nowhere in front of the visitor's screen. That is why you should be discreet and careful when creating your pop-over window.

An annoyed website visitor is highly unlikely to turn into a potential customer. I recommend that you should exercise discretion when creating a pop-over advertisement.

If you search the engines for "pop-over software" or "pop-in window software" or something similar, chances are you will find hundreds of pages offering pop-over windows services or software that creates pop-over windows. Not all of them are perfect.

They all have their pros and cons. Most pop-over scripts/software are pretty straight forward. You choose the colors, pop-over window width and height, screen position, whether you want the pop-over to instantly appear as the web page loads or wait for a specified number of seconds. You then specify the contents and you're done. There are more sophisticated pop-over window scripts/software that will let you customize the pop-over window even more.

It's up to you to benefit from this technology but don't overdo it. My advice is to be discreet, straight forward, clear and concise. Don't forget to use your imagination. Good luck!