A common trap for companies taking their business online is to create pop-up ads on their website. After all, if you don’t take advantage of as many internet features as possible, you’re wasting your money, right? Wrong. Pop-ups now have worse press than ever due to their association with spyware, adware, and other intrusive software.These programs manifest themselves as “rogue pop-ups” with no connection to the product or service your business is offering. Although some newspaper sites like The Washington Post and The New York Times use pop-ups to improve functionality for their site users, many people have programs to block pop-ups of any kind. Some rogue pop-ups are also highly inappropriate. Poor security or coding on your website can allow this kind of content in regardless of your intentions, and if a user stumbles across these on your site, they may never return. Consider it from the user’s point of view: if you go to a site looking for a specific piece of information, do you want to have your route cluttered by extraneous or even offensive information?Google, a role-model for many online businesses, absolutely refuses to allow pop-ups on their site. Apart from being “annoying,” as they mention, Google also does not waste time on ineffective practices. The easy availability of pop-up blockers (along with firewalls and anti-virus software) means that many users won’t even see any pop-up ads you may include on your site.If you insist on using pop-ups, we suggest either using them solely for instructional purposes (for example, providing more information about a product or opening a link in a new page) or clearly putting your company’s name in the title bar of the advertisement. Also, consider whether the benefits of including them on your page outweigh the risks.