What Is A Lightbox In Web Design?

Lightboxes are one of the best tricks web designers have at their disposal. They can be used in a variety of ways, ranging from simple text-based popup messages to feature-length creations that cover your entire page. Lightboxes are highly effective, but they aren’t something you should use whenever you want traffic. This guide explores what is a lightbox popup in web design and when you can use it for more efficiency.

What Is A Lightbox?

Lightboxes are a type of website pop-up usually used for discount offers, product announcements, visitor informational guides, cookie policies, and more. This technique takes content that could be shown in a pop-up or modal window by default and instead makes it the full screen.

Are Lightboxes Effective?

If you want to run any commercial business, you’ve got to get traffic. You can’t just rely on your competition to bring the customers; you certainly can’t rely on luck to put them in your lap. If you want to make a living online, you need to drive in more visitors than anyone else.

Lightboxes work by taking viewers on a visual journey through the website with an enticing alternative message at each step and a cinematic feel throughout. This makes lightbox design perfect for certain types of websites and companies, but not everyone is an ideal fit for what it has to offer.

When Should You Use A Lightbox?

A lightbox should be used only in those situations where you want to capture the attention of your viewers https://sguru.org/create-newsletter-signup-form-that-converts/ and, at the same time, tell them something important. As a rule of thumb, you should use lightboxes when:

 

 

• You want to sell products; for example, if you have a store online where you sell t-shirts and hats, then a lightbox is an ideal way to let viewers know about available new products.

 

 

• If you want to present your services, for example, if you’re an architect and have designed some cool buildings that won’t fit on your main website, then a lightbox is the perfect way to get all the necessary information about the services you offer.

 

 

Some practical reasons to use lightboxes on your site are listed below.

Discounts

Lightboxes make it easy to offer your customers discounts and special offers. Why? Because the ad takes up most of the content on your website, recapturing the viewer’s attention.

If you have an eCommerce website, then you should be able to see how important this could be. Customers who want discounts will have to pay extra attention because they will have to scroll down through your main website content. But that is something that can take a lot of time and effort, especially if just one or two products are on sale.

Product Announcement

Lightboxes are perfect if you want to announce something new or if you want to inform your visitors of a change in the way that you do business. For example, if you want to introduce a new product range, your lightbox can tell your customers about that. If a customer doesn’t know about the changes, then they’ll be able to learn more by clicking on the box and going through it.

Informational Guide

Don’t you hate it when browsing a website and something catches your attention? But you don’t know what it is, and since the site doesn’t have a description of the feature, there isn’t much you can do about it. Lightboxes, on the other hand, are perfect for telling visitors about what something is without having to dwell on it. You may let your visitors know what new categories have been added or if there is something else that needs their attention.

Cookies Policy

Very few people read the fine print, and even fewer understand what they are being told. The same goes for websites, too, where few people notice the “cookies this website uses” section. Lightboxes are your solution to this problem. If you want to inform your customers about something but don’t want them to skip over a particular part of your site, then you can use a lightbox. It won’t take much effort, but it will ensure that your customers know what you really stand for, especially regarding privacy and cookies.

Recover Lost User

If you have a website for business and don’t want to lose your customers, using lightboxes can be a great help. The way it works is this; if some of your customers are trying to find their way back home at any given time and the website isn’t directing them back, then the lightbox will show them exactly where they need to go, and since it goes through each part of the website very slowly, it won’t be very long before they get there after all.

Activity Reminder

This is a really simple one. You can use lightboxes to remind your viewers about your activity on social media, such as how many likes you got on Facebook or how many followers liked your tweets. Lightboxes are an excellent way of reminding people about these things because they draw the viewer’s eyes directly to the specific point on the page where you want them to look.

The Bottom Line

You now have the knowledge to create great lightboxes for your website. What you do with that information is up to you, but if you’re interested in using lightboxes on your site, we recommend checking out this post that explains everything you need to know about using lightboxes. I hope this helps!