A lightbox is an image overlay that takes control of the rest of your site when a customer exhibits a certain behavior or arrives on a certain page type.
Lightboxes can be an effective way to direct customers' attention to a specific site element or image.
Types of Lightboxes
You can create these types of lightboxes in Monetate:
- Image: This standard lightbox focuses on an image.
- HTML with Optional JS: This lightbox action contains HTML and JavaScript that you can customize.
- Lightbox on Click: You can build an image-based version of this type of lightbox as well as a version that contains HTML and JavaScript. On-click lightboxes open when a customer clicks a specific element instead of on opening or arriving on a page.
- Exit Intent Lightbox: You can build an image-based version of this type of lightbox as well as a version that contains HTML and JavaScript. Exit-intent lightboxes open when a customer moves their mouse pointer out of the window.
Lightbox ID
The lightbox ID, which can be any number between zero and 31, determines the grouping for the lightbox. If you want to group the display frequency of a lightbox with other Monetate lightboxes, then choose an ID that matches those lightboxes. If a customer qualifies for more than one experience with the same ID, then the experience with the highest priority appears.
If you want a lightbox to remain independent of any grouping, ensure that its ID is different from all other Monetate lightboxes. If two lightboxes have the same ID and are running concurrently, then customers who qualify only see the lightbox with a higher experience priority. If the lightboxes have different IDs and a customer qualifies for both, then they could see both lightboxes in the same session.
Lightbox Session
Most session measurements within the Monetate platform correspond to the Monetate session. However, when calculating display frequency for lightboxes, Monetate uses the same definition that browsers use for session cookies. While this definition can vary from browser to browser, a session generally ends when the user closes the browser window or when the user has been inactive for a specified amount of time, typically 20 minutes.
Display Frequency
Display frequency determines how often a customer sees a particular lightbox. The settings include once per user, once per session, and every page for all users.
Every Page
A customer who qualifies for the lightbox experience sees it on every page if you don't set any other guidelines. You should set guidelines at the experience level for this frequency so that customers aren't overwhelmed by a lightbox on every page of your site.
Once Per Session
This setting is the one most commonly used. Customers see a lightbox one time per lightbox session.
Once, Ever
Customers only see a lightbox once, ever. Use this setting sparingly due to its implications for the lightbox ID. If you used this setting one time with every available lightbox ID (0–31) and a user qualified to see every lightbox one time, then they would never see any other lightbox you create because you have already used all the available IDs.
Once Every 'X' Days
Customers who qualify for the lightbox experience see it once and are eligible to see the lightbox again in a number of days that you specify if you don't set any other guidelines. If you use the Once Every 'X' Days option, then you must specify the number of days in the Days until expiration field in the Optional Inputs section of the action template.
Adding a Lightbox to an Experience
Follow these steps to add a lightbox to a Web experience.
- On the Experience Editor page, click WHAT and then click ADD ACTION.
- Click Lightboxes.
- Select the lightbox action template that you want to use.
- Configure the lightbox action.
Lightboxes serve to capture customers' attention, not annoy them. Monetate only serves a maximum of one lightbox per page and doesn't serve a series of lightboxes that fire when a customer closes the previous lightbox.