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Grok Key takeaways
Multi-step popups spread requests across two or more screens instead of asking for everything at once — lowering perceived intrusiveness and improving completion rates.
Around 17% of Shopify stores now use multi-step popups, a significant jump from just a few years ago when they were rare on ecommerce sites.
Each step is a micro-commitment: a visitor who clicks a button is far more likely to type an email next, and a visitor who gave an email is more likely to add a phone number.
Multi-step popups collect more useful data per visitor (preferences, birthday, category interest, phone), which directly improves the personalization of downstream email and SMS campaigns.
On-landing multi-step popups in Wisepops average a 3.93% conversion rate, while on-click campaigns can reach 37.34% — choose the trigger based on intent, not habit.
Yes, multi-step popups are an effective way to increase your website's conversion rate.
They're like polite family members compared to traditional website popups — always engaging visitors gradually, unlike their "in-your-face" relatives.
Multi-step popups are gaining a lot of popularity — as many as 17% of mid-sized Shopify stores use them to convert visitors. Below, I'll cover everything you need to know about using multi-step popups for your business.
In this post:
See which visitors are ready to convert, and which campaigns will reach them
We analyze your visitor segments and show you which campaigns would drive more conversions on your site.
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What are multi-step popups?
A multi-step (or multistep) popup is an interactive website popup that contains two or more windows ("steps") with different content: email and/or phone number signup fields, survey forms, preference questions, and so on. Multi-step popups are designed to capture more useful data from visitors that can be used for marketing.
Multi-step popups can be highly effective because they provide more thoughtful and gradual user interactions. Thanks to this, they increase visitor engagement and help gather valuable information such as lead contact data, product preferences, and survey answers.
Here's how a typical multi-step popup looks (you can see I've added my email in the first step and got the second one asking for a phone number):
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Difference between multi-step popups and traditional popups
Traditional popups
Multi-step popups
Single popup window
Two or three windows
Immediate request for user information
Gradual engagement
Limited information and data capture
Progressive data collection
Higher perceived intrusiveness
Lower perceived intrusiveness
Quick offer presentation
Storytelling opportunity
Limited engagement metrics
More detailed interaction metrics
Fact: 17% of Shopify stores have multi-step popups
Around 17% of Shopify stores use multi-step popups to get leads and feedback — a significant increase in popularity. Even a few years ago, finding multi-step popups on ecommerce stores was rare.
Benefits of multi-step popups
Multi-step popups have several benefits:
More conversions: multi-step popups can achieve a higher conversion rate because of their lower perceived intrusiveness. Wisepops data shows multi-step popups convert at 5.17% on average, compared to 4.62% for single-step popups.
Higher visitor engagement: multi-step forms keep visitors engaged with a website for longer, increasing the chance of conversion.
More qualified leads: multi-step popups require action (giving product preferences, answering questions, etc.), so the leads generated are more qualified.
Diverse marketing objectives: you can combine different campaigns in one popup, like a website experience survey and email or phone number collection.
Better data capture: you can gather more information about your audience thanks to multiple windows — product preferences, gender, email, phone number, answers to questions, and more.
Expert comment
"With multi-step popups, you can get more customer data at once, without disturbing users later with more requests when you need to run another campaign.
Thanks to this, you'll have the data you need to better personalize the offers in marketing emails — for example, collect email and date of birth in a popup to send a VIP offer on a customer's birthday, or collect sport type and training frequency (as Nutrimuscle does) to send product recommendations that actually match what each subscriber trains for.
The data doesn't just sit in your list. It flows into your email platform and becomes the basis of segmentation you couldn't build any other way. That's why multi-step popups convert at 5.17% on average — higher than single-step formats — and why the leads they generate tend to be higher quality."
— Lisa Fockens, Popup Expert, Wisepops
Emma Sleep: 50% lift in email subscriptions from a single step change
Adding an interest-selector step (mattresses, pillows, beds, or other) before the email capture form increased Emma Sleep's subscription rate by 50% vs the single-step version. The campaign has collected 2.2M+ contacts at a 5.5% average signup rate across 20+ markets.
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How to create a multi-step popup
Choose a template
Customize the campaign
Add the discount code
Choose when to show the popup
Connect your email app
In this guide, I'll be using Wisepops — a platform you can use to make any type of popup for free. We'll create a multi-step popup with a discount, which is a good option for Shopify or other online stores.
1. Choose a popup template
In the Wisepops dashboard, go to Popups > New popup campaign:
Next, choose a template:
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2. Customize the campaign
Change the appearance of your multi-step campaign to fit your website design. It's simple — just click the element you want to change to see the customization menus:
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Before we start customizing — take a look at all the campaign steps by clicking the corresponding buttons (Step 1, Step 2, and Step 3 above the popup campaign preview):
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You'll find all the customization options at the top of the campaign editor (Style, Position, Closing, CSS, size, border, and so on).
Helpful tips on writing compelling popup copy:
3. Add the discount code
We promised a discount for signing up, so let's make good on our promise.
Go to Step 3, click the code section, and replace the default "CODE" with a different one (WELCOME10 can work as a welcome discount for new customers — but feel free to use these 20 discount code ideas for inspiration):
Creating a multi-step popup for a Shopify store?
Connect your store to Wisepops and sync discounts. You'll be able to create and share unique codes from your Shopify dash in seconds.
4. Choose when to show the popup
Now decide when you'd like the campaign to appear to your website visitors. You have multiple options (immediately on landing, on exit, on reaching a certain page depth, etc.).
Go to Display Rules in the main menu.
Let's choose On Landing — such campaigns convert a decent 3.93% of visitors on average. Note that your multi-step popup will display three seconds after the landing by default:
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Average conversion rates for different display options in Wisepops:
On-landing popups: 3.93%
On-exit popups: 2.87%
On-scroll popups: 3.09%
On-click popups: 37.34%
On custom event popups: 5.43%
5. Connect your email app
You need all the emails collected by the multi-step popup to be sent directly to your email marketing app, right?
This is easy: go to Step 2 of your campaign and click the email signup field. Next, click the Sync tab in the menu that opens and find your email app:
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How to use multi-step popups (with examples)
Here are some of the most popular ways online businesses use multi-step popups to achieve various marketing goals:
Capture emails and phone numbers
Generate leads and collect qualification data
Convert mobile visitors with a mystery offer
Keep customers updated on brand news
Raise awareness of limited-time offers
Use case #1: Generate leads and collect their info
Multi-step popups are ideal when you want to collect more than just an email. By asking for preferences, profile data, or contact details across steps, you build a richer picture of each lead — one that feeds directly into personalized email and SMS flows.
Nutrimuscle, a French sports nutrition brand, ran an A/B/C test to find their best popup format and landed on a 3-step flow. Each step builds on the last:
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Result: 4.1% signup rate and 7,000+ new email subscribers in 12 months. The sport type and training frequency data collected in step 2 feeds directly into personalized Klaviyo flows — product recommendations matched to each subscriber's goals rather than a generic newsletter.
Use case #2: Capture emails and phone numbers
This is an excellent way to generate leads for your business.
In this multi-step popup example, Blume, a self-care brand, offers a discount for new visitors in the first window:
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Once you give your email — you go to the second step (it's optional, by the way), where you're asked to provide your phone number to get deals on your smartphone:
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Blume converts 5% of website visitors with multi-step popups
Use case #3: Convert mobile visitors with a mystery offer
Ruggable, an online retailer, uses a multi-step popup (with three steps) to convert mobile visitors into leads.
The first popup window entices customers with a promise of a mystery offer and asks for an email in exchange:
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Next, we get the second step with the phone number signup. This one is also mandatory to fill out, so we have to keep going to get that offer:
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Finally, we arrive at the third step where we get a discount for the first order:
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Use case #4: Keep customers updated on brand news
This multi-step popup example is very interesting. Rothy's closed its international store for a while, so it posted this welcome popup to inform non-US visitors about it.
There was also a button offering an email notification to those who wanted to know when the store was going to be reopened (a nice idea that helped the brand grow the email list with this campaign):
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Clicking Count Me In took us to the second step with the email signup form. Only the email was needed — so signing up was quick and easy:
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Related: more examples of email popups
Use case #5: Raise awareness of limited-time offers
Want more of your visitors to know about your special promos but don't want to clutter your homepage with all of them? Then ecommerce popups can help.
Look at this multi-step popup example below — it appeared while I was looking at a product (visitors on product pages have higher buying intent compared to those browsing the homepage, so this offer makes total sense), making an interesting offer:
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Clicking See details took me to the second step, where I got more information about the offer. It was a "free-product-with-purchase" deal, a popular limited-time offer example ecommerce businesses use to increase the average order value:
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Related: Examples of sales promotions
Summary
Multi-step popups can be a game-changer for your website's conversion rate optimization. Compared to traditional popups, they have many benefits, including higher conversion rates, improved engagement, better data collection, and personalization.
If you'd like to learn more about popups, these resources will help:
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