Exit-intent pop-ups, sticky bars and widgets you can A/B test

What’s new

An exit-intent pop-up is a box that appears when a visitor is about to leave a page. Since 15 October 2026, Cuttl’s visual editor can add pop-ups, exit-intent offers, sticky bars, email signups and 29 page elements to an A/B test without code. It is live now for marketers and CRO teams, and on every plan.

• Widgets: pop-up, email signup, exit pop-up, full screen, sticky bar, countdown bar, slide-in, notification and floating button.
• Elements: 29 of them in 7 groups (text, media, layout, proof and trust, urgency and offers, forms, advanced), placed into the page itself.

Why it matters

Pop-ups often go live without a control. A separate pop-up tool reports how many people saw the box and how many signed up, and leaves out the visitors who left because of it, or who would have bought anyway.

Built inside an A/B test, the pop-up becomes one version and the page without it is the other. The primary goal stays what the page is for, such as orders or demo requests, so the test answers whether the pop-up helps overall. Widget events like shown, closed and submitted sit beside it as secondary metrics.

It also cuts a step. Testing an offer or a free delivery bar no longer needs a developer or a second script on the site, and the test runs on the same snippet as the rest of Cuttl.

How it works

Everything is set in the visual editor, which opens the page in its own tab:

• Open Web Experiments, then Experiments, open a test and choose Build in visual editor.
• In the left rail choose Add, then Elements, Widgets or Saved (the site’s Library).
• Elements: click one to place it after the selected element, click on the page where it should go, or drag it in.
• Widgets: click one and it shows straight away. Its settings open on the right: content, design, when it shows, how often, devices, closing and tracking.

A widget shows on its own trigger: straight away, after a delay, after scrolling, when the visitor is about to leave, on a click, after a spell of inactivity, from a given page of the session, after time on the site, or after a goal or event. On desktop, exit intent fires when the pointer leaves through the top of the window. On touch screens it fires on a quick scroll back up after the visitor has read part of the page.

Frequency is every page view, once per session, once per visitor or once every N days, and a widget can stop for good once someone closes it, clicks it or signs up. Only one pop-up shows at a time, and pop-ups work as accessible dialogs with keyboard focus, Esc to close and screen reader support.

Each widget adds “Widget shown”, “Widget clicked”, “Widget closed” and “Widget submitted” goals to pick as metrics. Email signups go to the site’s own form or email tool URL, and Cuttl never stores the addresses. For background on reading the outcome, see what A/B testing is and the guide to A/B test targeting and approvals.

Who it’s for

The update matters most to teams that want to try offers and prompts without waiting on a release:

• Growth and performance marketers: test an exit-intent discount against no pop-up on paid landing pages and keep it only if orders rise.
• Ecommerce managers: run a free delivery sticky bar against the current page and watch average order value as well as conversion rate.
• CRO and experimentation leads: compare a slide-in with a full screen pop-up, with bounce and rage clicks as guardrail metrics.
• Founders and small-business owners: add an email signup without installing a second tool, and send signups straight to the email tool already in use.
• Agencies: build a client’s pop-up once, save it to the Library, and reuse it on the next test.

By industry

The same widgets fit different jobs depending on what the site sells:

• Online stores: an exit pop-up with a delivery code on the cart page, tested against the cart without it, with orders as the primary goal.
• SaaS: a slide-in offering a 30-second quiz on the pricing page, judged on trial sign-ups as well as quiz starts.
• Lead generation and service businesses: a floating “Book a call” button on long service pages, measured by form submissions.
• Publishers and media: a newsletter signup shown after 50% scroll, tested against no prompt with bounce rate as a guardrail.

How to start in Cuttl

In app.cuttl.io, create a test on a high-traffic page, open the visual editor and add an Exit pop-up from Add, then Widgets. Leave the control as the page without the pop-up, and set the primary goal to the page’s main conversion. The visual editor section of the Web Experiments page shows the editor.

Adding widgets and elements to a test is on every plan, including Free, which runs one test at a time. Saving widgets, themes and snippets to the Library for reuse is on Basic and Pro.

A few limits to know. If an AI assistant points a test’s email signups at another site, a person approves it before it goes live. Custom widgets with their own HTML, CSS and JavaScript are made in the Library. AI assistants connected through the Cuttl MCP server can add widgets and elements to a draft test, and any JavaScript they add waits for a person’s approval.

Common questions