Use this guide when your popup appears earlier or later than the delay you set, or keeps showing after a visitor closes it. Most timing issues come from how the delay is measured, a popup that was never closed, or another trigger firing first.

If your popup doesn't appear at all, see Troubleshooting a Popup Not Appearing.

You see one or more of the following:

Check these causes in order.

An open popup stays open until the visitor closes it. If a visitor moves to another page without closing it, it shows again right away, with no delay, on the next page your campaign targets.

This also happens in incognito windows when other incognito tabs on your site are still open. To rule this out, follow the steps in Test your popup's timing.

A trigger with more than one condition fires as soon as any one of them is met, unless you set it to require all of them. Separate triggers each fire on their own. For example, with a 15-second delay or a 25% scroll depth condition, a visitor who scrolls quickly sees the popup before 15 seconds.

Your time delay (the Time on Page trigger) is counted from the moment the visitor's browser starts loading the page. It doesn't wait for the page to finish loading, and it doesn't start when Alia loads.

If you time the popup from when the page looks ready, it can seem to appear a few seconds early. To show it later, raise the delay. See How to set or adjust the time delay for your Alia popup.

If you use Adaptive Timing, the delay changes for each group of shoppers but always stays between the minimum and maximum you set. See What is Adaptive Timing?

Some in-app browsers in social apps load your page in the background before the visitor sees it. That background time counts toward your delay, so the popup can appear almost immediately. If this happens with traffic from social apps, raise the delay.

Alia needs a moment to get ready on each page. If Alia is ready after your delay has passed, the popup opens as soon as Alia is ready. On a slow connection, this can add a short wait.

If Preload images is ticked in your trigger settings, Alia waits for your popup's images to load before opening it. Large images or a slow connection can push the popup past your delay. To fix this, use lighter images or untick Preload images.

With Adaptive Timing, Alia also waits to receive each visitor's delay, which can add a little time.

The visitor never closed it. An open popup stays open until the visitor closes it. It shows again in new tabs and after the visitor closes and reopens their browser. It only shows on pages your campaign targets, and only while the campaign is published.

This includes any page the visitor opens, in the same tab or a new one, including pages opened from links inside the popup. In preview, links open normal store pages, so the popup won't follow you there.

Some button actions leave the popup open. Check the actions on each button in your popup editor.

To give a reward without the reward modal, use the Set profile properties action with a reward value, or add a Discount element to the step. Keep the Discount element visible, because the editor warns you when a step has a hidden discount code.

If your own code applies a discount with a URL parameter that reloads the page, an open popup shows again after the reload. Alia's own discount actions apply the code without reloading.

Settings based on a close only apply to visitors who actually closed or minimized the popup.

Alia never opens a second copy on top of an open popup.

Reload the page or open a new one, and the popup won't show. A tab that was open before you unpublished keeps showing it until it reloads. You don't need to clear your cache or use incognito.

Alia treats any browser window narrower than 1024 pixels as mobile. Tablets and narrow desktop browser windows count as mobile, so they see your mobile popup. Alia checks the window width when each page loads.

Test in a fresh incognito window so you visit your store as a new visitor. If your popup targets one country or market, test from that country.

Your If closed, trigger popup again after... and Closed popup settings still apply, so use a new incognito window for each test.

Three things decide when your popup appears:

No, but it can change which campaigns a visitor sees. Location rules such as In countries use the visitor's IP address, so a VPN can make a visitor look like they're somewhere else. Shopify country, market, and language rules use the values Shopify provides.

The Alia script loads on every device, even when your campaign targets only one. Alia checks device targeting in the browser after it loads, so a few Alia requests on desktop are expected.

Not reliably. Preview skips targeting and A/B tests and doesn't record analytics, though your delay and trigger settings still run. To see how a live visitor experiences your timing, follow the steps in Test your popup's timing. See also How to preview and test your Alia popups.

Smart Trigger is an extra trigger that uses a predictive model to open your popup when a visitor is most likely to engage. It's off until you turn it on, and Smart Testing can also turn it on as one of its tests. It runs on mobile only by default.

By default, Smart Trigger opens your popup once. It counts separately from your basic triggers, so a visitor who closed your popup can see it once more from Smart Trigger. It also ignores your time delay. See Setting up Smart Triggering.

No. Deferring the script doesn't make your popup wait longer, because the delay is counted from when the page starts loading. To show your popup later, raise the delay. For how the Alia script loads, see Popup is lowering my site speed or PageSpeed score.

Contact our support team by starting a chat in the Alia app or in the Help Center. Include:

We can't always reproduce timing differences, so a recording of what the visitor saw helps us find the cause.