2,000 Unique visitors for 4 signups: How can I improve conversion?
I'm in the early stages of creating resources aimed at developers who want to learn more about blockchain. I'm experimenting with writing blog posts and writing a newsletter to (hopefully) build a small audience.
Yesterday, my post, What The Crypto Community Should Learn From GitHub's Acquisition, did well on HackerNews and OK on Reddit. I ended up with 2,000 unique views, but only 4 signups for my newsletter! I include a Drip widget in the bottom right of the site, and added a link to a sign up form in the article's footer.
I'm not expecting HUGE signups, but I have to think I can do better than 0.2% conversion, no? What can I do around copy, form positioning, etc... to improve here? I have some ideas but would love to hear your feedback.
Hey Ben,
Always sucks to write the whole thing and get little conversions, the quality of the traffic is a good point but still it should be way better!!!
Improve the blog's reading experience:
About the newsletter:
This should have a huge difference next time!
Hope it helps Ben, best of luck!
Thanks Pedro, this is really great stuff. Appreciate you going out of the way to mock up the design stuff as well! I went to sign up for your course and got an error!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.No worries man, happy to help!
Dammit, it's the third time it happened (pretty rare tho). It happened before because people block the signup form, my tracking/analytics, and all that stuff...Any chance you have one of those blockers?
If not I will just add you manually ;)
I don't see a newsletter signup box on that page...
Unless you are talking about textual link on the bottom of the page?
Hmm, yes I have that link but also have a Drip widget that shows up (on Desktop) as a little box at the bottom right (and as a bar on the bottom on mobile). I wonder if it's an ad blocker thing? Are you using one?
Yeah, Ublock origin. I am adblocker user like the majority of HN and Reddit. So that the first problem.
Make it medium sized, visible, with proper Call to Action. And use solution that is universally accepted by adblockers.
Help people find a way to sign up. As of now its simply un-noticeable.
Thanks y'all, realizing the Drip widget is blocked by ad blocker is in-itself a huge insight. Clearly I need a native form with a better value prop and call to action. This is why I love this community!
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Hi Ben,
Two ideas that hit me right away.
Good luck!
-Pmox2018
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Two things stand out as clear reasons:
Your call to action is literally invisible! Surprisingly, your company's front page has a very visible CTA: https://coinrecap.io, so one has to wonder how your blog design came about.
Your blog post is illegible. Compare your blurb at the top of this post to your blog page. One is easy to read, the other is almost impossible. You need to:
a) replace the serif font with a sans-serif one
b) increase the font size
c) and most crucially, decrease the characters-per-line count
See:
https://pearsonified.com/typography/
https://pearsonified.com/2011/12/golden-ratio-typography.php
To quote:
Okay, one more: d) ease people into your content by starting with a short paragraph, not a long one. For example, you could have made the first sentence by itself be the first paragraph. Easy to see, easy to scan, sets the topic, and it eases the reader into your piece. Don't start with a long paragraph. Same goes for writing effective emails, by the way.
I don't know much about crypto so I won't comment on the content but your CTA for the newsletter could be stronger.
"Receive occasional links and resources for blockchain builders."
Occasional links & resources don't sound all that value-adding. Can you be more specific about what you are giving me in exchange for my email?
Props for getting something out into the world! Keep cranking.
Start by asking questions (survey will be just fine) to people who have already signed up. Ask them the type of benefice they were expecting/thinking about when they registered.
Then try a value proposition like "sign up to get a message about X every week/day/month" (choose your frequency)
X should be what (the benefice you users where expecting when they registered) you get from your survey.
Do not forget to promise while new users signup to not spam them.
Good thoughts, thanks!
your next step should then be to find a niche (specific forums/websites/channels...) where the users that have the characteristics you've just identified and converted through the survey gather. This should be one of you good acquisition channel)
Then normally, your traffic and conversion should skyrocket!
Edit : if you need specific help contact me by email (find it on my profile)
Your traffic sources are notoriously bad for conversions. But, and this is a big but, they tend to be awesome newsletter subscribers.
Just my experience.
That out of the way, your newsletter sign up is easy to miss.
Thanks! I guess I'd been hoping/expecting more along the lines of 1%, maybe 2%- if the form is more visible, is that an unreasonable hope?
I mean, yes, it’s reasonable. You have to consider a few things:
What I mean by point four is that what’s the next logical step for people to take after reading your article? How can you create a subscription opportunity that makes it faster or easier.
For example - you write a post about 10 ways to growth hack. Your content upgrade could be “get the framework I use to rapidly implement, test, and scale growth hacking ideas.”
Thanks Daniel, appreciate this advice!
What you're going to find out with conversion rate optimization is that many of the design changes will result in negligible increases.
In other words - it's not the design of your landing page, it's the source of your traffic.
The people who were coming from HackerNews or Reddit likely didn't need the solution you offer. So no matter how awesome your landing page, it probably wouldn't have converted more than a handful of them.
With that being said, just some basic advice:
Thanks. This seems to be a theme in the feedback. Any practical advice on how to "sell the benefits" better given the limited real estate on the drip widget. What, for example, would you put in the title bar?
Not a strong enough value prop yet. For me to sign up to something I need to feel like either there's so much useful info on the blog I can't get to it all in one sitting. or the newsletter is going to give me something I can't live without.
Think of it like this. If I'm going to commit my time to reading your newsletter, what am I going to get? Ben DiFrancesco's opinion of today's tech news? How did that help me? Nothing personal, I sure your a great guy, but most people are much more worried about themselves.
What is your users problem? and how is your blog/newsletter going solve it for them?
Even for famous people they use the subtle promise, if you read my stuff you can be famous like me because your going to gain some insight into how I think and that will get you there. And/or, they're entertaining then your competing with cat memes.
Thanks! This is helpful feedback, and seems to be a theme. I'm trying to cut through the crap and deliver actual, technical insights on the blockchain world. Given that, do you have any suggestions for what you might put on the Drip form title bar, for example, that might be more compelling?
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Really appreciate all the candid feedback! Super helpful.
Yeah, totally fair. Only 4 posts so far because I'm just getting started. Hoping to produce at least one post a week, along with videos, webinars, email courses, etc... Just at the beginning of the journey.
This is a bummer, because I'm not a designer at all, but since I know I have this weakness I went out and used a template from folks who supposedly know better about this stuff. Your point about the "Acres of unrelieved text" is well made- I can probably do a better job with my writing to work on that. But I'm not qualified to redesign the other parts of the page, so it's a bummer to hear the existing template isn't getting the job done. Back to the drawing board!
Can you expand on this one a little? Right now I have "Home", "About", and "Blog". What would you consider instead?
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