What's a good conversion rate?
Anyone have any insights or stats on what a good conversion rate is, and how to improve it?
Background:
My latest newsletter edition got 1933 visits and 3 new subscribers. 😕
This is the article:
https://definiteoptimism.substack.com/p/is-stable-diffusion-really-a-big
Almost all of the visitors came from Hacker News, where I posted the article.
I feel like this is a pretty bad conversion rate, so would really appreciate any thougths or advice. Is this normal?
What's a good conversion rate? I would imagine 2% at least?
Anything obvious I am doing wrong?
Perhaps I just need to write better articles!
Any tips or thoughts appreciated, thanks in advance! 🙏
Trending on Indie Hackers
I write around profitable products, Newsletters and other ecosystems on Micro SaaS Ideas
I went through your previous posts and I see the topics are pretty random on various topics. I think what you need to find is pick a niche and continue to write deep on that.
Newsletter about AI, Hyperloop, SpaceX doesn't make sense to most people as its almost like reading random some news articles. Rather, you can pick a specific top like AI and just write about AI stuff. This way you will have better conversion rates and less churn too.
I'd agree with that. It will also help you hone in on a more specific audience, which means you can focus your marketing, where they specifically hang out, while also making it easier to communicate your value proposition.
That's right. Thankyou!!
Content quality could certainly be a factor, but at this point you simply need to focus on shipping.
If I read your data correctly, you re-started writing on August 7, after more than a year of not publishing in your newsletter. You need to focus on writing consistently to have more content people can look at when they see your site.
I seem to be converting about 1% of viewers to subscribers so far at https://barbariangrunge.substack.com/
Some others I spoke to had similar conversion rates, but the more successful your newsletter is, the harder this is to measure. Instead, they said they saw 1% of visitors like or share, since you don't know what percent of viewers are already subscribers
Also, apparently the typical conversion from unpaid to paid is about 10% on substack
Unless I'm missing something you have no CTA and just a single optin at the very bottom of the article? So as a minimum 1933 people need to get to bottom of the article - how likely is that? - before you have any chance of getting a subscriber. And let's say they do get to the bottom, is there a compelling reason to subscribe? Well, if they really liked the article maybe. But it's not enough to get a good subscribe rate
The good news is 3 people really did like this article enough to subscribe.
If it was me, for those that don't have time to read, but are interested, i'd have an invitation to "have this sent to your inbox" above the fold or you could consider an exit pop up. These may not be things you'd choose in a ideal world, but if something's not working (and if more subscriber's is the objective then this isn't), then it may be worth trying something different.
Just noticed you have a header with subscribe button. If you make this sticky - assuming substack has that option - then "subscribe" will always be in view at least although "subscribe" on it's own is not really enough (it's not clear what you're subscribing to or the benefit of doing so). You might also want to consider adding the word "newsletter" to the header because it's not clear it's a newsletter (rather than a blog). Yeah, just checked your home page and it looks like a blog to me. And again no CTA there.
"Almost all of the visitors came from Hacker News, where I posted the article". I tracked this down to see if the expectation of clicking through was met (i.e. does the visitor see what they expect when they click) and it seems fine. If you have stats on bounce rate that would tell you something . People tend to leave very quickly if they don't get what they expect (it doesn't look like that's the problem - but its worth checking)
What i don't quite get here: https://hacker-news.news/post/32634074
... is you have "read the original article" option, and so 1933 are making that choice rather than reading it on HN? Is that usual? I don't know what options you have on HN, but - if possible - i'd be inclined to try having the "show article" option with a CTA & link to a dedicated opt-in page.
Ultimately, there are lots of things you can try here, it will just take some trial and error, but if you don't focus on on getting subscribers, i think you're more likely to just get casual readers.
Quick Win 3 (Qualifying Statement) & QW4 CTA here might help -
https://landingpagehub.net/email-list-building/higher-converting-squeeze-page-quick-win-guide/
@jamie_g
Most businesses facing this thing! But there are multiple technics that others use to get back their customers and increase their sales.
you can check this https://churnfree.com/blog/8-effective-customer-retention-strategies/ it helps you grow and increase your customer retention and conversion!
A very important question, thanks for your post, we can read comments and find good answers!
For what it's worth, I've had >10 articles on the front page of hacker news in the past year. I don't have formal statistics, but my guess is that the percentage of people who read an article and go on to subscribe is similar to what you've found or perhaps even lower. Some articles get tens of thousands of views but ~zero subscribers. My guess is that most people who find stuff through hacker news like finding stuff through hacker news. A link from a respected blogger or something might lead people to subscribe at 3-4 orders of magnitude higher rates.
Begs the question whether it's worth the bother then or if there is more that could be done to improve conversion. I know nothing about Hacker News & Substack platforms specifically, in terms of functionality options, but from what i can see so far - with my landing page conversion copywriter hat on - with there is a lot more that could be done on the conversion optimisation front.
From a design perspective:
Put the sign up box at the top of the article or half way through it. You're expecting most people to read the entire thing when the likelihood is they will read just the first 2-3 paragraphs and skim.
You should talk about the pros of subscribing to your newsletter like the topics I can expect to receive into my inbox.
Use some social proof to further incentivize. Small facts like "trusted by 500 subscribers" etc can help push people into giving you there email.
Give something in return for signing up. "If you sign up I'll give you my 5 best topics of last month and sign you up to next week's newsletter".
If you want to talk further about some other ideas I've had you can book a call with me on my page: https://www.imaginaryspace.co.uk/
Right. Agreed entirely. Sorry i didn't see this before i posted.
It really depends. On target audience, how they got to your article, quality (and quantity) of content, expectations...
I've seen everything from 0% to 22% (this was one time deal).
If all visitors came from same source and conversion was this bad the problem probably lies in the content for that target audience. It didn't deliver enough value for more of them to subscribe.