Want more visitors to accept your membership or subscription offer? Check out the lessons learned from our critiques of paywall sites – all 16 lessons are applicable to your site.
Three Member Questions Answered
How much will a customized subscription page cost?
This depends very much on the program your site was created in. If you have a WordPress-based, or other PHP-based site, you can get custom programming fairly cheaply (low hundreds) because thousands of freelance programmers with experience in those platforms are available for low hourly rates.
If you have a Membergate-based site, you may end up paying $1000 or so because it’s in Cold Fusion (freelancers tend to cost $60-100/hour) and your changes may require experience with the MemberGate platform which is harder to find. Or you may decide to switch your public pages to another, cheaper-to-program, platform and then link to Membergate for the members-only back-end which is something that some sites, such as Zappos’ membership offering, have done.
In either case, you may also want to spend money (often $1,000-$5,000) on a professional designer. Programmers are usually not designers. Most prefer to work from design that’s handed to them.
Lastly, whatever you do, make sure you can A/B test the new page, including being able to track through to the very end of the cart so you know which changes made you more money, and which you should abandon.
Can you speak about using a thumbnail video?
Thumbnails are generally images of a video-start page that people can click on to view the video. Often the video itself then becomes larger for easy viewing. (You can send the click to a new page or to an overlay for the larger video.) If you are using a thumbnail, you probably should not have it begin playing automatically, or allow it to begin but without sound, in order to get people to click to interact with it and make it larger. This interaction may increase total site conversions.
Videos tend to work best for:
- demographics who prefer video such as younger people and sales reps
- products which themselves are heavily video in nature
- famous-name expert’s sites where prospects want to see the expert
- member testimonials
However, you should not rely on the video alone. Always accompany it with text-information so prospects who prefer to read can get at information about you in a non-video format.
What is the #1 thing you would do to improve lead gen from the home page?
If your main goal for your homepage is to improve lead generation, design your page so it’s 95% focused on that goal without distractions of other offers or members-only information. The headline of the page should focus on the lead generation offer. Also, make sure prospects can begin responding to your offer directly from the home page — not just with a button but with the beginning of the form they’ll need to fill out, such as their email address and name. If the form is longer, you can continue it on the next page.
Top 16 Lessons Learned: Useful Tips from the Critiques
1. Page width: Your page can be as wide as 960-980 pixels across. Anything thinner wastes real estate above the fold and looks a bit old fashioned. Only exception — mobile sites.
2. Page length: Your page can be as long as the Nile, but make sure that your key marketing content and offer are above the fold. For a page viewed in a typical laptop screen at typical resolution, that might be fewer than 600-pixels down.
3. Header size: Because vertical page length is limited above the fold, make sure you’re not wasting vertical space on an excessively long header.
4. Logos: Best practices say your logo should be at the top left of the header, rather than the middle. If some prospects haven’t heard of you before, avoid acronyms in your logo (and frankly everywhere else on your site) unless you are WSJ.com or IBM.
5. Member log-in: It should not attract attention from anyone but actual members. Make it as inconspicuous as possible and move it to the upper right corner of your header.
6. People photos: Avoid stock photos because they are generally not relevant to your specific site and they look “fake” as opposed to “real”. Visitors’ eyes are drawn to photos of people more than almost anything else on the page, make sure you have key response elements near the photos — use the attention, don’t waste it. Also, if the person in the photo is looking or leaning in a particular direction, it will direct your visitor’s eyes in that direction. Make sure response elements use the power of that position.
7. Overlay “pop ups”: Delay the timing to give visitors a chance to experience you site for at least 30 seconds. Cut back on text copy, people don’t read overlays. It’s a billboard, not a web page.
8. Pricing placement: Lead with your highest price, not your lowest.
9. Security icons: These belong in your check out process, probably near the credit card info or final order button, not elsewhere on your site.
10. Buttons: If you have multiple offers or buttons, only pick one to focus on as the most important visually with size and/or color. If every button is colorful, no one knows where to click. Copywrite your buttons carefully especially early on in the sales process — ‘submit’ is not enticing and ‘buy now’ or ‘subscribe’ is too aggressive. Never rely solely on a text-link instead of a button. You need both.
11. Long form letters: These can work for particular demographics (mainly older men seeking investment and money-making opportunities) but can bomb for others. Test, don’t assume.
12. Multiple audiences: If you sell to several different demographics, add clear navigation to your homepage to allow visitors to pick the best path for themselves depending on who they are. They don’t care about your product lines by other type they care about what you have for them. (ie. “For Nurses” vs “For Doctors”).
13. Headlines: Every page needs a compelling headline. Your order form page needs a headline. Your homepage needs a headline. Your marketing page needs a headline.
14. Icons: Far less important than your headline, body copy, buttons, etc. Often icons are distractions or confusing rather than being useful. If they serve no valued conversion purpose, dump them.
15. Text: Don’t center each line, except perhaps for a one-two line headline. Flush left is easier to read. Never center more than two lines in a row. For readability, text itself should not run further than 65 characters across the page, including white spaces between words. If your prospects are over 45 or under 14, make your text larger, certainly more than 12 points. Use a sans serif font and avoid extensive use of italics. Clickable text should be blue and/or underlined.
16. Extraneous content: Remove any content — including navigation links, member discussions, Facebook fan links, etc., from key conversion pages (home page, landing page, order form) that distracts prospects from converting to leads and/or buyers. Keep your content focused.
