Online Marketing Today

BREAKING NEWS:

Hi Guys,

We’ve got a very simple popup window converting at just under 18% at the moment. I thought I’d share it with you in case you would like to try it on your own traffic source. You might like to use it as a base for split testing variations if you’re not using popups or doing any other testing at the moment.

That conversion rate is on organic search engine traffic sitewide (I’ll explain how we have it setup in a minute). You can check it out in the screen shot below…

…as you can see, it’s very simple.

The title is “GET THE FREE NEWSLETTER” and then very basic but explicit instructions on what to do next.

It doesn’t even mention what the newsletter is about (it’s about keeping chickens at home). There are no “benefits of subscribing”. No “free report” on offer etc. However converting at 18% on organic search engine traffic (of which some keywords have a high bounce rate) is pretty good considering how basic it is.

It’s also adding around 90-130 new readers to the mailing list each day – depending on the peaks and troughs of search engine traffic. You can’t beat free leads.

We’re using a wordpress plugin called OptinPop to do this.

There is a free version (which is fine for basic stuff) and an advanced version for $97 which gives you a bit more flexibility.

The advanced version is ideal if you want to rotate different offers for split testing and also has better display frequency and delay settings amongst other things.

However, the free version is better than nothing so don’t let a price tag put you off giving it a try, although I would recommend the advanced version as a smart investment.

Right now we’ve got this popup window…

• Set at a width of 420 and a height of 500 pixels.
• Set to display in the center of the screen.
• Using the lightbox effect (this grays out the background).
• Showing to a visitor once per day.
• With a 15 second load delay.

….it’s really easy to use, you simply create a separate HTML page for the content to be displayed in the window, upload it to your website and then specify the URL where it’s located. You then define your settings to whatever you would like to test and you’re away laughing.

Other than obvious stuff above, the logic behind using a 15 second delay is that by that stage the visitor should be well into reading the article on the page they’ve arrived at. It’s given them a chance to evaluate the content a bit to determine the quality before springing the pop up on them. We plan to also test 30, 45, and 60 second delays on this traffic source to see what impact that has on conversion ratios – you never know until you test these things.

Obviously all traffic sources and markets will react differently to the same things, so there’s no guarantee you’ll get a 18% conversion ratio on this out of the door but it’s a solid starting point.

It’s also a great way to ensure all traffic is being exposed to a prominent option to get on your mailing list, rather than relying on them finding a subscription form on your website which no doubt has other distractions on it already brining down conversion rates.

You can download Optin Pop here.

(6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
 Loading ...