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[ How I Quadrupled my Sign-ups? ] By Mark Brownlow

Prior to October 23rd, 2006, a site produced few newsletter subscriptions a day. Since October 23rd, 2006, that number has increased fourfold. Yep, a 300% increase in average daily sign-ups.

Obviously that's good news, but why the increase? Well, October 23rd was the day I launched the redesign of the site. I thought it might be helpful to outline the specific changes I made to boost sign-up conversions: perhaps you can use some of the ideas yourself.

Before looking at these targeted changes, note that I also put up a much cleaner site design, got a professional logo done, and added many more links to the front page of the site (so that people could instantly see the depth and quality of information available within). My theory is that the overall presentation of a site - design quality / clarity, the ease of navigation and the apparent content - influences the decision to subscribe to that site's email offerings.

Changes to the sign-up form

The old sign-up form looked like this:

The new one is:

What's different? Here's what I was trying to achieve:

The new box draws more attention to itself through the dark background and border
Larger text font
More pronounced sign-up button
Stronger newsletter description
Sole focus is the newsletter (not the newsletter and web feed)

Changes to the newsletter "more information" page

The old copy you saw if you clicked through for more information on the newsletter looked like this:

The new copy look like this:

These are the deliberate copy changes, partly based on the insights gleaned from below:

Clearer presentation of the benefits to the reader using bullet points and bold text
Stronger presentation of address privacy, including reassurance that unsubscribing is easy
More frequent urging to sign-up (at the top and bottom of the copy, not just in the middle as before)
Added testimonials, including the full name and website address of the source of each testimonial
Again, a more pronounced sign-up button

Given the time, money, resources, energy, etc., I would A/B test all these elements individually. But for now I simply present the changes made and the net positive effect, and let you draw your own conclusions...

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