by Tom Ewer
Most bloggers are obsessed with conversion rates. They monitor their analytics, continually adjust copy and fiddle with design in a bid to convert more of their readers into email subscribers.
I’ve never really been one of those people. I happily floated through the first two and a half years of my blogging life without concerning myself too much about conversion rates. I just enjoyed what I did.
But a few months ago, I made a conscious decision to make my blog better integrated. I made some key decisions about the purpose of the blog and how it could best help people. These decisions led to a total re-launch with a new design, manifesto, and community forums.
But more importantly for the purposes of this post, my decisions led to an enormous leap forward both in terms of email conversions and overall engagement. Read on to discover how.
The Background
It was early summer when I finally decided that I wanted to re-design my blog, Leaving Work Behind. I had big aspirations for the site but I felt that the current design didn’t reflect where I wanted it to be and my message wasn’t well presented.
I wanted people to hit my site and immediately know what it was all about, but that wasn’t happening. Furthermore, I decided that my number one priority was to get people to sign up by email.
I had deliberated about this in the past, but I came to the decision that the best way that I can help people is by email. As a blogger, it’s the only way I can send people prescribed information in a suitable order. So that was the decision that I made: I was going to put email front and center.
Beyond that, I wanted to give people further opportunities to engage through social media, the forums, and comments. I wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to do this.
Once I’d figured out what I wanted, I started designing. That’s the right way round to do things. Don’t start designing until you know exactly what you want to achieve, not just in terms of aesthetics, but also in regards to the overall purpose of your site. It doesn’t make any sense to stumble blindly into things. Instead, you should identify your goals and work to align your design decisions with those priorities.
The Results
I launched my newly-redesigned site on November 4th. The impact was immediate.
I was getting great feedback from my readers in the comments section, but that’s not all. My email subscriptions had taken a huge leap as well. It hasn’t slowed down much since.
In the ten days leading up to the launch I attracted just 39 new email subscribers. In the ten days after, I attracted 195, which is an increase of 500%.
Continue reading over at Flippa.com: http://flippa.com/blog/email-subscriptions-increased/
