What was the problem?
The marketing team created topic-specific newsletters designed to appeal to readers of BXM magazines. The shifting reliability and effectiveness of social media campaigns required a significant increase in sign-ups for a way to connect with readers of all their brands.
- What is the best way to encourage readers to sign up for the different newsletters on offer?
- How do we give readers the content they want to read?
Bauer Xcel Media
- My role - Design, UX, A/B testing, data analysis
- Tools - Photoshop, Illustrator, Coda
- Platforms - Optimizely, Google Analytics
What was the approach?
Competitive Analysis / Benchmarking
I wanted to get a solid understanding of what features are used on opt-in forms on other entertainment-focused websites. I primarily looked at placement, type of form, landing page usage and if there were any features that could work for our brands.
Experimentation, iteration and optimization
Over the years, the newsletter opt-in form was tested and tweaked, building on improvements. There were unequivocal successes but even the failures gave us valuable information.
- Offer a topic specific newsletter to the user
- Bring the form to the top of the page - above the title, below the title, or after second paragraph
- Change the Call to Action text
- Offer something of value for signing up
- Show the form as a slide-in on scroll down
- Show the form as a popup
- Send the user directly to a landing page
Landing Page Design
The landing pages featured large background photos of people that matched the magazine user’s demographics. It was important to have the opt-in form inline with where the person in the photo would be looking. In general, the eye gaze direction of a person in a photo will influence the eye gaze direction of the observer.
Landing pages have more real estate to allow users to sign up for specific topic newsletters. I also included an example newsletter so that users can see what it is they’ll be getting in their inbox.
What were the learnings or compromises?
- Just when we learned that popups worked wonderfully, Google changed their policy so popups were put on the back burner.
- Space on page was extremely limited and the opt-in form was often moved or turned off over monetization concerns.
- The landing pages were very successful possibly because they gave users different options for newsletters.
- There were a lot of users clicking on the simple button on Closer, FFW, and LNS. It may be that there is a high percentage of users interested in getting the newsletter, but we didn't manage to convert.
- Marketing was pleased with giving users more options for tailored newsletters for a more personalized experience.
- Part of the navigation revamp, we tested an opt-in button that triggered a popup form which performed about as well as a timed popup.