Analysis of a Well-Structured Optin Page For a Newsletter Subscription Site

Let’s go over what a well structured opt-in page is going to look like.

First and foremost, you want absolutely no navigational distractions to have a high converting opt-in page.

You want the only decision they have to make is to click the submit button to send you their name and email address. A lot of people will try to give them other navigational options and all that winds up doing is diluting their opt-in rate, so first and foremost, is to have as few navigational distractions as possible.

From the top of the opt-in page down, the very first thing you want people to see when they land on that page is your headline.

I can’t emphasize the importance enough of having a good quality headline, because the headline is what’s going to grab them by the eyeballs and get their attention.

People attention online is so fractured because they’re doing 75 different things at the same time. They’ll have their email open, instant messaging, sending messages on Twitter or Facebook, all while they’re supposedly trying to read your sales letter or opt-in page. Usually they’ll have seven or eight different browser windows open at the same time.

The most critical thing you have to do is get their attention and you have just a fraction of a second to do it. It’s the headline that’s going to do that every single time so you have to have a very strong headline.

It’s not a headline that’s going to sell them the product right from the headline. It needs to sell them on the benefit to them of reading the copy on the page or if you’re using video or audio in your selling message to play and watch the video and listen to your audio.

The headline is first and foremost and that’s going to either make or break your opt-in and conversion rate, is getting that strong headline and that’s the first thing to test on your website. You should always be testing new headlines.

After you have a strong headline you then want to, on the opt-in page, begin selling them on the actual bribe that you’re giving them.

If it’s a video bribe, a free issue of a newsletter, a free report, whatever you’re offering them as the bribe in exchange for their name and email address, you want to begin selling them on that. You don’t need to use extensively long copy on the opt-in page.

In fact, you want to make sure that opt-in box itself where people can enter their name and email is above the fold, which is, when somebody is looking at it in a normal resolution computer screen it’s in the visible area when they first land on the page without scrolling.

A lot of times if you put it over to the right, it will allow you to have some bullets there on the left that does the bulk of the selling job to sell them on the value of the bribe.

Even though you’re giving them something for free, you still have to sell them on the benefits to them, because you’re essentially buying the name and email address from them in exchange for that free bribe, so the copy you use to sell that is next in importance.

Then you want to test the offer itself.

Test the different offers, test even different names and titles for the offer. You’ll find if you have a free report for example, what you name that free report can in some cases increase your conversion rates by 50, 100% or more.

You want to make sure that what you’re naming your actual bribe in exchange for the name and email address is laser-targeted for what people are looking for when they land on that page.

The first fundamental you need to do before you even create your opt-in page or your sales letter is doing your market research so you understand that target buyer, what their wants are, their needs, their frustrations and where the pain is in their life.

To a degree on your opt-in page and sales letter you’re positioning your offer as a solution to that pain, but you’re rubbing a little bit of salt in the wounds so to speak to emotionally work them up.

People are going to make their decision whether or not to opt-in or even whether or not to subscribe to your newsletter not based on logical reasons, but based on emotional reasons. You want to hit those emotional hot buttons within your copy, bullets and within your call to action to get them to subscribe on that opt-in page.

You can even test it further and I recommend you do when you’re doing a testing on your opt-in page is to actually test the emails that go out afterwards. Have a couple of different email sequences set up so when visitor ‘A’ opts in they get one email sequence and when visitor ‘B’ opts in they get a different email sequence.

The real persuasive momentum here it not generated just by capturing the name and email address, it’s captured by the quality of that follow up sequence that you hit them with after they opt-in.

Bret Ridgway is co-founder of the Newsletter Formula. For your copy of the free report “7 Ways to Make Money with Newsletters and Continuity Programs” visit http://www.NewsletterFormula.com