Making the conversion process less intrusive

Many site content providers have been told they need to make customer conversion a priority, but at what cost? For example, many people are annoyed when they go to a website for the first time and get a popup that prevents them from reading the content on the page. Instead of converting your potential customer, it’s a lot more likely they will be inclined to not return again due to the annoyance.

How can this be resolved?  Well, if your goal is to get your visitors to subscribe to a newsletter, with some added programming you could create a subscription prompt when a visitor makes their fifth visit to your site.  This has a higher likelihood of a successful conversation because of the demonstrated interest in your site with repeat visits.  You may also consider something less intrusive than a popup in the middle of your website over the content; perhaps something that noticeably appears in one the widgets along your side columns.

For example, our main conversion goal is for non-techies to sign up for our $399 One Day Website package, so we promote this offer on our front page, as well as on the sidebar of most of our pages. Our secondary goal is to have people sign up for a monthly newsletter, where we offer special services and discounts that we don’t publish on the website. There is a subscribe option on the lower sidebar of most of our pages.  It’s not intrusive and doesn’t take away from the visitors ability to view the content in any way.