Category Archive: 'Conversions'

$3M in Subscription Revenues For BostonGlobe.com, But Site Still Struggling to Convert

Date: April 30, 2012 Topic: Conversions, Subscription Business Model Tags: , , , ,

BostonGlobe.com’s paywall doesn’t seem to be the rainmaker it is for its parent company, The New York Times.

Recent reports of BostonGlobe.com’s free trial offer (April 24 – May 6) allowed me to take a closer looks at the company’s conversion and revenues. It turns out that Beantown’s flagship news outlet has only been able to convert 18,000 readers into paying subscribers since instituting a paywall last September. With 6.2 million unique visitors in 2011, that puts the site’s conversion rate at about 0.3%.

That also means that the site can be expected to garner about $3 million in subscription revenues this year. Compare that to The New York Times with 450,000 paid subscriptions and a conservative estimate of $77 million in subscription revenues, and you can see why the powers-that-be at the Globe are willing to buck best practices by offering a free trial without requiring a credit card number (we strongly recommend against this).

Some have speculated that the low conversion rate may be because the Globe has failed to articulate the benefit of its online platform, other than the site’s ability to adapt to any mobile device. It may also be because the Globe doesn’t have the national (and international) appeal of the New York Times. Plus, putting free content on Boston.com and having a more stringent paywall on BostonGlobe.com (there’s no metered access like the Times), makes it a difficult sell with no foot-in-the-door offer. And lastly, the Globe has chosen to make online access free to its print subscribers. While this may be an enticing tactic for some papers, valuing online content separately and pricing it similar to print has allowed other legacy print publications to garner more profits during this period of trial-and-error in the digital publishing industry.

Posted by MinalB21
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Overlays Make a Great Entrance But Controversial Exit For Subscription Site Conversion

Date: April 27, 2012 Topic: Conversions Tags: , , , ,

As LoopNet’s VP of Marketing Mike Manning showed the audience at our Subscription Site Summit this past week, a “faked” (HTML) overlay on a landing page can increase conversions significantly for a site.

But in this week’s Case Study on our sister site, Subscription Site Insider, Mike Zenga of SportsBettingProfessor.com shares with readers his experience with overlays. Zenga originally had the site coded to offer an “exit” overlay when people were looking to abandon the site. Also known as friction points, these overlays often ask site visitors to engage once more before leaving, clicking “Stay on page” or “Exit” before they are allowed to navigate to another page.

While some sites have had success with these types of overlays, Zenga and his business partner felt they were just annoying. So they decided to remove them and see what happens. To their pleasant surprise, there was no decrease (or increase) in conversions. So they’ve decided to remove exit overlays permanently from the site.

As Justin Rondeau, Editor of our sister site WhichTestWon.com would say, this is why you always need to test your pages. Consumer behavior and conversion rates will vary by site, by niche, and by topic. So learn from the best, but always do your own research.

Posted by MinalB21
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LinkedIn, Hs.fi Among Insider’s 2012 Testing Awards Winners

Date: April 19, 2012 Topic: Conversions, Technology for Subscription Sites Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every year, our sister site, Subcription Site Insider, holds an international testing awards competition to see which digital publishers and agencies are doing the best A/B and multivariate tests to increase sales, conversions, retention, and all-around effectiveness. Like previous ones, this year was no disappointment. We received some very inspiring entries, and here are the winners by category:

Winners table

We were also fortunate enough to get our guest judge, FT.com’s Optimization Manager Reagan Miller, to talk us through a two-step test he conducted for The Financial Times. To view the creatives and results data from these tests, use our special $1 offer to sign up and see the 30-minute video.

Posted by MinalB21
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Less Text + More Visuals = Better Conversions

Date: April 5, 2012 Topic: Conversions Tags: , , , ,

If you’re running a complex service, such as the data monitoring and identity and financial protections services provided by IdentityForce, you may be inclined to think that your customers want to know everything you do before they’ll subscribe.

But as this week’s Case Study on our sister site, Subscription Site Insider, shows, you would be wrong.

IdentityForce’s CEO Steve Bearak let us in on some of his company’s A/B testing results. Surprisingly, despite the incredible wealth and complexity of IdentityForce’s services, they got better conversions with less text and more visuals. In fact, the company routinely sees 65% of visitors converting for the free trial offer. (One key visual was the Better Business Bureau icon.) All they included to lead visitors to a more in-depth description of their services was a line of hyperlinked text in a font size smaller than the body copy. Ingenious.

So if you’re looking to redesign your conversion pages (and you should be reviewing your design on a regular basis), remember this equation: Less Text + More Visuals = Better Conversions.

Posted by MinalB21
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‘The Recorder’ Gets Paper-Friendly Audiences to Subscribe Online

Date: March 27, 2012 Topic: Attracting Traffic, Conversions Tags: , , ,
Brian Hunt, Publisher of The Recorder

Brian Hunt, Publisher of The Recorder

When speaking to Brian Hunt about his upcoming talk at Subscription Site Insider’s April Summit in San Francisco, he mentioned that his publication, The Recorder — which provides California attorneys with daily industry updates — has done a better than average job of targeting an old-fashioned marketplace that loves paper to subscribe to their online content.

How did The Recorder do it? Brian will give the full answer at the Summit, but we suspect their highly effective site tour video had something to do with it. With lovely blue highlighting, the video has a professional quality while explaining the basics of navigating the site, including the multiple ways one can search for a particular topic or article. While this may seem rudimentary for digital publishers, it’s imperative that these easy messages are conveyed to paper-friendly audiences in clear, concise language with visual displays. If the video’s well done (i.e., a calming narrative voice, clear visuals, and smooth transitions), even an advanced user will sit through it– and leave with a better impression of your publication.

The Recorder also does some other interesting things — like providing both a free 30-day trial of full content (with credit card) and a 90-day trial of limited content. Come see Brian speak at our April Summit to find out which trial has better conversion rates!

Posted by MinalB21
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