Trying to build up membership without harming sales

Forum Moderators: rogerd

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Trying to build up membership without harming sales

Looking for ways to increase signups w/o lower income

travelin cat

6:35 pm on May 2, 2008 (gmt 0)

My partner and myself have been having a bit of an argument as to how best to increase sign ups for our site. She has been experimenting with a css overlay that appears after x amount of seconds. The form is just a request for name and email with some upsell as to why anyone would want to join our site.

This has been working well to increase sign ups which are up from 2-3 per day to 50-100 per day.

Because the overlay must be dismissed by the visitor, many people are bailing instead of clicking the "close" button. Traffic in the pipe for purchasing our product is down 10% and sale conversions are down 18.5%.

So this is obviously not the route to go to increase members.

Can anyone recommend other methods to convince visitors to sign up? Contests? Prizes? Freebies?

rogerd

6:29 pm on May 10, 2008 (gmt 0)

Hmmm, maybe a less intrusive ad for non-logged in users? A popup or popunder?

I can see how an overlay would be effective, but also why some users might just leave. If you can find the balance between visibility and impairing the user experience, you should be able to optimize your results.

Part of your process should be deciding how much a registration is worth vs. a sale. It seems likely to me that anything you do that increases registrations will likely result in at least a small negative impact on immediate sales.

aw23

7:37 pm on May 10, 2008 (gmt 0)

A pop-op or overlay takes me about 1 sec to hit the back button.

Mayb a sign-up form in the sidebar?

rj87uk

7:59 pm on May 10, 2008 (gmt 0)

I feel a great way is a competition that has been highlighted on the page.

Tick boxes at every user form, contact forms, feedback, ordering etc