Once you’ve done the work to attract new website visitors (the A in ACEM), you must then move on to C, capture. What good are a million visitors racking up your bandwidth bill if you’re not spending time converting them into email subscribers and buyers?
If you’re only trying to get new visitors to buy a product or subscribe to your magazine membership website, then you’re going to have pretty low conversion rates. How often do you visit a website and buy a product at first glance? Those chances are further reduced when it comes to a monthly recurring membership. Trying to get visitors to take action is even harder when you’re a publisher and their first page is likely an editorial page, not a sales page.
In order to convert more visitors into subscribers, we tell all publishers to focus on effective conversion architecture. This means turning every page of your website into a landing page by introducing one or more of these effective conversion elements:
OFIE (Order form in editorial): An OFIE is an embedded form that offers a free download in exchange for an email address. OFIEs are often fairly large, coupon-style ads, usually placed above each article, category page and tag page on your site, and simply require a user to supply an email address and click “submit”.
OFIN (Order form in navigation): These forms appear in the navigation panels of a website. While they are usually smaller in size than OFIEs, an OFIN’s strategic intent is the same: to quickly capture your visitor’s email address in order to grant access to a free special report or a free copy of a magazine or newsletter.
FLOATERS: Named a floater because it appears to float onto a webpage. This was a method created in order to fight back against pop-up blockers. While it may look like a pop-up, a floater does not open in a separate window and therefore cannot be blocked or banned. The floater is a tactic for increasing landing page conversion rates and may be used at nearly every entry point on a website, though it’s usually better to set a cookie to let the floater appear to the user only once upon entry to the site.
TEXT AD: These are found within editorial content to obtain an email address. It’s typically formatted between two horizontal rules, a couple paragraphs into each article, and promotes a free report with a link to the landing page to sign up and download
Watch our webcast hosted by the Mequoda team, called How Can Capture (C) Be Improved?