Many sign-up forms and opt-in opportunities used today are industry specific. For example, a pop-up box asking you to sign up for a newsletter while you’re in the middle of reading something can be very annoying. However, if that pop-up box is offering you recipes like the one you’re reading directly to your inbox, you are pretty likely to opt in. The five opportunities we’re going to cover are opportunities that have proven to work for the majority of industries. This way, you can’t go wrong with any of them!
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Website Header and/or Footer
My favorite place to see an opt-in opportunity is at the footer of a website. No matter where you go on the website, you can decide to opt-in at any time at the bottom of the page. Oftentimes I’ll choose not to sign up for a newsletter because the pop-up interrupted my article and I’m eager to get that box out of the way so that I can finish it…then I realize, hey I think I would have liked that newsletter! But, now the opportunity is gone. You don’t have that problem with an ever-present signup box in your header or footer.
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Feature Box
A feature box is located at the top of the screen on your home page, but under the header. Its main purpose is to make the sign-up opportunity stick out to the reader, without letting it get lost in the rest of your home page content. As it happens, when there’s too much to read, we often choose to read nothing. If that’s ever the case, you at least have a noticeable opt-in opportunity that isn’t lost to the reader.
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Under your Blog Post
If a reader has made it to the end of your article, that’s a pretty sure sign that the content was enjoyed. So why not create an opt-in opportunity right then and there? This is the best time to grab an email address, because this person’s interest is piqued. Some blog owners even like to put a check-box to signup for when a reader wants to leave a comment. That works, too!
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Side Bar/Slide Up
As a reader scrolls down through a post, an opt-in opportunity scrolls up the side of the page. Pretty simple, and pretty effective. It catches the attention without interrupting, and it’s there for when you’re ready to consider it, not before or after.
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On your About Page
For this one, you could either create a “Subscribe” tab along with the rest of your main content, or you can create the opportunity on your “About” page. The reason this area works is because the reader is already showing an interest in learning more by choosing to visit this page.
These are 5 very clear and hard-to-miss places to display your opt-in opportunities for subscribers. This infographic can help give you a visual of where some of the different opportunities would appear (thank you, LaptopEntrepreneurship.com!). Consider each of them when building your website, and remember that the more obvious it is, the better. Where have you noticed the best opt-in opportunities?