Increase Email List Building with Welcome Splash – A Case Study

Do you have a great website but are having a hard time directing web traffic to your site? Even if you have the best design, very meaningful and creative content and a fantastic domain name, you might still be pulling in low visitor numbers. Visitor numbers are important because that will be the basis for anything that provides a revenue stream. Income from advertisement, from sign-up and from purchasing your product will all depend on converting those visitors. If you have a small number to begin with, then your end numbers will also be small, resulting in very small income for you.

As we all know, list building is where the money is. Building a big list is one of the best ways to have a sustainable internet related business that will essentially be Google-proof. However, building a list is somewhat difficult to do because it takes time and needs a relatively large web traffic for your site. Thus, it is important for you to be able to increase web traffic.

Another way to increase email list building is to improve your conversion rate. What most internet entrepreneurs do not realize is that it is not enough to just randomly place an opt-in form anywhere you feel like it. Pop up pages have become popular for that reason. However, I would dare say that the best way to increase web traffic and improve conversion rates is to create a splash page that welcomes your visitor when she comes to your site. And Welcome Splash, a WordPress Plugin created by Chris Guthrie, will be able to help you create professional looking splash pages without much effort but your own design.

Email List Building won’t become any easier

Welcome Splash can create a very powerful and unique splash page that is a hybrid between a popup page and a squeeze page and helps you to increase your email list building. The splash page is able to immediately capture your visitor’s attention as soon as he enters your website and hold it long enough for him to read the compelling message that are emphasized by strong call to actions.

I recently got the developer’s license because it worked so well on my MacMania site that I couldn’t resist to add it to Digidesignresort.com as well. The thing is – I personally find it much less distracting than a pop-up. Why? Because when I go to a site it makes me an offer. In best case, it lists the benefits of the freebie I get and then asks me to subscribe. And even if I say “No, Thanks” I can still subscribe over the on-page form later – but the visitor already knows that a Freebie exists – whatever kind it is. They already know the benefits and what is in it for them – even if they decide against it first and want to look around at the site.

So what happened:

1. TheMacMania.com

On my techie site the opt-in rate went from zero (yes, nobody was subscribing to my newsletter) to 10 per day. The traffic was there before, the only thing I changed was the welcome splash page. It lets visitors know quickly what is in it for them. Here is how it looks:

I have to admit that the site is relatively new so in the beginning you usually do not expect a lot of subscribers. But it is amazing how Welcome Splash changed my subscriber numbers. By the way – August is just half over and I already got more subscribers than in July.

2. Digidesignresort.com

Yes, Digidesignresort was always my hobby site. I have always loved photography and after discovering digital scrapbooking I was hooked that I could combine my passion for photography and design. This hobby project has grown over the last four years and went into one full time job. In the end it is just a niche site but with over 1,000 daily visitors really lucrative 😉

Before implementing Welcome Splash I had about 5-10 new daily subscribers. Now I have 15-25 – but have a look yourself. Of course, there were month where I had a similar nice subscription rate – but these were usually special month, such as around christmas. Summer is usually slower in this business but as you can see – the subscriber numbers increased over the last two months 😀

One of the advantages of Welcome Splash is that it seamlessly integrates with WordPress and allows you to create the splash page that you want right from your dashboard. It’s very customizable right down to the color of the link and the font that you use. It gives you three major templates to choose from. You can select a video, photo or testimonial style, which you can actually mix and match.

What makes Welcome Splash very useful is that it will allow you full control on where you want to put your splash page. You can even control how often a site visitor sees it. You can be as subtle or in-your-face as you like.  It is also compatible with most traffic monitoring services out there so you can easily track your numbers.

If you had one second to convince people sign up, I would say that using Welcome Splash would be the best way to do it and increase your subscription rate easily.

You can check out the developer’s homepage here

Filed in: Blog • Blogger Tools For Online Business
Tagged with: email list building