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by nbrochu 5733 days ago
Thanks.

I thought the block quote in the first paragraph was in-your-face enough but I'll definitely listen to this advice as I have very little experience trying to convert users. Most sites I build already have a defined audience.
1 comments
petercooper 5733 days ago
It's in your face but unless you've done some A/B testing, you'd be surprised what can affect conversions! :-)

FWIW, I have an e-mail newsletter myself at http://rubyweekly.com/ and the way it is right now is the best I've got it to convert. Every time I removed more from the page, the better the conversion, and unsubscribe rates are low (about 8 in total in the last month).

Of course, flat out "lots of subscribers" isn't necessarily your goal and you don't need to optimize for that if it doesn't make sense for your plan.

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hkuo 5733 days ago
That is a fantastic signup form! I just signed-up myself, and I don't even know Ruby. But I've been having a huge itch to learn for a long time, and your newsletter may be just the trick to get me into it. Thanks much!
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nbrochu 5733 days ago
Wow! A clean page like this does make my wall of text look pretty scary... I guess I have a lot of work to do on the UI. I'll try to simplify it as much as possible in the coming days.

P.S. Sub'd to Ruby Weekly

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il 5733 days ago
Your landing page looks great, but if you want to increase conversions even more you should try putting the subscribe form above the fold. It took me about 5 seconds to figure out how to subscribe.
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petercooper 5732 days ago
I've considered that but have not tested it as I didn't like how it looked visually. Perhaps I will though, since conversion is key for me. Alternatively, making the "preview" smaller would help.
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ma2rten 5732 days ago
Either he already changed the site or you using some insanely low resolution, it's above the fold for me even on my laptop screen.
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il 5732 days ago
It might just be an OS X issue as I rarely have a browser window open fullscreen. If the dock wasn't there, it would be above the fold.

Then again, I bet a fairly significant portion of the target audience for this newsletter uses a Mac.

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