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Here’s something you need to come to grips with…
The majority of people who visit your site will never, ever come back.
Maybe they find you through a search or a link on Twitter and they’ll stay for a few minutes, only to wander off to waste their time somewhere else.
Don’t get all depressed just yet, because you can pull some of these visitors back to your site by capturing their email address.
Why would you want to do that?
This is important because it gives you the opportunity to reach out to them about new content, updates and offers, as opposed to merely hoping that they remember to come back.
Also, according to an eConsultancy study of 1,400 U.S. consumers, 42% said they preferred to receive ads for sales and specials via e-mail compared to 3% who said the same for social-networking sites.
If you start looking for it you’ll notice more and more sites and blogs starting to do this. Why? Because it works dammit.
Both Living Social and Groupon have used this strategy to become multi billion dollar businesses in less than 4 years.
But I literally laughed out loud when I saw the White House doing this because you normally don’t expect politicians to have much understanding of the internet. (Use incognito mode in Chrome to be sure you see the landing page above)
Let’s take a look at how the first page you see on Whitehouse.gov is designed to convert site visits into email addresses…
Call to Action
One of my favorite parts of this landing page is the call to action. On most forms you’ll just see something stupid like “sign up” or “sign up for our newsletter.”
Borrrring. You might as well say, “Enter your email so that I can put you to sleep.”
But the White House page says, “Stay Informed.” Now that might sound just as simple and basic as “sign up,” but the psychology behind it is totally different.
Saying “Sign Up for Our Newsletter” does not give users a compelling reason to enter their email. Why should I care about your newsletter? What’s in it for me?
The White House gives a reason by asking you to “Stay Informed.” Everybody wants to stay informed right? Worse, people HATE to be uninformed.
Humans don’t like being out of the loop or missing out on important events.
They’re playing to this emotion and positioning it by saying that all you have to do to stay informed is to enter your email.
They do the same thing with the button that says ‘Learn More’ which you click after entering your email. Most sign up forms have meaningless phrases like ‘sign up’ or even worse – ‘Submit.’ People don’t care about submitting, they care about learning and being a part of something. After people have already entered their email they give them one more compelling reason to click the button and confirm.
Privacy
Under the email box they make it clear that it won’t be shared with anyone outside the office of the President. They also let you know that you can unsubscribe at any time – this eliminates risk by letting people know that they can try it out first and stop receiving emails at any time.
Get Personal
The entire background of this page is a picture of the president. Having a photo or better yet a video of yourself on the page helps put people at ease because they can see the face of who they’re giving their email to. This helps to build trust.
People have no problem exchanging business cards with their contact info on them. Why? Because it’s very personal, you’re standing right in front of each other and you can feel that person out and decide if they’re trustworthy. You can try to bring some of that trust into an online encounter by showing people that you’re not a Nigerian scam artist.
What’s also interesting about this photo is that he is looking in the direction of the sign up box. This makes users follow his gaze and leads their eyes right towards the desired action and away from the no thanks button in the opposite corner.
Keep it clean
You’ll notice that the design of this page is very simple. The standard navigation is completely gone. By limiting the users options of where they can click or what they can do there is a better chance of them taking your desired action – which in this case is opting in to your email list. Doing this alone can double your conversion.
Sadly, most people don’t visit Whitehouse.gov
And even fewer visit on a regular basis.
But by capturing the email address of first time visitors, Barack can be sure to keep you informed.
How are you making sure that people come back to your site?