Turning Visitors Into Subscribers - The Contributing Factors

With the degrading value of PageRank, and the unreliable stats of Alexa, more and more people consider RSS subscribers to be the most reliable stats for measuring site reach, growth, and success.

As a result of this trend, bloggers are doing more and more, to try and lure their visitors into subscribing to their feeds. There are a number of ways in which this can be encouraged, and various types of bait used, but this post really just follows on from Mondays, first impressions really do count.

The Exception to the Rule

However, admittedly, there are a few cases in which it doesn’t, and recently I read an article dealing with why design doesn’t matter for some websites. In the article, the author points out three websites; YouTube, Amazon, and MySpace.

Now, I’m not going to start debating about whether or not he’s right to say these sites have a poor design. However, I do think he makes a valid point, and that there are cases where design doesn’t matter.

To illustrate the general rule, and to see if design really matters for your site or not, let’s design a flowchart. For the sake of time, here’s one I prepared earlier:

What the flowchart seeks to illustrate, should be fairly straightforward. The main drive for many bloggers now, as we’ve already established, is to build subscribers. Where do they get their subscribers? From their visitors. (See, it’s simple).

Therefore, in the flowchart, the visitor becomes the Trigger, and subscribing is the Target. Between these two, there are various paths and options. Let’s take a walk through…

Authority Site

The reason this comes first, is because it’s usually one of the first things we subconsciously look for as soon as we arrive at a site, and it’s the biggest contributing factor as to what action we’ll take.

An authority site, is any site with credibility. People talk about them, write about them, link to them constantly, use them in examples, etc. Examples would be Seth Godin for marketing, Darren Rowse for bloggers, and Engaget for technology. Everybody knows these sites, and no matter what kind of publicity they receive, people respect them as leaders in their field.

As a result, as long as the content is something you’re interested in (Topic of Interest), you will subscribe.

For the rest of us though, it’s not so easy…

Nice Design

Immediately, design comes in to play. Does the visitor like it, or do they not? Are they confused? Can they find what they’re looking for? If it’s not up to scratch, they’re gone.

Topic of Interest

Ok, so the design is pleasant, maybe even cool. I’m going to have a look around here…but wait! This is about fishing! What do I care about fishing? — Bye!

Good Content

Hmmm…cool site, and it’s about making money online! Hang on. I’ve read all this before! It’s just regurgitating John Chow posts! I’m off…

The X-Factor

Don’t ask me what it is, but there are just some sites which ooze something which makes me hit the subscribe button. They’ve got the design sorted, it’s a topic of interest, the content’s original, and well, it’s just quality! Subscribe!

And so there you have it. These are the major contributing factors in building your subscribers, all nicely presented for you to digest and learn from.

Now go get working on building that feed count!

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