Increasing Co-Registration Offer Conversion In our Email Newsletter Signup Process
March 14, 2023 • By Farah Lopez
The number one way that Industry Dive engages with its targeted audiences of business leaders is through email newsletters.
The signup process for these newsletters involves two separate steps, each an individual webpage. On the first page, the reader signs up for the actual newsletter. On the second page, the reader completes a second form, sharing job-related demographic information. The second page also contains co-registration offers — related newsletters and sponsored content downloads — e.g. “Get this free eBook when you sign up for the newsletter.”
For this project, we focused on the second page of our funnel – improving reader completion of the demographic form and co-reg offers.
The Design Process
We started the project by collecting data via Google Analytics to identify where readers were dropping off. We then assessed co-reg offer completion. Though these numbers were helpful, we decided to also observe reader behavior in real time. We used Hotjar to record and watch anonymized readers move through both pages of the signup funnel.
Here’s what we observed:
- Readers either filled out all the demographic form fields or none
- Readers rarely engaged with co-registration offers
In addition to looking at user data and behavior, we also gathered business stakeholder requirements:
- Some demographic form fields can be combined but none can be totally eliminated
- None of the demographic form fields are mandatory for newsletter signup
- We can decrease the number of client content downloads that appear as co-registration offers but not the number of related newsletters offered
- We are free to make copy changes on the landing page to drive the specific user behaviors that we are looking for
After identifying these possible user pain points and business constraints, we began to think through design solutions to drive the completion of more co-registration offers.
Using Figma, we created wireframes of two possible solutions. We categorized the solutions by the degree of development complexity — a “low lift” and a “high lift” option.
The “low lift” option included relatively few UI changes so that the engineering team could quickly ship it.
The “high lift” option involved a number of changes:
- Single-column layout, instead of two
- Funnel progress bar to encourage users to complete both forms
- New section copy to project exclusivity and content value
- Combined form fields (to simplify the form)
- Images to accompany sponsored co-reg offers (previously just text)
- Vertical progress bar with checkmarks to highlight section completion
We decided to move forward with option two and ran a limited test on two publication websites.
Results
The tests were a success. Our post-release data showed a meaningful improvement in co-registration offer completion — both for client content downloads and related newsletter signups. We then rolled out the new funnel design to all of our publication sites.
