How do you test subscription based websites

[Scott Prock]

I have been studying many of the marketing techniques that you all are using, mostly from a copy-writing aspect and realize I have been doing things soooo wrong over the last two and a half years.

My main focus was always geared around SEO and providing compelling content, but now since subscriptions have reached a plateau and growth has stalled, I am seeking out ways to improve my website.

I was burned out with the make money and internet marketing crowd about four years ago, and happened across a website where I was inspired again to start looking at the web to make money when I decided to start my site.

I think one of the biggest mistakes I made was not incorporating any of the marketing strategies I had learned in my early days online. I also blindly followed the examples of the person who inspired me to start the site, but I have learned their market is completely different from my market, therefore the model I have been following isn't working. There are some other parts of my site that are lacking due to poor time management on my part, so I'm not trying hand off all the blame.

Sooooo . . .

I am trying to take John's advice and milk this thing for all it has before I get completely distracted (which is an area I struggle with) searching for other areas I can make money online. (or at least get the growth back before I start other projects)

Now I want to kick things into high gear and I'm realizing a lot of the techniques and strategies you all talk about are not going to be easy to implement on my site.

For starters - What kind of strategy do I use to write good copy for a subscription based website vs a sales page type of site. One of the challenges in having a website vs a sale page is not knowing what part of the site influenced the buyer to subscribe. Was it an article that they HAD to have, was it a forum posting, was it something in the downloads area, or was it everything as a whole. I have tried asking the subscribers but they haven't been much help in telling me specifics as to what made them pull out their CC

I am at a loss when it comes to split testing because the CMS that the site is written with does not have this feature and I don't know of any ColdFusion based split testing scripts. Even if I could split test I'm not sure what elements I could test because there are soo many factors that influence a person's decision to subscribe. I was at one time testing the sign up page, with a script that was off site, but it wasn't as affective as I had hoped, and was a maintenance nightmare.

I have been seeing a good increase in opt-ins to my tip of the week, and I have also found that it wasn't because of the pop-over, so the only thing I am sure of at this point is I have a chance to build trust with the opt-in list.

I know there are also big improvements I can make in the main headline, and my article headlines, but I was mostly wanting to get feedback into strategies that some of you may have used or know of to increase the conversion rate of a subscription website.

One thing I am considering is using a sales page style ad to sell potential subscribers on a premium membership that we are developing.

I'm sorry if this went too long . . . oh wait . . . you guys like long copy

Thanks for the help . . . Scott

P.S. I hope no one takes this as a self promotion tactic, as you guys are not part of my target audience anyway.
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The Powerseller Report
http://www.tprweb.com

[Paul Short]

Hi Scott,

I read through your post and had 2 ideas:

1. Is there any way you can tell (or track) what particular page the person was on when they clicked your order link? Can you use a click tracker to surround your order link urls on all pages? Knowing this could help narrow down the possible "hooks" or elements that sparked the buying decision.

2. Once you've done that, you could use a few google ads pointing to that *money* page to boost your subscribers and overall conversion rates.

When you've found the keys to why people are subscribing, you can work those elements into other pages and test those against your control page for conversion as well. It would be a long involved process, but could pay off very well in the long run.

Just some thoughts...

Paul Short
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Meatball Marketing

[Scott Prock]

Hi Paul, that sounds like a good direction.

Do you (or anyone) know a good tracking script? I had tried a couple of tracking services before that used javascript to track but I wasn't getting the benefits to justify the cost of the service.

I do have a different website that I can install scripts on as long as the script will allow for tracking offsite.

I just remembered, my hosting account has LiveStats 5.0 installed and I'm supposed to be able to set any page up as a watch, I'll see if this will work.

Thanks for the suggestions . . . Scott
_________________
The Powerseller Report
http://www.tprweb.com