It has almost as much white space as an Apple store – the focus is kept on that sign-up bonus, and that sign-up box. Text is minimal, but hooky. There are no clickaways. At least, there weren’t any until GDPR rather annoyingly forced the inclusion of a Privacy Policy link, but you will see that this page is absent any distractions in the sidebar – no Twitter feed, no Facebook Like box, no BookBub Follow button, no RSS feed. All that has been removed on this page.
There’s also no nav bar at the top – even those minimally distracting clickaways have been removed here. Pretty much the only thing a reader can do on this page is sign up to my list. Indeed, it is pretty much the only way they can escape from this page also. Bwahahahahahaha.
The principles are identical for fiction, to stave off inevitable questions, and I recommend following this approach closely.
The page should be optimized in other little ways too. Any images have been shrunk down to make sure the page loads as quickly as possible – this is essential. Code has been tinkered with to make loading time as fast as it can be.
Every element of this page has been analysed and optimized. The button is red, because that attracts the eye – and that clicking cursor – more than anything else. Studies show that a red button white text converts better than anything. (The yellow/black combo comes next if you need an alternate for whatever reason.)
The chosen text of “GET MY FREE BOOK” rather than “GET YOUR FREE BOOK” or “DOWNLOAD NOW” is a little trick purloined from Newsletter Ninja – a clever bit of reader psychology, making it their book already and helping along ultimate conversion just a little bit more.
And, actually, looking at it now again with a critical eye, that "GEY MY FREE BOOK" could be bolder and thicker, and I bet that would boost completion a little more.
All of these things might sound like marginal improvements, but they can actually make quite dramatic differences over time and at scale. And just remember how hard you work to get people to buy your books - any of those readers you can save from slipping through the cracks is just gravy.
The only thing which has thrown off the design of the page slightly – and is making my eye twitch somewhat – is the recent inclusion of that Captcha button, which I had to do personally because of some… nefarious actors but you probably don’t have to worry about.
But the overall point I want to stress is that you should pay serious attention to your sign-up page, and all the elements it contains. There are no magic tricks here, just applying well established best practices, and doing so with care and attention. Anyone can do this!
And, of course, this page is where you will push all prospective sign-ups. You link to it from the back of your books - not to any of the forms that come with your mailing list provider. Link to it from social media. Anywhere you are pushing sign-ups, push them to this page.
Any other "selling" you are doing to get people to sign up to your list can be done at the point of sharing - keep the page itself minimal.
The same principles apply equally to fiction and non-fiction, but here's an example of a graphic that I have shared on social media recently to drive sign-ups to this list, one which I have also appended to various blog posts, along with accompanying text. I also use this graphic as a visual CTA inside my books - at the front and at the back - to drive sign-ups there, as well as trying to do so in the About the Author section of my books. (And, yes, I do the same for fiction.)
The text on my blog post (or Facebook post or whatever) does the job of eliciting the interest, the landing page itself is purely designed to close the deal, and if you keep it spare and focused, it will do a very good job of that indeed.
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