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Large Authority Site - We Built It, They Came... How to get them to stay?

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brettlevert
brettlevert
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brettlevert
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Hello All,

In dire need of some advice!

We have built a large authority site in a non-marketing niche focused on the Canadian government. We are currently seeing 150-200 uniques per day from Google (keywords are Canadian politician names or districts and point to politician profile pages) BUT we have had only 5 user registrations in the past week.

We are using the Freemium model. Our goal is to get users signed up and then promote our premium features.

We are specifically looking for design suggestions and HTML or CSS techniques that are proven to work to get users registered. Things like CSS pop-ups inside the page, overlays, flashing buttons, etc. Anything that you have experience with, I would like to hear the pros and cons.

Side note: We have facebook login and can also enable twitter login. We are not running on WP, we are built using DotNetNuke. However, we are not looking for coding, we have our own developers to handle that.

The domain is below:

[removed]

We are looking for tips on our homepage design as well and have plans to add an explainer video and "login with facebook/twitter" buttons with some bullet points about what benefits membership has above what is currently there. We are going to follow along the lines of what is done here:

gushcloud(dot)com

An example of a politician profile page (where most of our traffic lands) is here:

[removed]

I am open to any and all suggestions and I appreciate anything you might have to add! We have tried to keep it low profile in the hopes that users would sign up anyway but now we want to try some more "in your face" techniques and see what happens.

Thank you.
#authority #built #large #site #stay
  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    Istvan Horvath
    Istvan Horvath
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    Istvan Horvath
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    That site is not done. Only half-finished... (or less). Of course nobody is interested to sign up on a site that is full of "coming soon" pages.

    It is not a design issue. It's the lacking content and broken functionality (like the search for MLA or municipal politicians based on postal code).

    The other thing is: even after taking the time to go through 2-3 clicks(!) to get to the registration form, I have no idea WHY would I register.
    Look, I used to be a political journalist at a daily newspaper (in my previous life) and I am interested in everything that affects our life + I am knowledgeable and well-informed about the Canadian politics... so I tried to look at this with some kind of benevolence

    But the site couldn't explain me the benefits of creating an account (signing up).

    Altogether I consider it a huge mistake to promote a site that is not finished...
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  • Profile picture of the author brettlevert
    brettlevert
    brettlevert
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    brettlevert
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    Hello Istvan,

    Thanks for taking the time to check out the site. You are correct it is NOT finished not even close. But Google has picked up our pages that are complete and that's where the traffic is coming from. We felt it would be good to test out things and see what needs improvement before our official launch. Sorry I didnt make that clear.

    Our homepage is going to be changed as I mentioned above once our explainer video is done.

    If you use the drop down navigation then it won't take you to any "coming soon" pages. But that was not my question, I am aware of the areas not finished and not working (any province not in our database won't work for the postal code look up, we are adding an error message to that feature this week) what I am asking is about the politician profile pages specifically.

    On those pages what suggestions would you have as far as design is concerned or ways to entice users to sign up?

    As you mentioned it is 3 clicks to get to our sign up form but one click to use the Facebook login. However the link for that is small text in the top right.

    What are your thoughts on using CSS overlays to show a list of benefits of registration as well as the Facebook login buttons and a short version of the form?

    We do have some bullet points on the registration page explaining the benefits but it sounds like you feel we need to add some sales copy as well? Or will an explainer video suffice?

    Again thank you for any suggestions.

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