Episode 13 | Easy ways to level up your website to build paid subscriptions - Part 1

This episode of the Paywall podcast is brought to you by zine101, the makers of Leaky Paywall. Leaky Paywall is the most flexible WordPress subscription platform. Find out more at zine101.com where you can download Leaky Paywall for free. On the Paywall podcast, we discuss paywalls and paywall strategies for news and magazine publishers. Let's get started.

Okay, it's Friday and we're almost in May, and it's our 13th Paywall podcast. Welcome to this episode. I'm here with Jeremy Green and Tyler Channel and we are going to talk about something which we hope you make some time for. And that's the question of so what's next? You set up your paywall, you're starting to attract free level subscribers and you're starting to attract paid subscribers. And that's all going. So what's next? How do you level up your website, your subscriber experience now to build, to really build paid subscriptions and grow that substantially? We see a lot of installations and you might be one of them where the subscription's working fine. But we see a lot of weak points in the touch points that the visitors and subscribers experience. We also see lots of opportunities to build new products. And we're gonna, in this, in this episode, we're going to talk about those touch points and we're going to talk about a way to easily create some new products to generate more revenue. And we're also going to talk about how to, how to target the visitors that are on your website easily with our tools in order to convert them from free to paying subscribers or to convert them from a paying subscriber to a member or sell a new product or whatnot. So I would say get a pencil out, a cup of coffee or tea or whatever beverage and really commit to spending a little time on this because this is, this is super important and it's an easy way to build more revenue. Okay, so let's get into it. The first area that I want to talk about is touch points. So what is a touch point? A touch point is when a visitor lands on your website and they start to experience your content. They start to read it and they start to run into things like subscription nags. They sign up, they get emails from you. These are all touch points that subscribers will experience with your publication. And it's really important to look at all the touch points and make sure they're saying the right thing. And every time, personally speaking, every time I go back and we look at Our own website and we look at the touch points with our own customers. You always look at it with fresh eyes as sort of that editorial kicks in and you end up improving a lot of things and it happens quickly and, and it absolutely makes a difference every time. All right, so as far as the website, here's what I would recommend as a first thing to do. Test the subscriber experience yourself. I would do it on mobile too, since most publishers are finding most of their traffic coming through on mobile. I would load up your site on mobile. I, I would create a coupon for yourself, test your couponing if you're using that, and go through the experience as a subscriber. Now, when people come into your website, when visitors come in, they're generally coming in through a landing page, which would be an article for, for you. So visitors don't generally land on your homepage. I mean, certainly a chunk do. But most visitors come in sideways and land on your article page. So start with an article page, pretend you're a new visitor and experience the site from that direction. The article page, really, you almost have to treat it as a homepage. So make sure the messaging is right on that page. Speed of the page. This is a hosting thing and this is a theming thing and a technical thing. But Google has made it very clear that the speed of your website will impact how your articles rank in search. And they're really turning the screws on that with their next core vitals release. So you want to make sure your website runs fast. That's important. Okay, so let's say you're on your page. The first thing you run into after running out of free articles is your, what we call the subscription nag. And many of you have come, have set up free level subscriptions. What do you see? Is it awesome? And what I mean by awesome, in other words, is it the default, the default leaky paywall setup? Is it just, you know, is the copy compelling? Are you, you know, do you have your, is your mission clear? Are you, you know, you have an empathic message to a potential subscriber and you know, your, your, the job here, if you're using the free registration method, is to, to really capture the email address and give something away to, to capture that email. Do you have an image in there? Some publishers will create a video, but as far as a free level subscription, you don't really need much. Just, just the pit, the, the offer, the pitch and you know, you'll get some extra articles or you'll get articles plus an issue or a download or something in order to capture that email. Okay, so once you register, because now you're going through the registration on your site. And I'll say one thing, when you get to your registration page, keep it really simple. The purpose of your registration page is to register that new user. It's not time to upsell anything. It's not time to run a pop up offer for something. The focus is to get that new visitor through the free registration, keep it super simple, just the form they want your content. Your job is to capture the email. If you, it's really just about that form. So keep it simple. Now I just said keep it simple. But you do have some opportunities to capture a little bit of additional information if it's really important to your mission. We have the custom registration fields add on that you can use to capture maybe a little more demographic information like where you're located, if that's relevant or what's your company name or a field or two. I wouldn't go crazy with that. If you do publish other newsletters, our group's integration with mailchimp is awesome. So you can add those newsletters as just check boxes to that registration page. And you know, people that are actually willing to register, they'll probably give you a little extra information. But again, be careful with how much you ask for. Okay, so now what happens? Okay, so I fill out or you fill out the registration form because that's what you're doing. And the thing that we recommend strongly is take that new visitor that's just registered back to the article they were reading. Right. That's pretty standard practice these days. But still I see publishers that maybe take the visitor to their my account page or to a thank you page and that's okay. But you know, the thank you page, there might be some reasons where you're gonna, you're gonna upsell things on a thank you page or share more of your mission or whatnot. But really that, that new visitor just wants to get back to reading and you really don't want to get in the way of that too much. And, and with our multiple levels email function which you can use, you can craft a specific email for that free person who just registered and in that email, you know, go nuts with your mission and any other offers that you want to give. It might be a very easy way to throw in a 10% limited time coupon code or discount code in that welcome email to your free registered subscribers and, and see what happens. You know, do it for 30 days and see how many people convert off of that coupon? It might be something that works fantastically for you, but again, make it a limited time and you can see you can, that's easy to set up in the, in the coupon section. You just set up, set up when coupons start and when they end, when they're, they start and when they expire. And you'll have to update your welcome email, let's say once a month. But you might be able to drive quite a lot of new conversions doing that. Okay, so let's see, where are we now? So that email comes through. This is all pretty easy stuff you can configure right away. And I want to make a mention on another thing that's, that's really quite easy to do, although it takes a little time to create the content is to set up a drip campaign, which mailchimp and other email service providers do very easily now. And what is a drip campaign? Well, so you captured an email address which is the start of this whole subscriber relationship. Why not send them some additional emails dripped down the road maybe. And maybe they get the welcome email right away. Maybe you know, the next day they get like an introduction to your, your publication. Maybe it's sort of a top, maybe It's a top 10 articles, maybe it's a free issue, maybe it's something mission related. It could really could be anything. And then the day after that, maybe the week after that. And really you can drip infinitely. But it's a great opportunity to get the message you need to get across to that new free subscriber that you got. So think about that, easy to do, quick to set up and helps in that, in building that relationship. And it's totally automated. Okay, so now some time goes by. So generally speaking, some free registrations will now that you have the email address and you're sending them your newsletter every day, week, month, whatever your newsletter schedule is. And you're sending them back to the site so they can read more articles and use up their free subscription level quantity of articles. They'll hit the next subscription nag, which will ask them to pay. So the paid nag is now the next touch point and time is what generally happens here in between. Some time will go by. Some free registered subscribers will pay you a smaller percentage, but most will generally get your content. And then over a period of time they'll get tired of running into that subscription nag and eventually they'll sort of get breakdown and say okay, I'll just pay and support this publication. So that's sort of the time thing that happens. And that paid nag when now you're going through this experience yourself. What does it say? Is it now match the branding of your free nag messaging? Is the messaging compelling in order to get somebody to convert? And we do have some great examples on our, on our help desk if you look for subscription nag. If you search for subscription nag, you'll find them and we even have some HTML. You can grab a couple of templates that make it easy to make your nags look better. So that's the paid nag. That's, that's that touch point. Now the next touch point is when someone decides to consider subscribing or decides to subscribe. They click the link on your paid nag and it takes them to the subscription cards page. So this is where you have maybe your monthly recurring, your annual recurring. If you're print, you might have a print and digital offering. It's tempting to create lots of different offers but, but I would say try to make your. Try to have three subscription cards because that's the simplest way to say it. Three is the number thou shalt count to if you enjoy Monty Python. And it's, you know, we as, as consumers when we get three options, it's easy for us to make a choice when we have five or seven or ten options which I see all the time. Publishers have a lot of offerings and sometimes that's, that's okay. That's just what you have to do because you have different products. But certainly in the beginning and even when you add your first premium plus or member level product, you should be able to keep the cards to three. Don't worry about having the free level there. The in content subscription nag will take care of those registrations. Just have your paid offerings on the subscription page. So take a look at your page and some publishers are going with one option now like a digital recurring monthly sort of Netflix style you have. If you go to Netflix and try to subscribe you, you get one offer and that's it. You can't pay annually. It's just a monthly recurring and it works. Okay. Getting a drink here. Okay, so that's subscription cards. Do they look good? I mean this, this, these are areas, these are, these are really important conversion touch points. Is the mission clear? And then they click to pay and they go off to the payment page. So if they're free, if they're already registered for free, their information is already pre filled and then they're just adding their credit card and off they go. And again, don't get in a way, don't get in the way of that, that payment experience. You know, look at your pop ups. What are, you know, sometimes I'll be in the middle of filling out a form and some pop up will just show up and I'll be typing. And of course my typing is now blown into the ether sphere because the pop up showed up. I'm thinking, wait a second, I'm trying to have a relationship with you and you just pop me out into space. Okay, so now next touch point, pay. You have the ability now to send an email specifically for paid subscribers. In fact, the way, the way the multiple level email system works with us is you, you just. Each subscription level can have a different welcome message. So generally it'll be a free message and a paid message and certainly print and digital will offer a different kind of messaging. But look at that, at that email that then comes in. As you pay, you use your coupon, let's say you're using a discount code or not, as you pay, you get that welcome email. Is that welcome email doing what you need it to do? It's a very important touch point. And then of course, once they've paid, now they're a paid subscriber, which is really the, you know, the goal number one. You know, well, the major goal number one.

Thank you for listening to part one of Easy Ways to Level up youp Website to Build Paid Subscriptions. Be sure and tune in next week for part two where we discuss how to easily create new products. Thanks for listening to the Paywall podcast. You can find us@paywallpodcast.com Be sure to subscribe in your podcast player of choice and we'll see you next episode.