011: Unlock the Power of Opt-In Pages: A Webpage Walkthrough

In this episode of The Website Success Show, host Jules White takes you through a detailed walkthrough of a real-life opt-in page for therapist Mallory, who specializes in counseling and therapy for teens. Discover actionable tips and strategies for optimizing your opt-in pages to attract more subscribers and grow your email list.

Key Takeaways:

• The Importance of Opt-In Pages: Learn why these pages are crucial for growing your email list and nurturing potential clients.
• Different Types of Opt-Ins: Explore various freebie options, such as quizzes, checklists, guides, and training materials.
• Creating High-Converting Opt-In Pages: Discover the essential elements of a successful opt-in page, including attention-grabbing headlines, benefit-driven bullet points, and clear calls to action.
• Two-Step vs. One-Step Opt-Ins: Understand the pros and cons of each approach and choose the best option for your website.
• Optimizing for Conversions: Learn how to make your opt-in pages more visually appealing and user-friendly to increase conversions.

Jules also provides specific feedback on Mallory's opt-in page, offering suggestions for improving the headline, imagery, and overall design to make it more compelling and effective.

Whether you're a therapist, coach, or any other service-based business owner, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical tips for creating opt-in pages that will help you grow your email list and attract more clients.

Connect with Mallory and download her free guide here

Get your free website SEO report here at The Website Success Hub and start making changes for a more sustainable marketing strategy!

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction and Purpose of the Video

Hi, So I normally do these lives over in my Facebook group on a Friday morning.

This is for an opt-in page, and I think there's so much potential with opt-in pages that I really wanted to share this here on the podcast as well. I hope you enjoy it.

I have been doing some webpage walkthroughs in my group recently and my lovely client Mallory requested one this week for her opt in page. And I love opt in pages. There's so much potential there.

So I thought I would share this one on my profile rather than sharing in my group, which is a little bit scary, but also could be fun., 

So freebie sign up pages, opt in pages, email sign up pages would probably be another thing you might call them, and they're really important.

Growing our email list is critical.  So yeah, let's talk about opt in pages. 

Client Introduction: Meet Mallory

This is Mallory's page. And I met Mallory through an online group that I'm in. She has an amazing business. She offers counseling and therapy for teens.

She's over in the States and she.  offers one to one services. She's also got online courses as well. She's got a fantastic YouTube channel and she has just hit 6, 000 subscribers this week, which is amazing. We're massively celebrating that for her. So we recently did a power hour and she said some lovely things.

I'm just going to read out what she said. So,  Mallory said after our power hour together,

"   Had an amazing power hour. With Jules White today and realizing I don't need to be pumping out more new content right now until I clean up my website and blog posts, highly recommend booking one with her."

And it was great.

I loved doing it. She's got so much content out there and she's already getting some. Traffic to her website, but nowhere near enough for the amount of amazing content she's got out there. It just needs a bit of organization. We were talking about her core topics and the key things she needs to be talking about and just working out what content she's got that she can optimize around that, that really.

Importance of Opt-In Pages

So looking at this opt in page for Mallory, opt in pages are really helpful.  Because we have different options of how we can actually lay them out and it's basically helping to get people onto our email list so that we can then nurture them. Once they're on our list, they're in our world and the algorithms can't take that away.

We can connect with them. We can offer them support and help. And when we need to then come and come to selling things that that also can happen to our email list. So email lists and. Our website are the most important parts of our business, the most valuable parts of our business, especially if we are an online business, then it's just so valuable and you can get such a better return on investment for putting some effort and time into, into developing these kind of pages than we get from social media in general, really.

Blueprint for Effective Opt-In Pages

So when we, when I'm looking, working with clients, looking at their opt in pages, , I have a blueprint that I work through with my clients. And we look at the different options of how we can present this page. But generally the goal of this page is to convey that this is a valuable resource that's going to solve a problem for them.

And the result of that is to grow our email lists.  We would always just have ideally one call to action on this page, which is to download the freebie or to join our email list. And it, we, it, people may come into this page at different stages in their awareness journey. So in the buyer's journey. So we need to consider that when we're looking at positioning the freebie that we're offering, then thinking about where are people coming into this?

Where are we sending traffic into this page? Is that coming in from another page on our website? Or is it coming through Facebook ads or through promotions on social media? But giving, having that in mind as we're building out this page could be really helpful as well. There are lots of things you could do for a freebie.

If you're a one to one service provider, then if you have something that will help your clients along their journey with you, if you have some pre work or something like that, that, that would be helpful for them to have done before they come and work with you. And you can develop that into a freebie.

That can be really helpful, but you could have things like a quiz or a free checklist or a free guide, a mini ebook, um, some free training that could be a video training series or audio training could be audio meditation could be a tapping sequence. There's so many different things that you could Uh, makers into a freebie that just helps to encourage people to join your list.

And hopefully it helps the right people to, to join your list. Cause there's no point building an email list of people who are never going to become customers. And it's just out of alignment with what you're actually selling as well.

Design and Content Tips

There's different ways that we can present this page. What Mallory has here is kind of the first one that I would, I would talk to my clients about, which is, is a two step opt in essentially.

So we have a page that people come to, they click on this, click to claim, and then it's going to take them over to, it does open in the same window, but essentially it's this that opens. And so then we've got a form for them to fill in, they click on the, on the, , button here, and it takes them through and delivers.

I haven't actually filled this in, so I'm not sure. Normally it would go to a thank you page, or maybe would go to something that is good to add there is some kind of tripwire page or one time offer page where you offer something to them of.  You know, they come through this with mine. It's, you would come through, you'd fill the form in, and then it would take you to another page saying your freebie will be delivered  into your email box shortly.

But while you're here, you might find this helpful, and then delivering like a one time offer there. That can be really helpful just to bring in some more sales, trickling through your business. Hopefully that people are just stumbling across you or they're finding you through Google and that can then lead to sales through that really.

Whenever we're thinking about freebie pages, one thing I would say with this page Mallory is ideally we want one thing to happen from this page, which is we want people to take the action of joining our email list. So I would consider your freebie pages. Almost as you would any other kind of sales page really.

So you would then  not have navigation menu, not have anything else that's going to take their attention away from joining your email list. It's something that we, it, it kind of feels a little bit off of like, oh yeah, but I just want to promote everything. They might be here. They might be then. Looking at taking up my offer, or they might then want to navigate around the site.

But actually, if you can just get them to take that one action on this page, which is to join your email list, and that's really, really valuable. So I would consider making this into a page where it is more like a sales page, as I say, without the navigation, take the navigation off of this page and have everything, if you can  above this, above the fold section.

So. Before people start scrolling. And the same if you look at it on mobile before people start scrolling on their phone, that you have all of the information that's needed here for them to, to decide that this is a valuable resource that they need to download. They wanna get it straight away. So when we are thinking about this, there's a few things that you can have here.

You would, again, the same as you would as any other other sales page or really any other page on your website. You want an attention grabbing headline. So you want something that's gonna immediately grab their attention. When people land on our pages, we have.  They say three seconds. I'm not sure now that people even wait that long.

If a page is slow loading or doesn't grab our attention straight away, then quite often we will just click away from it.  So with that, with bearing that in mind of where people have actually come into this page from,  what's an attention grabbing headline that's going to keep them there, keep them reading for a bit longer.

and, all we want to do is essentially keep them on that page long enough for them to take the action that we want them to take. So. Thinking about that, something that's going to help them to understand what the benefits are. So   this guide is going to help you to get this result and, and that result should be benefit driven.

So what is having this guide going to help that help your clients to your, your potential clients or your subscribers? What's it going to help them achieve? What's, what problem is it going to help them overcome? How is it going to make their life better essentially?

So,  If we're thinking about that,, so you'd have a headline here, then maybe have a sub headline underneath if you need it, something that just explains it a little bit more.

We don't want loads of words on here. We want it to be very skimmable and easy to read, grab people's attention so that they know what's what, what's what straight away really.  I would suggest then underneath that having the benefits. So having three bullet point benefits of, of this, this freebie.  And when you're thinking about that, thinking about the benefits of what it's going to help them to achieve.

So you've got in here, the guide includes exercises, guided reflection, supportive resources, and  it's more these kinds of things that you you'd be thinking about. So  three to five, I would say if you can,  if you can summarize it in three points, then it's probably going to be have more impact because people can read it quickly.

And if so, if there are three sort of key things that this is going to help them do and thinking about  it being in very plain language, what the results are and what maybe thinking about it even further off, like what is embracing their unique path going to help them achieve in life? What's that what's figuring out their goal is going to help them achieve, or how is this going to make it easier for them to actually,  Be the, be the, be the best selves, you know, get over something that's, that if it's sort of thinking about who I am, why do I matter?

You have here figuring out who you are is a real total game changer. Why is that? What's, what is going, going to change in their life or what's, what problem is it going to help them to,  overcome from doing that. And this is not easy. I'm not a copywriter and it's not easy figuring out these kind of things.

And you probably will find you'll tweak them over time. And it's certainly worth doing that as you get more and more traffic to your website, trying different things to see what does actually resonate with people.   but you can run that through chat, GPT or Google Gemini. I would definitely suggest using AI with this, just like even just putting what you've got on your copy.

Right now into the page and just seeing what it comes up with. I know you, you, you, the, the group that we're in together is all around AI. So I know this is not, not going to be, you're not going to be a stranger to using that to help with this kind of stuff,  but yeah, thinking about that, I would maybe consider switching around when, when we read web pages, it tends to be that our eyes move in a Z pattern or an F pattern. So having your writing the, uh, this is another thing I can just point out for you as well here, but having your headline of the page on the left hand side, and then an image on the right tends to be better, but it tends to grab people's attention a little bit more. Better than having it the other way around.

This looks like this is actually an image. So Google can't actually read this writing here. This your journey journey to authentic living starts here. If I look at this from my SEO tool,  let's  have a little look. Headers.  So Google can't actually read your H1 headline on this page. If it's buried in an image, then Google can't read it, unfortunately.

So I would definitely suggest doing that. We've been part of our part of the power hour. We spoke about the hierarchy of pages. So I know you're working on this on actually getting your page hierarchy sorted. But ideally, you just want one H1 heading on this page. And With an opt in page, it might not be that this is a page that's going to massively show up on Google, but I think just do everything you can to give it the best chance really.

So  one h1 heading and that would be that main headline on the page that's going to let people know what this is going to do for them. It's that attention grabbing headline and ideally something in there that relates to what they were searching for that brought them to this page.  Or,  Something that relates to where they were, where they came from.

So if it was a, if it was a Facebook post that it, or a, you know, um, a YouTube video or something that brought them here, then it aligns with what, where they came from realistically. So I would definitely suggest making sure that you just have one H1 headline on the page and it's that, and then the hierarchy follows naturally.

So your, maybe your H2 headlines on the page would be those benefit bullet points that you have on this part here as well. So  When you are, so if you're sort of thinking about this, if we're thinking about this image here,  another thing I would say is maybe just  having a little think about what the guide is.

Like I, when I was reading this earlier,  I was a little bit confused I think it took me a few moments to realize, is this a Is it a journal? Is it an ebook? Is it a, like a guide? I think there's probably ways you could explain it, which would be clearer and more compelling, I think, for people to actually,, want to download it.

So it says you've got exercises, guided reflection, supportive  resources to help people on that journey. You could maybe do is show where you've got this mock up here. I definitely think your your branding is amazing and I definitely think you could have something a little bit more impactful in terms of a mock up.

So maybe finding something Canva have got amazing mock ups in there where you can just show. Copy and drop your stuff in there, but maybe having some of the pages within the journal visible as well, that might be helpful just so that people can understand, like they can see that there are,  they can see what's inside.

Basically they can see what they're signing up for and not in terms of being able to read it and then not needing to download it, but just having those pages sort of scattered behind. So it shows this is what this journal is all about. Maybe if there is spaces for them to. write. So it is more like a journal than having that visible as well.

You can definitely portray a lot with an image. And I feel like that would be really helpful here. 

The image of you journaling  is.  Where I was a little bit like, okay, is this an, is it, is it an ebook? Is it a journal? I guess probably is a bit of a hybrid.  Having,  having that a little bit clearer I think might just help you to get more, more opt ins really.

And also for who it's for. So, because your audience is teens, Is there anything that you can do to relate that and bring that in here so that that becomes, that comes across here as well, really.  So  when we're thinking about the different types of opt ins that we have,  this is the first one, as I say, where you, where you have one page, you click on the button to claim it, and then it opens another page where the actual, form is that they fill in and what, whatever kind of page we have, there's always going to be a form to fill in.

There's always going to be a button to click. And this is really good that you've actually got this here so that they click on the button. So  you get the buy in from them clicking on that button really. So rather than having it, that you come into a page and this, and that is one option that you can have it where it's an all in one page where you have.

Everything that the freebie is about. And then you have just an email signup box, but these kinds of ones where they actually, people have to click the button to say that they want it,  tend to convert better because if you immediately see an email box it's like, Oh, something I've got to do, or they're trying to just get my email address.

Just psychologically actually clicking that button first before you then see, okay, it's just two boxes that I need to fill in on an email form or something along those lines can be really helpful. So I like that you've got it this way. I would always want a big button. So ideally, if you can have a button that's even bigger than this down on the bottom of the page, you've got this amazing big, big button here.

I love this button. I think if you could have something  Like that. So almost like this part of the page is almost a bit more, the kind of thing that we w we would want to see. And so we'd want a headline there. Maybe the image would be a bit smaller and it would be slightly different, but this is more likely, I think, to convert  than  the bit at the top of the page.

Realistically,  you could ideally have it. So that  what's on the button is something explains the next step for them and also encourages them to take action now. So whether it's get instant access now or download the guide now, and then, you know, I love my directional cues on the button.

So if you can just have some chevrons or an arrow or something pointing them in the direction of what you want them to do. So click on that and then, then they, that then takes them through. And they've bought in, they, they know that they need to do it now. And it's just all the psychological stuff of actually  a button that converts, then that can be really helpful as well.

Then when you come through to the form itself, ideally what you want is the same  headline and benefits on the form as you have on the actual page as well. So it's the same sort of thing, very plain language tells them exactly what they're going to get from this here, you could even have it with,   a small image of what they're signing up for here as well.

one of the things I forgot to say when we were looking at the main page when they come into this page. So if you get rid of all your navigation menus and anything else on the page, all of, all of the other stuff. So at the bottom of your page, you've got this link to your podcast, just have a very minimal footer that you need with the legal stuff on it  and keep it just to the freebie sign up here.

But what I would say is to have your logo at the top somewhere, just discreetly at the top, have your logo there. So people know when they come into this page, that increases the trust here because they, they know it's you that , it's the same place, making sure it's still on  That it matches up to the branding that you're using elsewhere is really important.

And the reason I said that is I know you then come across to MailerLite, so you will have slightly different branding. It's going to look a little bit different here because it's a different platform. But I would think about maybe if you can try and use the same fonts, the same button color. So whether that is the pink or it's the green, even with this background color that just looks slightly different, this one to the background color here,  those little things can really make a difference.

Um, and this button looks a bit red and red is. I'd like a danger sign. So I would maybe think about changing this button to a different color. It's good that it stands out. It's good. The white against that dark color stands out. But is there a way that you can make it make that the same as in the previous step?

And ideally, if it's exactly the same button that they've, they've clicked on, it could even be the same.  Language on that button, because if you're asking them to click in, then ideally they're, they're still wanting to do the same thing once they've filled this form in.

When you, have the email box, when you've got a filler here , of  email , one thing you could do is rather than having it say email, you could have as  something that's  going to benefit them. So like, where should we send your guide rather than enter your email address or something along those lines?

So where can we send this guide with a little email icon next to it  is then helping them to understand the benefits of it really. 

Only Take the details that you need to be  On the forms. That's really important, making sure that you just ask for what you need  and actually having it, a benefit to them of why they put their email address in here can be really helpful as well. So with the placeholders having things that actually are going to encourage them that this is good for them to be filling in this form ,  Having something on this page as well that that displays the trust so you could have that something in here as well.

One thing you can do on your on the actual sign up page is having something on here that.  If somebody has told you that this, this guide has helped them having that here.

So I've got that on my  SEO report signup page, which I need to do some work on this one myself, but underneath the button, I've actually got this little testimonial that somebody gave me around the report and how it helped them. And that's something you could do. You could add that in to above the headline.

You could just have a little something there of, a hundred people rated this guide five star or something along those lines. And then something underneath it, just a really short testimonial that just encourages people to know that this is trustworthy, know that it's going to help them.

And just that social proof can be really helpful as well. that's kind of the, if you're, if you're doing the two steps, so it's where it takes you to another page. Ideally, What you can do, I know that you are kind of a bit stuck on this 'cause you're using Mail Aite to, to actually get those, their signup details.

So it does have to go for another page for you. But ideally, if you can have something where it does keep them on the, on the page, if your website builder does that, if for other people whose website builders allow you to do that, that can be really helpful. So you click on it and then it either opens a popup and if it is a popup, again, it's the same sort of thing.

It's gonna say the same thing, it's gonna have the same,  headlines, same.  Benefit driven  results there within that headline, the same button style,  that kind of stuff that is, it can be really helpful just making sure that it, everything feels seamless and there's nothing that sort of,  in terms of the user experience, nothing that then takes  away from that really.

Then another option is to have the all in one where you have the email box here. It's something that you could try that it's another way of doing it.  Ideally, if you are doing that, you would just literally be asking for people's email addresses,  and then version four is like the hybrid. And this is the one that can do really well because we're not then waiting for anything new to load, but essentially we're getting the benefits of it being.

As if it was just the one page. opt in,  but it's actually not. So what you would then do is you would have the top part of, the screen before you scroll as everything that we've talked about in terms of what you want here. And then when you click on the button, it essentially would just scroll you down.

So you just have a jump link that scrolls you down to the, to then the bottom half of the page, which then contains The form for them to sign up for and so, it looks like a two step, but it's actually just a hybrid. And so that means it's quicker to load. And it's literally just skipping them down to the bottom of the page and actually if they scroll then they would see that

But it's, it's a way of doing it that, that sort of works, works well. If you have that option in your, your website builder and your email builder, where you're, where you're actually collecting those emails.

So that's  the main ones.

The other one as well that you can do is you can do a , no freebie opt in. So if you've got. you're emailing regularly with  good information, and it's really valuable for people to get on your email list, then having somewhere on your website, a page where they can sign up for your email list.

And essentially what you would be explaining is join my email list to  Save time, save money or get this benefit. So whatever, whatever benefit is that you have that there and that's what you want them to have.

And then the button would be opt in today or something along those those lines. And sometimes it's good to have that somewhere anyway, because Not everybody wants a freebie. So actually just having that option, they might want to still hear from you, but having that option of join my email list today to get this benefit  can be really helpful.

And then you can have that through other pages as well. So things like your blog pages, those kinds of things. If you have a banner somewhere on the page that would then allow them to subscribe to your email list without actually having to , download a freebie or whatever, then that can be really helpful as well.

In terms of.

SEO and Traffic Strategies

this page and getting traffic to it. I just had a little look at the SEO on here and there's a there's a few things you could do. As I say, you're not likely to get loads and loads of traffic to a freebie signup page just purely because there's so little amount of content on that actual page.

But still, we want to try and do everything we can to make the most of it. So I would suggest making your title, the page title, shorter. So try and get it under 60 characters. When you actually decide on, okay, is this, is this going to be, am I, am I going to describe it as a journal? Am I going to describe it as an ebook?

Am I going, what am I going to describe this as? Having that in the title there could be really helpful. The page description as well.  Thinking about how you can get that down to under 160 characters.  It's maybe that would be the benefits. So it's going to be what would encourage people to click through to that page.

I would definitely be thinking about having  that in there. Doing your hierarchy as I suggested, having the H1 heading, the H2 heading with the benefits.  Aside from that, if you're then trying to drive traffic into this page, probably the best thing to do would be to, I was going to say create a blog post, but we've already had that discussion about the fact that , you're trying not to create new content and instead trying to make the most of the content you already have.

So I would be thinking doing some keyword research. I just had a quick look around self discovery journal prompts, and there certainly is some search volume around that. It does seem to be on the, on the. Decline a little bit with the trends, but there's plenty of people that are searching for it that it would be worth exploring that as if you've got some content already around that if you've got a blog post, if you've got a YouTube video that you can repurpose and optimize around that term.

It wouldn't be a bad thing to try and sort of try and rank it for that though that term really.  So if you were doing that, then you'd maybe have a blog post that talks about that or has got some talks about the benefits of prompting for journaling or whatever you decided your keyword would be. And that would then lead into this.

page from from that blog post. So you'd maybe get the traffic into the blog post and then within that blog post you would talk about this guide that's going to help them to achieve what they're trying to from reading through that blog post. So I would definitely think about that if there's something within your content.

I know we're on a journey to Getting your content organized. That's one of the big jobs that I know you need to do. And you're working through at the moment. But if you've got an article that would naturally lead into this, then downloading this freebie, and it probably would be more than one. Everything you're doing is around helping people to  to discover themselves to improve their mental health.

So there will probably would be many, many blogs that you have where leading into this freebie could be a really, really good way to go. So I would definitely think about that in terms of how you can actually lead people into this page, but also making the most of the SEO of this page that you can.  But don't spend a lot of time on that.

Literally just doing those tweaks that you can do with the page title, the description and the hierarchy of what content you do have on the page could make a big difference really.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

So, um, I think that's everything I wanted to cover in terms of freebies. I'm sure I will remember something else that I wanted to say after this anyway.

But hopefully that's really helpful. It's something that  I think we can often end up just you. Throwing out lots and lots of freebies that we kind of feel like, okay, I need to, need to create another new freebie, need to create another new resource. Whereas actually optimizing these kinds of pages can make a massive difference to the amount of  people that we're actually getting opting into our, our list.

And then you can start thinking about things like, okay, how much traffic is coming through to these pages? Where are they coming into this page from? And then you can start thinking about tweaking it, but getting some of the basics in place first, so that it's optimized for conversions. For the get go can make a big difference.

One of the things that came up in when we were doing Mallory's Power Hour just before I finished, I just wanted to say this, but one of the things that came up was that one of the keywords that Mallory is ranking for already is cool therapist and that really it made my day, made her day to, to know that she was ranking for that kind of thing. 

It's something where just diving into what she is actually ranking for was really interesting. And it's, she's, as I say, she's got so much content out there that just, we, I feel like we've just scratched the surface with it really. But this, these kinds of pages, these freebie, freebie pages are so valuable because of that growing your email list and just getting people into your world, getting them where they're where they are actually. 

in your database and you can connect with them as you need to and just help them as well. And people downloading these kind of journals, there's definitely things you could do behind that with the email list in terms of getting them to engage with you. And you know, they're going to be uncovering a lot of stuff here that then if you can, if you can ask them about that as well, then it's incredible.

I think just think, yeah, it's a great, it's a great idea for a freebie. And I think definitely,  there's lots of potential with this page and making it better. So I hope that's helpful.  And I'll see you soon. Bye.