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Thread: Online Registration

  1. #1
    Full Member Cream's Avatar
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    Online Registration

    I hope someone can answer my question or help me with advise:

    Every second month we publish Information Guides on our website (similar to a newsletter), however the Information Guides aren't accessible to public viewers but only to those who register on our website. If you have a look at our website as a non-registered user, a brief is available, and if you were interested in reading that particular Information Guide you would have to register in order to download it. News Page

    We took this approach to encourage our visitors to register with us, hence receiving our latest news, events and so on.

    Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by doing this?

    Sadly we haven't had a great deal of visitors registering with us, and I was wondering if there were some other ideas we could consider?
    Last edited by Cream; 05-Oct-10 at 10:48 PM. Reason: Deleted

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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Is your goal to accumulate subscribers, or is accumulating subscribers a means to achieving a more important goal?

    What is your real ultimate goal here?

  3. #3
    Full Member Cream's Avatar
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    Having more subscribers registered with us allows us to share information more effectively, saving time and our registered users have full access to any download. We too obtain new and more contacts, which we wouldn't normally have.

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    Email problem solweb's Avatar
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    Tracking visitors & registrations

    What you are doing is establishing yourselves as the experts in your particular field.

    Try advertising or doing cross promotional ads with the Web Sites your target audience is likely to visit
    Last edited by solweb; 06-Oct-10 at 11:08 AM. Reason: incomplete
    Michael Vella
    Web Presence Solutions - www.solutionsweb.co.za

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    Platinum Member Chatmaster's Avatar
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    Cream are you saying that you are getting traffic but it is not converting, or do you like to use the newsletter to attract more traffic?
    Roelof Vermeulen (Entrepreneurship in large organizations)
    Roelof Vermeulen| Rock flaps south africa

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    Full Member Cream's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chatmaster View Post
    Cream are you saying that you are getting traffic but it is not converting, or do you like to use the newsletter to attract more traffic?
    We are definitely getting traffic, in the two months of our website going live we had 918 hits, which I think is really great. However no converting

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    Full Member Cream's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by solweb View Post
    Try advertising or doing cross promotional ads with the Web Sites your target audience is likely to visit
    Currently we have done so on LinkedIn, SA Business Directory and Bizcommunity. So far LinkedIn is the best.

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    Gold Member Mark Atkinson's Avatar
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    By "cross promotional ads..." I don't think he means having profiles on social networking sites and directories.

    Without trying to put words in his mouth, I think what solweb is trying to say is find websites that your target market is most likely to visit and arrange to exchange ads with them.

    For example, I sell sports shirts online. Hence, I arranged with the owner of an SA sporting forum to exchange ads with me, whereby he advertises my store on his forum (via a banner) and I advertise his forum on our website. This way, it's more targeted advertising. It speaks directly to your target audience, whereas listing yourself on various directories is more like a stab in the dark (although advisable nonetheless).

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    Full Member Cream's Avatar
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    Fair enough, we don't literally advertise on anyone’s website, we do promote our events, and we are consistently adding comments within LinkedIn groups, a range of groups, sharing bits of inserts of our articles. Our links are always available to interested parties.

    Maybe I could consider IT companies, as they would be our target market.

  10. #10
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Maybe you should try partial open content.

    At the moment your website is a bit of a black box. If I as a passer-by don't have some sort of idea what's inside the box, why would I want to open it?
    Possibly more important (and my particular dislike of the curiosity strategy), if a person opens the box out of curiosity, all you've established is they're curious. You have not qualified them as a prospect!

    One of the advantages of the web is it will do as much of the work as you let it. That includes seperating the prospects from the suspects if you will let it. Prospects will sign up because they don't want to miss a reminder of the next issue. Prospects will take the RSS feed, or at least bookmark the site.

    The way you're doing it now someone will register just to find out what the heck you're going on about and if they're a suspect, hit the spam report button when your next newsletter lands. Who needs that aggravation, especially from someone who is unlikely to convert?

    In short - yeah - I think you're shooting yourself in the foot.

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