Design vs Art Blog

Do you deliver information to users per email? If so, try to:

Send users information that is relevant to them

Designing a newsletter that is "usable" is not an easy task but benefits could be huge: more visits and sales could be reached through good newsletter usability and marketing. Let me show you the iTunes Store "alert me" newsletter example:

 

The iTunes Store Newsletter

On March 13th I was criticizing Apple for sending me advertisement of an old album that I have and I listen to very often. I was wondering why they were bothering me offering an album that I already have?

 

 The Newsletter Now: Björk

 Yesterday I received a new iTunes Newsletter recommending me albums of my favorite artist: Björk. There are 2 important things here:

- iTunes knows that Björk is my favorite artist and sends me album recommendations of her,

- iTunes recommends me Björk albums that I don’t have (yet!)

 

Lesson

Send users information only when this is relevant to them. Recommend only products they might like to buy and they will happily click.

 

 

Popularity: 26% [?]

A small change could improve a website usability a lot. Sometimes, that could also drive a lot a traffic to it. I have a clear example about that. These are the Design vs Art Blog feed subscription stats:

 

Reading the graphic it is possible to deduce the following:

1 After an initial flat phase I changed the position of the "Feeds" logo from the bottom of the website to the top. The resulting effect was the first big jump in subscriptions (around 300% in less than a month).

 

2 After a second "flatish" short period (second, bigger bubble on image 1) I added some instructions to the RSS Feed logo: "Subscribe to Feed, get every week fresh articles"

 

Lesson

A Put the tools the people need and you want to promote in a prominent position, do not assume that users will look for them.

B Tell users what you are actually offering, do not rely on images and icons. Telling people that the Design vs Art Blog is updated every week is encouraging them to subscribe.

C This tips have a marketing impact but they could be applied to everything that is on a website, potentially improving usability with a few changes.      

Popularity: 79% [?]