The Little JavaScript that Could: HomeWorkingMom.com Grows Subscriptions 1000% for Free

CHALLENGE
Due to glowing reviews in Forbes, The Detroit Free Press and elsewhere, Web site HomeWorkingMom.com was getting lots of first-timer traffic. Publisher Angela Smith needed a low-cost method to ensure as many visitors as possible signed up for the site’s email newsletter so she could prompt them to visit again, and make purchases.

CAMPAIGN
Smith’s no stranger to the technical end of Web design, so she searched online until she found a free Java script to add a subscription invitation box that would pop-up when visitors left the site. She explains, “I was I was very concerned that it would annoy our visitors. I hate it myself when I go to a site and the first thing that happens is a pop-up jumps out at me and asks me to subscribe to some newsletter I know nothing about because I haven't even seen the web page yet. Worse still, are those sites that have a popup on every single page. So... I decided to do it a little differently.

We found that many visitors were going to the front page and then leaving, so we wanted to offer them a chance to subscribe before they left for good and we lost an opportunity to make a sale.

Our pop-up only happens when you leave our front page. It can be a link to another site or to someplace else on HomeWorkingMom.com but you get to see the front page and learn a little about us first.”

RESULTS
Prior to adding the box, HomeWorkingMom.com got about 30-50 new subscribers a day. Smith says, “I am not kidding. The VERY first day we added the pop-up, we got almost 300 subscribers. And it’s been averaging 250 a day since then. Although our popup is almost the same size as a web page, we have not had one complaint about it.” The site now has more than 30,000 email newsletter subscribers.