2 Quick Ways To Easily Modify Your Opt-In Forms (Without Being a Code Junkie)

13 | Posted In Technical by David

I know one of the big constraints many of you are having with your opt-in forms on your blog is your lack of coding skills.

So, what happens is you end up using the default opt-in forms you’re provided. Either that, or you use one of the pre-designed opt-in forms provided by your email manager. The problem is… most of them are downright corny. Even Aweber (my personal favorite email solution) offers a wide variety of pre-designed opt-in forms that I wouldn’t personally be caught dead using. ;-)

So, without the HTML skills, how do you customize your opt-in forms? Here are some ideas…

Pay Somebody To Do It

This is, of course, the easiest way to go. It also goes without saying that it’ll cost you a little bit of money. How much money is completely dependent on who you hire.

Now, this isn’t likely anything new to many of you, but I’ll mention it anyway…

Fiverr. Pay somebody $5 to do things they’re willing to do. So, you can use the site to find somebody who is willing to spice up your opt-in form per your specs – for five bucks. You can either search the site for people who offer something like that (there are a LOT of people advertising HTML/CSS help), or you can use the “Request Gigs” thing in the right sidebar to directly ask for what you want.

Screen shot 2011 04 06 at 10 23 39 AM

Think you can afford five bucks? Of course you can. :)

Do It Yourself – The Easier Way

Kpz scr 01

Another option is to use a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) web design program. With these programs, you can create what you want and it’ll make the HTML for you. With these programs, you can get as fancy as you wish. Obviously, to really trick it out professionally, it is still best to know some HTML on your own, but there is a lot you can do without knowing much (if any) code.

If you don’t yet have a WYSIWYG editor set up on your computer, check out KompoZer, NetOBjects Fusion Essentials, or Amaya. Those are all free. Of course, there are also the paid solutions like Dreamweaver. These programs (like any software) will still come with a learning curve, but the idea is that they operate on a push-button approach (like a word processor).

Now, the question, then, is… how do you make that work with the supplied HTML given by your email list provider?

First of all, when you get your opt-in form HTML, make sure you get the unformatted version. With Aweber, it is the default form (with no styling). Get the “Raw HTML” code, and be sure to UNCHECK the “Include beautiful form styles” box. What you’ll get, then, is just the raw, unformatted HTML code for the form itself. That’s all you need because you’re going to make your own styling in your editor.

Copy that HTML into your editor (in HTML view), then go back to WYSIWYG view and format the look and feel as you see fit.

Here’s a video I put together kinda showing what I’m talking about:

To include the finished code on your site, you can either manually input it into your sidebar.php file of your theme (the geeky way), or you can use the text widget in WordPress and copy/paste the HTML into that widget.

Now, please realize something… this can take a little time to get it right. Especially if techie stuff is usually foreign territory for you. Just don’t get frustrated and be patient.

OK, hope that helps. :)

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  • http://www.raisinganamazingdaughter.com Kari

    Helped a ton!!! Thanks….

  • http://Mazzastick.com Justin

    Dude, your totally reading my mind. I am using the corny default newsletter sign-up form. I was actually beginning a Google search on how to add a custom newsletter sign-up form to your blog.

    I was wondering how you can do it, now I know, Thanks…

  • http://ferodynamics.com PJ Brunet

    What’s a good conversion ratio for pageviews:email signups?

    I’m getting around 20 emails signed up per day (not using Aweber) and I’m not sure it’s worth tweaking the design to get even more emails because I’m concerned changing my opt-in form for the wrong reason (just to get more signups) could distort what I originally set out to accomplish–I figure people can detect our intent and this influences their decision to sign up.

    As much as I trust your recommendation to use Aweber, seems to me those tracking pixels kill your deliverability. I know email programs set off big yellow “WARNING: SPAM ALERT” messages after detecting tracking pixels. The way I see it, nobody delivers email better than Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft, because they are the gatekeepers when it comes to email. So I would rather pay them to deliver my email, because they’re the ones who decide what gets through and what doesn’t. Aweber may have some insider knowledge but the reality is they are outsiders knocking on the big GYM gates.

    It’s hard for you to say, “Aweber is better than Gmail” because your people are signing up with Aweber. You can’t really A/B test Aweber vs. Gmail because we know you got through your double opt-in subscribers’ spam filters. Does that make sense? David, I know you ran your own email list software before you chose Aweber, and you said it was a pain and you love Aweber now. But if Gmail allows me to send 2000 emails at a time for $50/year with better deliverability, I don’t see why I should spend 10x that much Aweber, even if the metrics are really cool. Because the results are what matter, not open rates or cool charts.

  • http://blog.thetaskwrangler.com Jean Bauhaus

    I’m not trying to spam your blog, David, but this seems like a good time to mention that I’m currently running a $25 special on just this sort of work. And the difference between me and somebody on Fiverr is that I’m a seasoned pro and I’ll stick with it until everything works properly and everybody’s happy with my work.

    Of course, no hard feelings if you decide this crosses the spam line and delete it.

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    Nah, its OK. :-) If anybody wants to check you out, they can. :-)

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    You’re confusing me with your comment. Are you saying Gmail offers mass email marketing ability? Because I’ve never heard of that one.

    Gmail / Yahoo / Hotmail are all consumer-level web-based email services…. they are NOT email marketing platforms. So, it is a completely different animal than something like Aweber. So, I don’t get your comparison…. seems like you’re comparing two very dissimilar things.

    BTW, the tracking image isn’t a problem. Aweber has spam scoring within the system. Now, most web-based email systems (like Gmail) will block the tracking image by default (that’s normal), but that’s very different than flagging it for SPAM.

    As for your opt-in form… it is all about split testing. :)

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    You’re welcome. :)

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    You bet.

  • http://twitter.com/bradgerlach Brad Gerlach

    I have to agree with David here the tracking pixel has nothing to do as being listed as spam. In fact, professional CRM solutions like Salesforce use these trackings too. Multi-million dollar companies use Saleforce and wouldn’t risk anything to be caught by spam filters.

    I have used my own self hosted email program before and I have also trialed MailChimp, iContact and others before settling on aWeber. aWeber actually performs the best.

    As for Gmail, it isn’t the same as one of these types of programs. I found this while searching about your comment on Google’s Gmail Forum, “You can create a Google Apps account, if you have your own domain. The premiere edition allows sending to 2000 external addresses from each account, for a cost of $50 per user per year.”

    However, this sound to me that you are sending a bulk email without personalization. Also, Google could shut you down easily since they don’t have the record of the opt-in. As I see it, you are more at risk using this method since aWeber will automatically remove someone that presses the Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail Spam Button – even if they double opt-in. To me, you are risking your domain be listed as spam via your method.

    Also, how do you know how well your email marketing is doing if you don’t have any reports telling you. I can see and estimated open rate and compare the headlines that returned a high open and click rate to those that don’t. An effective marketing campaign needs feedback. Going at it with blinders is suicide.

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    Ah, so that’s what he’s talking about? Google Apps?

    Yeah, not even in the same ballpark of something like Aweber. If you try to market from an Apps account, you’ll wish you hadn’t.

  • http://www.edgeofdavid.com/blog David (Edge of David)

    Funny, I have been looking for customization for a 720×100-130 banner optin box I’m working for the blog part of my site. This was right on time.

    Havent decided if I should use Aweber or Mail Chimp, but I like that video you made b/c now I have a better understanding of how it works on the backend so I know what the hell I’m talking about with designers.

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  • http://gurucrusher.com Coty Schwabe

    It’s funny, I was just struggling with this one of my niche blogs…

    But in my case, I simply created a sweet looking top image in GIMP, made the background color a simple color, and added a little modification to the optin area to make it look stylish.

    You can of course, also use something like Popup Domination which does a huge chunk of the work for you.