Usability consultant Michael Gold sees a lot of wasted opportunities and botched execution for email-newsletter sign-ups. These are the top five problems he sees most frequently:

The Lonely Sign-up Box
The Big Dead Silence
Too Many Choices, Not Enough Organization
What's This Newsletter For?
It's Too Complicated
1. The Lonely Sign-up Box

"I see a lot of Web sites missing the opportunity right there at the beginning, because they failed to sell the benefit of subscribing to a particular newsletter.

"I see an awful lot of lonely, nondescript boxes on homepages that say 'subscribe to our newsletter' and that's it. There's no earthly reason why a user would be motivated to do it unless they are already very vested in the topic of the Web site and the execution of the Web site.

"It's basic, but so much is basic. The thing we tell people over and over, at least in a brief promo line where the person can fill in their email address, is to give a concrete, specific benefit that would drive a visitor to sign up.

"The kinds of language and words that people need to use are the same things they need to do in all of their promotional copy all over the Web site and links, to basically be clear, don't say anything vague, empty or generic. Be specific and concrete. Offer to solve a problem the user is looking to solve.

"Put yourself in the user's place and say, 'Why should I subscribe to this newsletter? What solution is this newsletter offering? And, is there any sign that this newsletter is specific and focused and in line with my needs?'

"I also think it's important to link to a page off the home page. Do a very impressive sales pitch specifically for what the newsletter is going to offer, and how, and what form it's going to be in. It's a good idea to give people a way to look at samples and back issues. It's not just a lonely, inscrutable box. There's a path and the motivation to take that first step.

2. The Big Dead Silence

"When I sign up for a newsletter, the very next thing that happens is nothing. A big kind of dead silence and big blackness. There's no sense of whether I have succeeded in subscribing to this newsletter, other than the automatic thing that tells me I did on the Web site. I want something to happen in my email inbox right away.

"It's a really good idea to send, right away, the latest version of whatever newsletter the user has subscribed to, even if it's two weeks or a month old and the next one is about to come out. I want to feel that I as the new subscriber have joined the club and already gotten some benefit and am happy that I signed up for this newsletter.

"It's also important to send that confirming email. It tells the subscriber, 'You are now signed up.' It's useful to sell the benefit of what's about to come into the user's email box. And you can do the usual housekeeping stuff. It all tells me I'm dealing with a professional organization, not one that's one step away from spam.

3. Too Many Choices, Not Enough Organization

"Back to the Web site and invitation. The other thing I see people do that I think is counterproductive is to overwhelm users with way too many choices.

"I see a lot of sites that will invite people to subscribe to a newsletter and offer a link, and you end up on a page with 25 different newsletters.

"Like all information on a Web site, anything that offers too much choice and overloads the user is not a good idea. People should think about narrowing down the choices they offer in different newsletters.
"If they really need to have that many offerings, they really should group them into categories that make sense. Organize the information.

"In addition to subject areas of interest, a good basic kind of strategy is to carve users up into profiles based on demographics or how people use the site.

4. What's This Newsletter For?

"It's important, when asking people to sign up for a newsletter, to make it clear whether this is a newsletter primarily to notify the user about new material on the Web site and not much more, where the content is not in the newsletter. Is it a bulletin? Or is it a newsletter full of information and content itself, standing apart from the Web site?

"Both are very valuable, but not all users are interested in everything."

5. It's Too Complicated

"We had a client that had a "sign up for newsletters" page, which was a very generic description of 11 special-interest newsletters within a general topic. On the home page, you just enter your email address. There was no description of any one of the 11 newsletters, no way to say which one you're interested in. You couldn't exercise a choice until you enter your email address. Then you see the choices. That's a real blown opportunity.

"I had to leave the home page and click to the page that I thought would tell me all the wonderful offerings and choices and allow me to subscribe to them. Instead, I had to click another time to get to the sign-up page, if I could even figure that one out. Just having a box asking for an email address without telling the user what you're going to do with it is a great way not to get subscriptions for the newsletter."

Michael Gold is a principal in the consulting firm of West Gold Editorial. The company helps launch and renovate publications and Web sites.