Across different industries, average sign-up rates vary between around 1 and 5%. The Art Newspaper, a long-time client of ours, wanted a bigger uptake. They approached us with two objectives — firstly, to create a microsite that would notify readers on content around London Gallery Weekend 2021 and provide a sign-up opportunity for updates; and secondly, to present that content in a more compelling format than typically expected from standard news templates.
Our response was to build an elegant, evolving, and animated landing page that would motivate readers to subscribe to updates. Once signed up, they would be notified whenever anything new was published to the landing page, leading them into a weekend of art with varied offerings of content.
Content blocks built visual variety, animating as readers scrolled through the page. Blocks were created which would contain videos, interviews, critics’ choice content, and comments, each having a unique composition on screen, transitioning from one to another.
This framework provided the content-building-blocks needed for The Art Newspaper’s editorial team to plug in new material as and when it was produced.
The challenge on this project was creating a landing page that was captivating to use, but that didn’t pull focus away from its content, which is always the most important thing. We did this by breaking out of the formality of an existing system; creating a microsite that could be promoted separately and more widely.
During the three-week London Gallery Weekend campaign, the microsite saw almost 4,000 visits with a conversion rate of about 15% for sign-ups – around three times the industry average.
Aside from meeting their intended goal, the format for this project set a precedent for future possibilities, building on The Art Newspaper’s reputation for excellence in content delivery.