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Nice Design Candy – Hand Drawn Opt In Form

September 3, 2009 on 11:12 am | In Conversion Optimisation, Web Design | 23 Comments

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Jared Goralnick alerted me to the fancy new hand-drawn opt in form at www.AwayFind.com.

It may be replaced shortly, so I’ve reproduced a (static) version below (click to enlarge).

This is pretty cool from a design perspective — I wonder how hand-drawn forms compare with the plain ole popup?

We can get 15%+ conversion on a popup form from “cold” traffic. I’d be interested to see if going the extra mile with design can boost this number. Anyone have any data on that?

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23 Comments »

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it’s unusual that’s for sure , but you can’t use that kind of design for every website ^^

Comment by téléassistance à domicile — September 4, 2009 #
It makes an impact, although looks quite messy. I couldn’t imagine many clients agreeing with such an approach.It would be good to see the figures.

Comment by Martin Sanders — September 4, 2009 #
It is very creative and would look good as someones personal site but i think as a proffesional site or a site offering some kind of service it just looks too messy to be trusted. Interesting tho.

Comment by Craig — September 4, 2009 #
Thanks for profiling this, Will!

téléassistance à domicile: you’re right, I just hope it works for our audience. We’re trying to be personable and make it seem like a bunch of people who have a new version of their product that’s unfinished.

Martin Sanders: Pity that it looks messy to you, we were definitely going for something altogether different, but unprofessional wasn’t our goal–heck, we had to design it fairly meticulously electronically before we pulled out the Wacom pen. I’ll have to report back on those figures.

Thanks again, Will!

Comment by Jared Goralnick — September 5, 2009 #
I should add, it looks a lot less messy when you view it in context. If it fills the screen (as it does in the screenshot) then it’s particularly busy…but I’d be curious if you have the same reaction when it fills just part of the page on the actual site (awayfind.com)?

Comment by Jared Goralnick — September 5, 2009 #
Hi Jared — I agree. On the site itself, I think it looks awesome, with pleny of hand-drawn rollovers etc. I just screenshotted it because it seems likely the popup will go or be edited once the beta is over.

Comment by Will — September 6, 2009 #
That looks great. I used a much simpler but similar design on one of my sites, setting the border-style of textboxes to 0px except for border-bottom which was 1px solid. Combined with the right font and background it gives a nice effect.
I would be though that that style confuses a percentage of visitors wherby they simply don’t see the form, since they’re not used to such creative designs.

Comment by Jeremy — September 7, 2009 #
Gary Halbert said in a recording of a seminar that I saw that in his mind the perfect website for selling would be some one using a simple sales page to sell their car. Giving a description of the car, and details on how to contact the vendor to purchase.

I think his point was, the simpler and more personable, the better. I think this design hits some of those buttons. I’d actually love to know how to do this, or who designs these?

I suspect that your success of optin would widely vary from different industry and niche, but it captured my attention, and now my imagination!

Comment by Alex — September 9, 2009 #
It’s really very good and creates impact.

Comment by online backup — September 10, 2009 #
Tests have shown increased conversion rates for direct mail when a hand written post-it note was included. Perhaps the same would apply to a similar looking image on a web page.

Comment by 10th Degree — September 11, 2009 #
The handwritten style gives the idea of individuality to the website. I think it creates the emotion of a bond with the reader. Although depending on the products you are trying to sell, this could be useful but may also create an idea of unprofessionality.

Comment by deb — September 17, 2009 #
This definitely a unique form to use. I would agree with a few of the commenters though, that it can’t work for every site. If you are running a clean and professional looking site and this is your opt-in form, it looks a little childish and unprofessional. This would definitely be a judgment call to use depending on the concept and presentation of your current site.

Comment by Consumer Mailing Lists — September 19, 2009 #
This is a great example from a branding perspective. Would it work on all sites? No, but it fits in perfectly with a creative, eclectic site. Nice work.

Comment by Steve — September 22, 2009 #
What a great idea. I’m sure it’s not the first time someone thought of making a site like that but it’s the best try I’ve seen so far.

Comment by Apartments Bohinj — September 24, 2009 #
It’s definitely flashy, I’ll give you that. As far as conversions go, I would imagine(obviously) it depends on the target market.

The problem with something like that is it looks like i might not be compatible on all computers. Probably utilizes some heavy flash and whatnot. So, if you are marketing towards the older generation, it could be rather confusing and/or they might not even have the resources to view the form.

Given that, as long as it is immediately easy to understand and fill out though, i don’t really see it hurting conversion ratios.Remember, you want to create as little road blocks and difficulties between your customer and the product/service as possible.

Comment by Minneapolis Web Design — September 26, 2009 #
I find this design refreshing and a pleasant visual change from the standard rigidity that abounds. Hope it works for them. Reminds me of the commoncraft videos. Simplicity and humanity rather than hi tech.

Comment by Mudge — September 28, 2009 #
Not a bad design, but looks a bit messy. Maybe childish. It won’t fit in many sites, I believe. My experience tells me the user usually prefers simpler designs, as easy to use as possible.

Comment by Algernon — October 1, 2009 #
It great from a visual design perspective but if sites become more and more hand-generated it will have to force the search engines to develop algorithms to gather data from them as it will be hard for the indexing spiders to take “meaning” from the content. I think we are headed in that direction anyway as it becomes easier for people to create more outside of the box designs, especially with the new Apple and Microsoft tablets rumored to be hitting the markets. If web site designs become more hand drwan and written we could see a revolution in search technology; it would be foolish to rely on tags for much longer…new spidering techniques are long over due.

Comment by Basin Glass Co. — October 19, 2009 #
A lot of snail-mail marketers have been using this technique for quite a long time — that is, using “hand-drawn” fonts on the exterior of the envelope. Apparently, quite a significant amount of people open the junk mail if it looks like a human actually wrote the text on the envelope. However, I’m not so sure that would transfer on the internet, as there’s absolutely no expectation that someone would actually be writing the text on your screen… but with that said, I do like it, and it obviously differentiates a site from the competition…

Comment by Nate Kragness — October 19, 2009 #
This is a very unique design but is not really professional looking. Maybe it can be used depending on the site, if its a kids site then it might work. I really think it depends on the site.

Comment by Andrew@BloggingGuide — February 19, 2010 #
That’s not really a bad design. It looks cute, but then, it may not fit in on a business website. Or you can try to change the “messy” part or area of the form if you want to use it on your business. Just make sure that you only include the important message on your form.

Comment by Linda Clark — July 16, 2010 #
I think that layout is quite clever…but you can not use this on all sites. I think having an opt in on the right side is more effective than on the left side, but thats my personal opinion.

Comment by Psoriasis Free For Life — July 19, 2010 #
I agree that this design cannot be used with other websites. Though, this can be used but there are some similar designs that are simple and basic.

Comment by Anjo Sandler — July 28, 2010 #