Usability of mailinglist signups

Our friends at Kalsey Consulting Group has an interesting article about customers' frustrations trying to subscribe to the digital version of magazines. I completely agree and have had similar experiences, so I'll just link and excerpt :-)

[...] It's much easier to remember to visit a site regularly if they send me an email newsletter or provide an RSS feed. But I could find neither. [...]

Subtext must be the name of their newsletter, but how was I supposed to know that? If you are going to have clever names for areas of your site, make sure your visitors know what's behind the name. Naming the link "Email Newsletter" and moving the name Subtext to the signup page would have made it easier for me to subscribe. How many potential subscribers have they lost because people couldn't find the link?[...]

More at: Opportunity lost

Regarding RSS feeds, I've found feeds for most of the sites I'd read regularly on the net. See my subscriptions here.

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