One of the very first things new customers want to do is setup their own website address. After all, who wants to use a generic web address, right? Even though we give you a website address that looks like http://sitename.startagroupbuy.com, it doesn’t look too professional.

In this video, we show you how easy it is to setup your daily deal website with your very own custom domain name.

Lately, we’ve been getting several questions about what it takes to start a daily deal website. We’ve put together this short video to show you step-by-step on how to get signed-up and started. This video will be the first of many video guides that will walk you through going from an idea to a full-blown website in just a few days.

This morning, I was working with site owner and successful entrepreneur Ryan at Hunterdonbucks.com on our new Welcome Page feature. Ryan owns and operates the newly launched venture specializing in big savings on food and entertainment in the Hunterdon and Bucks county area. The question came up “Do we force users to signup, or should we make it optional.” In other words, should we let visitors browse without first handing over their email address?

The Problem

When enabled, the Welcome Page essentially forces the visitor to make a choice. You either give me your email address or get out. It sounds mean and it might sound like we should make this optional. However, if you want to make this optional, then turn the Welcome Page off all together. When “off”, visitors are implicitly given the option to sign-up anyways. They can just click the “sign-up” link.

However, when the Welcome Page is “on” the visitor is forced to make a decision. And you want them to make the decision to sign-up.

The Solution

First, get rid of the mentality that “If I force them they will leave.” Instead, start thinking “I’m going to make them an offer they can’t refuse.” Every page on your website should be optimized to sell, and your Welcome Page is absolutely no exception.

A well-crafted Welcome Page will convert more visitors into subscribers than simply showing them today’s deal. I’m not preaching anything new. The ultimate goal of any successful website is to get that almighty email address from every single visitor. A strong email list means you are always in front of your audience. Having an audience and something to sell is a powerful combination.

The Reason

If you send me today’s deal pushing Mexican food and I don’t like Mexican food, I’m going to leave and never come back. However, if you send me an invitation to join your “Food Lovers” site and if I accept, even if I don’t like today’s deal, you can always email me tomorrows Italian deal. You can either market to me forever, or you can market to me this one time. It’s your choice.

How to do it right

I’m not going to go into detail on how to do it right. That is for a future post. But here are a couple tips to follow:

1. Don’t bore them – No one likes to read. Get to the point on WHY I should sign-up
2. Be clear – Use a concise headline. What can you say in 6 seconds or less that I’ll understand.
3. Remove the clutter – Keep graphics to a minimum. Remove links and excess text. Don’t distract me from giving you my email.
4. Keep everything above the fold – This is the part of your page that I don’t have to scroll to see. Make sure everything is visible.

Conclusion

If you’re going to do a Welcome Page do it right. Turning this on and giving visitors a way to by pass it defeats the whole purpose. Instead, focus on what you are going to say to them as soon as they hit that page. Say something so irresistible that I just have to sign-up. Then keep me posted on the latest updates.

One of the biggest challenges daily deal websites face is building their email list. Most of you guys are already doing the marketing to send visitors to your websites. But if you aren’t capturing that visitors email address, you are wasting your hard-earned marketing dollars.

How to waste marketing dollars

I’ll explain using an over-simplistic example.  Let’s say you run an ad that costs $1000, which brings 1000 new visitors to your website. That breaks down to $1 per visitor. They browse for a few minutes and leave. You can safely assume that they’ll never come back, because  most people simply don’t remember to come back.  Paying $1 per lead isn’t the problem. It’s the fact that you are paying $1 dollar for 1 visit.

How to maximize your marketing dollars

What if you could turn that same $1 into infinite visits? That’s exactly what a Welcome Page can do. A well-designed Welcome Page prompts the visitor to exchange his or her email address for all of your benefits. Once you secure their email address, you can send them reminders to come back and visit. The beauty of all this is that each subsequent visit cost you absolutely nothing.

Breaking down the Welcome Page

Breaking down the Welcome Page

The Welcome Page, also know as a splash page, is the first thing a visitor sees when they land on your website. The Welcome Page‘s goal is to capture the visitors email address by asking them to join your website.  There are a few things to keep in mind when designing your Welcome Page.

1. Keep it simple – Don’t make me read!
2. Be clear about your benefit – Why should I give you my email?
3. Be clear about your privacy policy – Do you promise not to spam me?

Keep it simple

The last thing you want to do is scare visitors off by making them read through paragraphs of text. Visitors don’t like to read and you have to keep that in mind. Refrain from trying to explain all the details about your website.  Don’t overload the page with graphics. Again, your single objective is to get that email. So keep it clean and simple.

Be clear about your benefits

At the same time, you absolutely must state why they should sign-up. So keep it short and concise.  Here are some sample sentences to get you started:

• Sign-up and never miss a deal again!
• Sign-up for real time deal alerts!
• Enter your email address:
• Want more deals delivered to you?

Be clear about your privacy policy

Another big NO-NO is violating the visitors privacy.  This means that you don’t sell or share any of their info to any 3rd party services. People hate this so just don’t do it. Not only will they unsubscribe, but you’ll more than likely piss them off which opens up another can of worms. In a few words, promise that you’ll never violate their privacy and provide a link to your complete privacy policy.

Conclusion: Measure, Rinse, and Repeat

Once you’ve designed your Welcome Page, you will want to measure how effective it is at capturing email addresses. Rarely do you get this right on the first shot. When I say measure, I mean you should evaluate whether or not the page was effective in capturing emails. When I say rinse, I mean tweak your message to see if you get a better response. When I say repeat, I mean keep repeating this process until your list is overflowing with emails.

Don’t let visitors leave your site without trading their email for your benefits. It costs money to acquire that lead. It costs nothing to continue marketing to them once you get that email.

To setup your own Welcome Page click here.

Your StartAGroupBuy website can be integrated with Mail Chimp, which provides the following benefits:

• Visitors that signup on your website will automatically be added to your MailChimp list.
• You can use Mail Chimp to broadcast your deals to your contacts.
• Reduce the chance that your deals get sent to spam.

To set this up, follow these simple instructions:

1. Login as the Site Admin
2. Navigate to Settings > Site Settings > Email Marketing > Email Subscriber List
3. Check the box Enable this feature
4. Select MailChimp from the list of options
5. Follow the on-screen instructions
6. Click Save

If you haven’t already read our post about the benefits of a Welcome Page, you can check it out here. In this post I’m going to show you how easy it is to create your own Welcome Page on your StartAGroupBuy website.

Step 1. Enable an Email Marketing Provider

In order to use a Welcome Page, you must first have an Email Marketing List setup. When a visitor enters their email address into the Welcome Page’s form, it will be added to your email list automatically. Click on an Email Marketing List provider below to set yours up.

Design your Welcome Page

Go back to your StartAGroupBuy website and login as the adminstrator. Follow these steps to design your Welcome Page:

1. Navigate to Settings > Welcome Page
2. Check the box Enable Welcome Page Feature
3. Design your header under Welcome Page Header HTML
4. Design your footer under Welcome Page Footer HTML

How your Welcome Page appears to visitors

Testing your Welcome Page

The easiest way to test your Welcome Page is to use another browser window. If you use FireFox to manage your website, then use Internet Explorer to test. The reason is because the Welcome Page only appears once. As soon as you enter your email address, the browser will no longer display the Welcome Page.

1. Open your browser window
2. Clear your cookies and cache
3. Visit your website
4. Double check that it looks correct
5. Submit your email address
6. Double check that the email was added to your Email Subscriber List
7. If you need to re-test you will need to repeat steps 2-6

Your StartAGroupBuy website can be integrated with Constant Contact, which provides the following benefits:

1. Visitors that signup on your website will automatically be added to your Constant Contact list.
2. You can use Constant Contact to broadcast your deals to your contacts.
3. Reduce the chance that your deals get sent to spam.

To setup Constant Contact, follow these instructions:

1. Login as the Site Admin
2. Navigate to Settings > Site Settings > Email Marketing > Email Subscriber List
3. Check the box Enable this feature
4. Select Constant Contact from the list of options
5. Enter your Username and Password
6. Select the List you want to add visitors to
7. Select the Custom Field that will be used to store the visitors Location
8. Click Save

So you just started your daily deal website in 60 seconds. Now it’s time to design it with just a few more clicks.

Designing your StartAGroupBuy website is extremely easy.  It requires absolutely no coding experience, and all you need is a tiny bit of creativity.  In this tutorial, we’ll show you how easy it is to customize the look and feel of your website in just five easy steps.

Step 1. Login with your admin account

As with most administrative actions, you’ll need to login using your admin account. This is the account you signed up with. Once you are logged in you’ll have access to the DIY Design Changer. Click on the icon as seen below:

Click icon to open the DIY Design Changer

2. Select your website background color

The first thing we’ll change is the background color. This is the main color of your website and appears behind all your content. Simply click on a color to preview your website’s new color. If you don’t see your color, click on the Custom Color link and enter your hexadecimal color code.

Select your website's background color

3. Upload your logo

Next, click Upload a Logo to upload your logo. We recommend a logo that is about 300 pixels wide.  If you are not sure how wide your logo is, right click your logo and view the Details of the image. We also recommend that you save your logo as a .PNG file with a transparent background. That way, as you change your website’s background color in step 2, your logo will blend in perfectly.

If you want to upload a new logo, simply upload a new logo to overwrite the old one.

Upload a logo that is 300 pixels wide

4. Select a background pattern

In this step, you’ll add a pattern to your background. A combination of your own color and one of our patterns is one way to do it.  You also have the option of using one of our default background images. For a really unique look, you can also upload your own background image by clicking Upload Your Own.

Choose a background pattern and style.

5. Select your font

The last step is to select your font and font color. The font types available are all safe.  However, make sure you pick a color that is easy to read. It might sound like common sense, but you’d be surprised at how many people pick font colors that are barely legible against their background. Stick with a dark color since most of the content boxes are white. When you are done click the Save button.

Pick your font style and color

Done.

Whoa! You just started your daily deal website in just 60 seconds, then designed it with just a few more minutes. We told you it was easy. Keep in mind that you can update your design at any time.  Keep things fresh by updating your background to reflect the spirit of Christmas or any other holiday. The possibilities are endless so have fun with it!

StartAGroupBuy can update your Facebook status for you every time you post a deal. Once you enable this feature, a status update about your deal is posted to your wall along with a link for your fans to check out your deal.

Now your fans will see your deal instantly on their walls every time you post a new deal!

Step 1: Enable Facebook Connect

If you have not already enabled Facebook Connect on your site, please read How to Setup Facebook Connect on your Site.

Step 2: Give StartAGroupBuy Permission to access your Facebook Page

1. Log in as your site administrator
2. Go to Settings -> Site Settings -> Social Networking
3. Scroll down to the Facebook Automatic Status Updates section
4. Click the blue Facebook Connect button
5. Log in to your Facebook account (IMPORTANT: log in as the Facebook account you used to create your Company’s page or profile)

StartAGroupBuy should now have permission to post to your page. Next, you must choose the page/profile you want to post status updates to.

Step 3: Pick the Facebook Page/Profile to Post Updates to

1. Find the ID of the page/profile you’d like to post updates to from the address bar in your browser:
   Example #1

   

   Example #2

   

   Example 3

   

   

2. In the Facebook Automatic Status Updates section, find the Profile ID field.
3. Paste the ID from #1 into the Profile ID field
4. Click Save.

You may use a custom domain for your site, such as example.com, instead of the default address you get when you sign up, like example.startagroupbuy.com.

Step 1: Create an ‘A’ Record with your Domain Host

Step 2: Contact StartAGroupBuy Support after Creating an ‘A’ Record

Simply contact us at support@startagroupbuy.com when you’re ready and tell us:

1. What your custom domain is (i.e. example.com).
2. The current URL for your site (i.e. example.startagroupbuy.com)