How To Make Good-Looking and Effective AWeber Opt-In Forms

Eric from Warriorforum PM’ed me with a really good question, and I thought it would make a good blog post about opt-in forms. This is what Eric wrote:

Hi, I just paid the site in your sig file a visit and was wondering how you got your AWeber form to appear like that? I have been trying to get mine to do the same thing but am not sure which settings to play with or what software to use. Any help would be great.

When I told Eric that I had three opt-in forms and asked which one that had his interest, he replied:

The footer opt in and the pop over. It looks like you use AWeber. How do you get the footer to work like that and how do you get your popover to make the site fade away and focus on the opt in form like that? I’d really like to use it on my site!

So, this is how to make the one-time pop-over opt-in form and the form in the footer.

Unblockable Footer AWeber Opt-In Form

Let’s take the footer first. It’s very easy to do, because you only have to install a plugin for it, and to add your data.

Inside your dashboard on your WordPress blog, go for Plugins, and then Add New.

Do a search for “AWeber Footer SlideUp“, and when you’ve found it, click on Install Now.

As soon as it’s installed, go to Settings, and find AWeber Footer.

You can add a header and an AWeber tracking-ID (both optional), and you must add the hidden AWeber form fields. So leave this tab open in your browser, and log in to AWeber on a new tab. If you don’t have an AWeber account yet, you can sign up for a free test drive below.

Good! Now, create a new web form, and call it “footer” or something like that. Just go with a simple inline form. It doesn’t really matter, what you choose, and you only have to make sure you have a field for the name, and one for the email. Choose your thank you page in step 2, save the form, and go to step 3.

Choose to install your web form yourself, and take the Raw HTML Version. You don’t need styling, so uncheck “Include beautiful form style“.

Copy all the codes to a text editor. You’ll only need a part of it.

If you want to track your opt-in rate, and I guess you would, find the code that goes something like that:

http://forms.aweber.com/form/displays.htm?id=4TwVHMxsrLzM (your id will be different).

Put this text into the Tracking Image URL file field in your AWeber Footer settings.

Then identify the HTML code that says

<div style=”display: none;”>

And copy that together with the following lines into the big field named Hidden AWeber Form fields

Click Save Changes, and you’re done!

Make a Pop-Over Form That Makes the Site Fade Away (Lightbox Web Form)

This opt-in form is made entirely in AWeber.

So, start out by creating a new form.

Before you do anything else, change the default setting in Form Type from In-Line to Lightbox.

Then choose your templates, colours, etc. But don’t finish yet.

When you’re done with the editing of design, width, text, etc., click on Advanced.

Within the advanced options, you can choose, how your form be displayed, after how long, and how often.

Save your web form, go to Step 2, choose landing pages, etc., save again, and then you’re ready to put the code online.

This should be it.

Did I leave anything out? Do you have questions that I haven’t answered in this blog post? Please use the comment field below. I’ll love to hear from you!