Getsitecontrol Review : Free Subscription Pop-Up For Wordpress And Blogger

by Aquif Shaikh

One of the biggest problems that most bloggers face is retaining their visitors. There are many plugins and tools like SumoMe, which help you to convert your visitors into subscribers along with several other features.In this article, I am going to review one such tool, GetSiteControl, which is a simple yet very effective replacement for SumoMe. So let us go ahead with the review.

GetSiteControl is a tiny web-based tool packed with all the visitor engagement widgets a blogger may need. It comes with free as well as premium plans. As against SumoMe, at GetSiteControl, most of the essential features are free. GetSiteControl is one of the first tools that I’ve used since I started my blogging career. It can be used with WordPress, Blogger, Joomla, Tumblr, Weebly, Shopify and all other Blogging platforms which allow you to add custom codes.

Register Free With GetSiteControl  GetSiteControl Widgets Though GetSiteControl is a Freemium tool, all its features are available to free users with certain restrictions. We will discuss the restriction part later in the customization section.

Registering with GetSiteControl gives your access to the following widgets.

1. Subscribe Widget  The Subscribe Widget is what I love the most about GetSiteControl. It has a beautiful Interface and is very easy to customize unlike most other Opt-In Forms of WordPress. It saves a list of subscribers on its servers, and you can download the same in excel format even with the free plan. The subscribe widget can also be integrated with Mailchimp, Aweber, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, Active Campaign and Mad Mimi.

2. Promo Widget  As the name suggests, the Promo Widget can be used as a Call To Action pop-up to take the customer to your sales page. As with the subscribe widget, it is very easy to design it. You have full control over the pop-up text, button text, and all the colors. A promotional pop-up can be created in less than a minute.

3. Follow Widget  This widget lets you add Social Follow link of all the major Social networking sites to your blog. The Social Networks include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest.

4. Share Widget  The Share Widget lets your visitors share your content across all the major social platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Whatsapp. It also allows sharing of the content through E-mail.

5. Contact Widget  The Contact Widget lets you add a simple Contact form anywhere on your website. You can easily add all the basic options needed along with radio buttons, checkboxes, and drop-down lists

6. Chat Widget  GetSiteControl also has a chat widget which you can use to integrate the chat feature within your blog for interacting directly with your visitors.

7. Survey Tool Widget  The Survey tool widget helps you to quickly create a Survey for your readers. With the free version, you can create a simple linear survey. However, if you are looking out for logical surveys with branching, you will have to upgrade to the Paid Version.

Features of GetSiteControl

Can be used with any blogging platforms which allows adding custom codes.

Use all the widgets at nine different locations.

Easy to customize the Text, Fonts, Colors, Buttons and Images for all the widgets.

Automatically match the color of your widget with your theme color.

Exit pop-ups for visitors leaving your website.

Show the widgets to visitors matching only specific criteria.

Integrate data from Subscribe and contact widget with all major email managers.

Enable Autoresponders and double opt-in for the subscribe widget.

Show a thank your message to your subscribers or divert them to a Welcome Page.

Download subscribers right from your GetSiteControl Dashboard.

Advanced A/B testing by creating multiple instances of the same widget to find which widget performs better.

Detailed statistics in Dashboard for each widget.

Ability to integrate Google Analytics to show data as events.

Customization Of Widgets  GetSiteControl is a Web-based tool. Hence all the customizations are handled from its website. To customize set-up or customize a widget, you just need to login to your GetSiteControl account and choose the widget to set-up or edit.

From the GetSiteControl Dashboard, you can enable A/B testing by creating multiple instances of the same widget to check which one performs better. This, however, is a paid feature not available to free users. 

GetSiteControl Dashboard  Since all the above widgets can be customized in a similar way, I am going to show you screenshots of the Subscribe Widget only.

Appearance  GetSiteControl offers you to display each widget at any of the 9 different locations it offers. This allows you to fit them on almost any website. You can also use the same widget at two different locations. GetSiteControl also allows you to customize the looks of the Widget as well as Button by changing the background color, text color, button color, and fonts.You may either select a color from the palette or use your theme colors as detected by GetSiteControl. The latter feature comes in really handy to match your widgets with your blog color.

Content  This section allows you to manage all the text of the widget. For Subscribe widget, it gives you two options, either collecting E-mail address only or collecting both name and Email Address.  For survey widget, this section will allow you to choose survey questions along with possible answers for the same.

GetSiteControl-Content

Behaviour  This option lets your select when to display the widget to your visitor. You can either chose to display the widget as soon as the web page is loaded or when a user scrolls certain percentage of the web page or after fixed time. You also have the option to show the widget as exit pop-up.

GetSiteControl-Behaviour  Apart from this, you can set the number of times a widget should be displayed to a particular visitor and also when to completely stop showing widget to the visitor.GetSiteControl also gives you the option to display the widget for a certain period which is useful in the case you are running a promotional campaign.

Targeting  As a free user, in this particular section, you can only select the pages or categories on which the widget should appear. However, Pro and Premium users have the option to either show or hide the widget from users matching specific criteria.

Integration  You can Integrate the data collected from GetSiteControl Contact and Subscribe widget with all the major email managers including Mailchimp, Aweber, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, Active Campaign and Mad Mimi. As a paid user, you can also activate Autoresponder from your GetSiteControl Dashboard

Installing GetSiteControl  It is very easy to Install GetSiteControl. If you are using blogger, you can quickly copy/paste the HTML code provided by GetSiteControl into the HTML Gadget of Blogger.

WordPress users can download the WordPress Plugin and install the same on your website like any other WordPress plugin. Post installation, no settings are required on your website to make it work.

Register Free With GetSiteControl        GetSiteControl WordPress Plugin

GetSiteControl Pricing  There are 3 Versions of GetSiteControl: Free, Pro, and Premium. For most people, the free version would be more than sufficient. Though, if you are looking for more features like A/B Testing and want to have more control over whom to show your widget, you should consider upgrading your plan.For the Pro version, you will have to shell out $9/month while the Premium version will cost you $19/month. For annual billing, you get 20% discount.

The only difference between the Pro and Premium version is that the pro version carries a small GetSiteControl branding. For most people including myself, it is not a factor big enough to shell out extra $10/ month. I am currently using the Pro Version. However, considering you get so many features with a single tool, even a premium version will turn out to be cheaper than buying subscriptions for each of these tools separately.

Pros And Cons Of GetSiteControl  GetSiteControl is a great tool for every blogger. However, like any other tool, it does have its pros and cons.

Pros Of GetSiteControl  All necessary widgets packed in a single lightweight tool; Ability to use the widget at 9 locations makes sure you can effectively use all the widgets; Since it is a web-based tool, codes are added for only tools you use, thereby avoiding bloat; Can be used with WordPress as well as Blogger; All the necessary features are free ; and Premium plans are very cheap compared to other plugins with less features.

Cons Of GetSiteControl No option for adding fixed widget to WordPress Sidebar or Individual posts.; No Special discount for multiple websites

Final Words  GetSiteControl is definitely the most feature rich tool that takes care of all your needs to Improve Visitor Engagement. Apart from the two cons mentioned, I do not find any reasons why anyone should not use GetSiteControl. And considering most of its features are free, it is definitely worth trying. However, for fully utilizing the features of this tool, you must at least Upgrade to the Plus version.

Have you installed GetSiteControl on your Blog? If not, do Install it and give us your feedback.

About Aquif Shaikh Aquif Shaikh is a Blogger from Baroda. He loves writing, traveling and sharing his knowledge and Ideas with the world. At Bloggerz Arena, he writes mostly about Making Money Online, Blogging, and SEO. http://www.bloggerzarena.com/getsitecontrol-review/