Module 2 — Lesson 7

Your website settings help you customize your beehiiv website.

You can personalize:

• The color scheme of your site

• The layout (default or newspaper-styled layout)

• The color themes on your landing page and content pages

• And the typography, button styles, and images

Why is this important? Well, it’s like when your parents stopped dressing you and you got full control over what you wanted to wear. Each personalization (colors, fonts, spacing, etc.) is like choosing a piece of clothing (red shirt, blue jeans, white sneakers, etc.)

In essence, you’re making your newsletter publication uniquely yours.

So let’s design your wardrobe…

Color Palette

First, head over to Settings → Website → General.

You’ll immediately see “Color Palette”. That’s where you can customize the color scheme of your publication.

Layouts

Next, you can choose the layout of your publication site. You can either choose ‘Default’ or ‘Newspaper’. Here’s an example of each:

There’s no right or wrong choice. It’s purely up to your preference (and you can always change it later).

Theme

Next, you can choose your theme. Each theme uses your color palette differently. Here are a few examples:

Light:

Dark:

Secondary:

Again, it’s purely up to you. For your content pages, it’s the same thing: light, dark, and secondary.

Typography

Then choose your fonts.

Many people skip over the fonts and they just use the default.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re serious about building your “world” for your readers to fall in love with — take an extra 15 minutes today to personalize your fonts.

The Typography section here will only change the Typography for your beehiiv website, not your newsletter. You can also customize your website Typography in the Design Lab. Any changes made in the Design Lab will override the changes made here.

(Notice how Jason Levin of Cyber Patterns uses a cyber font to match the world he’s building. Stands out, doesn’t it?)

Buttons & Forms

Lastly, you can adjust the button shape and image styles on your website. Most of the publications I’ve seen stick with “Round” and “Medium” — but feel free to play around with it until you’ve found one that matches your style.

Boy, that was a lot. You still with me? Good. Because now we’re going one step further to the “Advanced” section.

Advanced Settings

The first thing you’ll see under the Advanced section is “Subscribe Flow”.

This is the journey new subscribers will take after they submit their email. You have the option to:

• Include a survey form

• Recommend other publications

• Ask readers to upgrade to a paid subscription

• And feature your other publications

Why is this cool? Well, let’s break it down:

Survey forms

The best thing about email is you “own” your audience.

What do I mean?

Well, unlike social media, email isn’t heavily reliant on an algorithm, you can’t be shadow banned, and you know that you can reach your audience. So why wouldn’t you want to know more about the people on your email list?

Here are a few questions you can ask:

• What’s their name?

• What do they do?

• Where are they from?

• What problems are they facing?

• What are they interested in learning from you?

Your survey form is an opportunity to better understand who you’re serving.

Here’s an example from First Class Founders:

Recommendations

The recommendations feature is an effective tool to grow your audience. It allows your new subscribers to opt into other newsletter publications that you’ve recommended.

How does it help you grow your own newsletter? Well, you can “trade” newsletter recommendations with other newsletters your size.

It’s a 100% positive-sum game that benefits everyone involved.

It’s kinda like trading lunches with your friends in the school cafeteria. (I’ll trade you my carrots for your cookies, deal?)

Here’s an example from Growing Viral:

Paid Subscriptions

Next, you can ask new subscribers if they’d like to join your paid subscription.

This is great for the people who already know you have a premium newsletter and want to join immediately.

Here are a few examples:

Okay, before we move on I just want to stress how cool this feature is. beehiiv allows you to create your own upgrade page with:

1. Different tiers

2. And testimonials (which aren’t shown in this screenshot)

That’s HUGE!!! We aren’t just helping you grow your newsletter, we’re helping you build your business.

Onward.

Multiple publications

You also have the option to feature your other publications (if you have multiple).

I know this seems like a long subscriber journey, but remember, you don’t (and most likely won’t) need to have all of these toggled on. I’m just here to show you all the options you have available.

Home Page

Lastly, as a final destination, you can send your new subscribers to either an external link (like a product page) or to your publication home page.

Ole from the AI Solopreneur chooses to send new subscribers to a welcome page. It’s smart because many people don’t immediately check their inboxes for a welcome email — so Ole leverages their already-captured attention to deliver his welcome message. (Good job, Ole!)

Featured Posts

Featured posts are exactly what it sounds like… these are the posts that will be pinned at the top of your website (you can include up to three).

It goes without saying, choose the ones that have gotten the best feedback or the ones you’re most proud of.

Here’s an example of what your featured posts might look like from Growing Viral:

And one from Ponderer:

Recommended Reading

The recommended reading feature adds 3 of your other relevant newsletter editions at the bottom of each newsletter. This creates a “growth loop” that allows your readers to fall into the rabbit hole of your content.

The more content they read from you, the more they know, like, and trust you. This is crucial if you want to offer them different offers in the future.

(I can’t see why you wouldn’t want that, but you have the liberty to toggle it off if you choose to do so).

Here’s an example of the bottom of Psychology of Marketing’s newsletter edition on the beehiiv website:

Email Capture

At the end of the day, your newsletter archive serves two purposes:

1. Give people a taste of what kind of content you create

2. Turn visitors into subscribers

Email capture increases your conversion rate by optimizing your archive for conversions. If readers are not subscribed to your publication, they’ll be asked to subscribe through either a popup or a gated message. You have three options when it comes to email capture:

1. None

2. Popup

3. Gated

Here’re a few examples of each:

None: Just shows your content.

Popup: They can read a little bit before the popup appears.

This one’s gold 🤣

Gated: They can’t read your content until they subscribe.

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