Substack introduced new website design tools on November 12. The quick editor opens from a publication’s homepage, and the full editor gives publishers separate controls for the homepage, welcome page and articles. Substack says design changes apply to the website, while its app keeps its own layout. If you publish more than one newsletter, the job after saving is to see whether readers can still find each edition and sign up for the one they intend to get.
Substack documents separate controls for its home, welcome and post pages. Someone coming in through a link to an older story might never see the homepage you just redesigned. The mobile preview can help catch a button that has been pushed out of view. To check which list a reader actually joins, follow the signup path and inspect the membership that results.
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Check the offer and the list membership separately
Consider a publication with a free daily briefing and an optional Sunday edition. The new homepage gives both editions equal space. The publisher wants every new reader to be able to join the daily briefing, with a separate choice for Sunday. Write down what each entrance offers, then compare it with the subscriber record.
Substack’s section settings control whether new subscribers are added to a particular section by default and whether current subscribers are copied to it. Showing a section’s posts on the homepage is a separate setting. A Sunday block can look prominent while Sunday still requires a separate signup. A default section subscription could also add new daily readers to Sunday even if the homepage does not mention the extra email.
The table is a worked test for this publication. It shows the publisher’s intended results. We did not run these signups on a live Substack account.
| Reader’s entrance | Test the publisher runs | Expected result |
|---|---|---|
| Signed-out homepage | Follow the daily briefing offer and inspect the lists joined | Daily is on. Sunday remains optional. |
| Sunday section link | Find and explicitly choose Sunday | The resulting membership matches the offer. |
| Old article shared by a reader | Open the subscribe link without going through Home | The form still describes the right newsletter. |
| Existing reader signed in | Open the page and check the account’s preferences | Existing subscriptions and access still match the account. |
Repeat the test after saving
Start with the current site. On a phone, open the homepage signed out, then open a previously shared article and the Sunday section independently. Record the button text, its destination and what the next screen asks the reader to join. Use a test address you control to confirm list membership, and leave it out of your ordinary performance reporting.
Repeat the same routes after saving and include an existing reader account with known preferences. If homepage signup works but the old article path fails, repair the old path before evaluating the redesign. If the page describes the offer clearly but the resulting membership differs, check the section defaults. Where the app brings in readers, check its path separately.
Keep the existing URLs in the test. A new homepage can work in a browser while a direct link from an older article or another newsletter leads readers somewhere they did not expect. Record the exact path that failed, so someone on the publishing team can reproduce it from a signed-out window.
Compare the same kind of traffic once signup works
Suppose you record 24 signups from 600 homepage visits by your existing audience, then eight signups from 400 visits after a link from a large outside publication. The two rates are 4% and 2%, but they describe different audiences. A change in the people arriving could produce that difference even if the redesign helped your regular readers.
Start with the same traffic source, device type and entrance page. Count confirmed signups over the same observation window and note whether any enrollment defaults also changed. The conversion rate comparison calculator does the arithmetic. The decision still depends on whether the groups had similar opportunities to join and whether the resulting membership matches the offer.