The Google Analytics Conversion Funnel Survival Guide
Make Sure You Do These 4 Things Before You Build A Product
Get Your FAQs Straight: Convert Your Curious Customers
Your FAQ page represents one of the most valuable moments in a conversion funnel. Nowhere else does a visitor so deliberately indicate that they want to know the details of your product or service.
Are you guilty of neglecting this important page? A page, that when given the proper attention, can actually boost your conversions and more importantly your:
SALES!
Well if you are guilty of neglecting this aspect, then here is the short answer:
You can improve your FAQ pages by…
Streamlining navigation through questions Prioritizing clarity over precision in language Connecting the answers in FAQs to other steps in the sales funnel so that no visitor goes uncapturedBut as we all know, the devil is in the details. So let’s go over how you can improve your FAQ pages for more sales and conversions, while making your customers happy in the process!
What is the Goal of Your Landing Page?
How To Design Compelling Call to Action Buttons
8 Ways to Instantly Improve Landing Page Quality
Search Engine Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: The Showdown
A Beginner’s Guide to Successful Email Marketing
10 Best Practices to Optimize the Language of Your Calls-to-Action
10 Little Known Factors that Affect Your Conversion Rate
101 Conversion Tips To Help Improve Your Website
Sign in with Google to get early access to our new free Google Analytics appColor has a powerful psychological influence on the human brain. Learn how others have harnessed it and how you can do the same.
Click on the infographic below to view a larger version:
View an enlarged version of this infographic » Click here to download a .pdf version of this infographic.Want to display this infographic on your site?
++ Click Image to Enlarge ++Source: How Colors Affect Conversions – InfographicFacts and Stats To Tweet:
- 92.6% of people say the visual dimension is the #1 influencing factor affecting their purchase decision (over taste, smell, etc.). »tweet«
- Studies suggest that people make a subconscious judgment about a product within 90 seconds of initial viewing. Up to 90% of that assessment is based on color alone. »tweet«
- One study found that magazine readers recognize full-color ads 26% more often than black-and-white ads. »tweet«
- Heinz changed the color of their signature ketchup from red to green and sold over 10 million bottles in the first 7 months, resulting in $23 million in sales. »tweet«
Sources
- http://loyaltysquare.com/impact_of_color.php
- http://www.zeroabove.co.uk/news/the-colour-of-success-whats-your-flavour.html
- http://www.colormatters.com/fun-color-facts/factoids-part-2
- Hermie, P., Lanckriet, T., Lansloot, K. and Peeters, S. Stop/watch: everything on the impact of advertisements in magazines. Medialogue; 2005.
- http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/20566/The-Button-Color-A-B-Test-Red-Beats-Green.aspx
- http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/how-ript-apparel-increased-their-sales-by-6-3-ab-testing-case-study/
- http://www.colorcom.com/research/why-color-matters
- http://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/preferences.html
- Adapted from “Building Accessible Websites”. Copyright © Joe Clark, 2002. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
The Business of Software Conference sounds like a phenomenal event. I haven't attended it, but I did recently run across one of the sessions from their 2012 conference, a talk by Gail Goodman, the CEO of Constant Contact:For those who don't know, Constant Contact is a publicly traded online marketing company with over 500,000 customers who rely on it for things like email marketing. While many people probably think of it as a recent success, it was actually founded in 1995, and went public in 2007, which means its nearing its 20th anniversary.
Gail's talk is fantastic, and well worth watching/reading in full detail. But in my limited space, what I'd like to do is to focus on the one number that explains the company's success: 45
The average Constant Contact customer stays with the company for 45 months. At their $39/month price point, this means that a customer generates about $1,800 in lifetime revenue, allowing Constant Contact to make money at a CPA (cost-per-acquisition) of $450.
This is the key to success in the SMB market. Small businesses don't pay a lot of money; $39/month is probably on the high end. And small businesses are hard to market to. Constant Contact found that even after they dominated the organic search results for email marketing, they didn't get enough signups simply because small businesses weren't bothering to even search for email marketing.
Goodman credits the company's success to--get this--in person seminars through Chambers of Commerce across the country.
This kind of high-touch marketing is expensive, hence the $450 CPA. So the math could only possible work if Constant Contact could hang on to those customers long enough to make a profit.
If you're a SaaS startup targeting the SMB market, you'd better either have an awesome freemium offering, or you'd better have a average customer lifetime of around 45 months.
The Google Analytics Conversion Funnel Survival Guide
Make Sure You Do These 4 Things Before You Build A Product
The SaaS Business Model is a fully-integrated architecture where all aspects of the business – product, support, revenue model, and marketing – are tightly-coupled.
Deviation from that model will affect growth, and most deviation occurs as a rift between marketing and product.
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker
What Drucker says is even more powerful when you consider your product to be part of your marketing.
And in SaaS, your marketing / promotion / customer acquisition methods must extend into the product in order to get the product to “sell itself.”
In fact, you need to think this way whether you have a $10/mo product where the economic buyer is also the end user… or if you have a product that is $500 per user per month, is a complex sale with multiple buyer types, and your average deal size is 1,000 users.
Getting your product to “sell itself” will allow you to scale your sales process efficiently no matter what that sales process looks like!
But, to get your product to sell itself, you have to spend as much time, energy, resources, and/or money on the Customer Acquisition, Retention, and Viral Expansion processes as you do on the core functionality of your product.
Blasphemy to many…. the gospel to the successful!
That said, here are 5 things (of many, but we’ll start here) that you should do to get your app to “sell itself.”
1. Attract the Right Audience
I recently published three posts on promoting your SaaS product and generating relevant traffic… you should read them and watch the video presentation on traffic generation:
It’s pretty simple, really… nothing else you do matters (conversion rate optimization, Free Trial optimization, better sales people, etc.) if you fail to attract the right audience in the first place.
Make sure you know who you need to be targeting (if you’re going to say “but everyone is a potential customer” save it for the bankruptcy judge) and use this to formulate your advertising and promotion campaigns, your overall look and feel, and even the way your product is designed.
Whether it is in the keywords you target with your SEO, the sites you write guest-posts for, or the sales copy you write, if you’re not speaking to the audience who will likely become your customer, then you are wasting your time, energy, effort, resources… and money.
But assuming you attract the right audience, you need to make sure you…
2. Properly Manage Expectations
This couldn’t be simpler but so many SaaS providers fail miserably at this.
They work diligently to get people to sign-up for Free but fail to let them know that they’re signing up for a limited version, a time-limited Trial, or that at some point there’s a premium version they have to or should pay for later.
If you have a non-refundable setup fee… say that. If you require a credit card to start your trial (but bury that in step 3…), say “valid credit card required” up front.
Many times the mis-management of expectations is reflective of the founder or executive team behind the SaaS company trying to avoid selling, hoping that once the user signs-up and experiences the awesomeness of the product, they’ll just trip over themselves to pay for the product (newsflash: they won’t, at least not after the early adopters).
Other times it’s an unscrupulous owner or executive team that’s trying to trick someone into signing-up for free, not telling them that they’ll have to pay later, and hoping that get’s ‘em to become a customer.
Most of the time it isn’t either of those but that the SaaS provider simply doesn’t understand psychology or look at things from the Point of View (POV) of the customer… if you think something is free to use forever and then get hit with a pay wall or an upgrade/nag screen or some artificial feature/usage ceiling – and this is incongruent with expectations – you wouldn’t react favorably by pulling out your credit card… you’d leave, right?
So why would you expect any different from the customers who pay your salary, pay your bills, and are going to make you rich? You shouldn’t… and not understanding these things will hurt your customers, hurt your ability to pay those bills, and keep you from getting rich!
Oh.. and what about sales people calling right after your prospect signs-up for a trial or downloads a white paper? Look at this from their POV.
If you don’t manage expectations that someone is going to call, and they go through what appears to be a self-service process to try your product for 30 days, your prospect will likely NOT enjoy receiving that call the next day.
Now, if you’re going to ask for their phone number because you’re going to call… tell ‘em that Steve, their Account Success Rep, is going to call tomorrow around 10AM.
Be bold but be honest.
Okay, assuming you properly manage expectations, then you need to…
3. Remove Barriers to Sign-up
People like to think that the more hoops someone has to jump through to sign-up for your product, the more likely they are to become a paying customer, right? If you say yes, save it for the bankruptcy… oh, I already said that.
NO! Supposed “qualification barriers”, artificial friction, even requiring Credit Cards to sign-up for a Free Trial do nothing but keep potential customers out.
The evidence – the data – clearly shows that reducing the number of fields on your sign-up form can have a dramatic effect on getting people in the door.
Here are some examples of companies that have reduced the FIRST STEP to just a couple of data points… often just a single one!
Please note… looking at pretty pictures of sign-up forms without knowing whether or not 1) this is is the failing part of an a/b or multivariate test or 2) seeing the actual metrics derived from this form can be hazardous to the health of your business. In other words, don’t copy others; observe their behavior and test it for yourself.
Freshbooks continues to refine their sign-up form and are down to just two data points as I write this – email and company name. I assume “company name” is there as a reminder that this is really for businesses (even small ones) and, of course, they use that to personalize the next screen, set the subdomain, etc.:
LessNeglect knows their audience and even lets people sign-up for their beta via API:
Woopra understands that they can get you started with just your URL because they know the psychological principle that Dr. Robert Cialdini, in his book Influence, calls the rule of Commitment & Consistency. They know that rule will lead to a large number of folks continuing the sign-up process on the next screen since they’ve taken an action and are more likely to take a second action.
That same principal is behind this Billion Dollar sign-up form from Yammer:
Someday I’ll talk about how Yammer built a $1B+ business (Microsoft acquired them in 2012 for $1.2B) with only a single data point required to get started.
In the meantime, consider that fact the next time you think talking about your sign-up form is just for the “web people” and isn’t relevant to building a real business!
Okay, so I showed you some good examples of companies lowering the barrier to get started… what about bad ones? They’re everywhere!
There are tons of bad examples… you can find them pretty much anywhere.
You’ll recognize them instantly… they have long initial sign-up forms, they ask for information the vendor will not actually use, etc. You know what I’m talking about… in fact, you probably have one.
One rule of thumb I use is this… don’t mark fields as required… If a field is not required, remove it from the initial sign-up form. You can ask for it later in the engagement process.
In fact, only ask for data points up front that are truly required (do you have to call ‘em to get started? No? Why ask for the phone number up front, then?
Remember, you can build a customer profile over time (the beauty of a SaaS and a data-driven engagement process).
Whatever you do, my advice is to spend your time and energy getting people into your app and using the service…
…not looking for ways to keep people out or from getting engaged with the service as fast as possible.
In fact, your app should actively…
4. Drive Engagement & Investment
This is the opposite of letting people kick the tires and fend for themselves; or the “strategy” employed by far too many SaaS providers.
Engagement actually starts before they sign-up by getting them excited to use your SaaS product.
I know, I know… marketing fluff, right?
Wrong… that’s the attitude of failure!
Marketing is the most important thing to your success… but marketing isn’t advertising, it isn’t a fancy slogan or neat graphics… it’s really everything that you put out from your business to your customers – including your product!
So getting them excited up front is just one part of the puzzle… everything that happens from there is super important, too.
In most cases, as soon as the potential customer – who is now excited to try out the app – hits the sign-up form… the momentum slows (see “remove barriers to sign-up” above).
And it just gets worse from there.
They finally get into your product after a long sign-up form, a trip to their inbox to validate their email address, and another login form… and they’re met with something that looks like these (all branding removed to protect the guilty):
or this…
or this…
Your first in-app experience shouldn’t cause your potential customer or your new customer (if they bought without trying first) to go “I’m in… so, what do I do now?”
Here’s a good one from MailJet…
Or this one from PadiAct…
I know… those are Wizard-y, huh? You don’t like Wizards? So? Are you the customer? Will it help the customer? Get out of your own way, then, and do what needs to be done.
Now, that said, you have to know your audience… some products need to get out of the way (seemingly) and let the user just poke around… consider products like Twilio that appeal to developers… they “get out of your way” but in a way that still produces a lot of engagement and investment.
On the other hand, a product that is targeting non-technical SMBs… you should probably hold their hand the entire way.
I know that a natural reaction to hearing what I just said is “but if we use a ‘wizard’ the user won’t see all the cool features we offer’ to which I would remind you to read the SaaS rule of Engagement: Confused Minds don’t Buy… they Bounce!
Whatever you do, you must engineer and design the process to take them from sign-up to first in-app experience to engaged user to invested user to paying customer – the entire process, not just part of it – if you want to succeed at scale.
Engagement (something leveraging Common Conversion Activities (CCAs) can help you actually measure and improve upon) is the goal, whether in a Free Trial, for a new paid customer, or a Freemium user.
Some people call the engagement phase “on-boarding,” but I think that term takes the customer out of the equation and focuses on functionally getting them started.
Engagement requires on-boarding, but on-boarding does not require (or guarantee) engagement.
Let me be 100% clear… it is up to you to drive engagement using whatever channels make sense.
This means using email (sorry kids, this is still super-relevant even today LOL), in-app messaging, account reps, or whatever makes sense to get them into (or back into) the app and using it.
And of course, once you have them Engaged, the goal is to drive Investment in your service; investment in the form of time, effort, energy, resources, data, etc… not necessarily money, especially if we’re talking about Free Trials or the free-side of Freemium… Getting them Invested makes conversion to your premium offering a no-brainer.
And from their POV, converting should be a no-brainer when you…
5. Make it Easy to Buy
I can’t tell you how often in a Free Trial it is easier to submit a feature request than it is to become a paying customer!
It’s as if the SaaS provider doesn’t actually want my money.
That speaks VOLUMES about the mindset of the people behind the SaaS product, right?
Remember, unlike the old days of software, the sales process (or funnel) isn’t decoupled from the app… with SaaS, they are one in the same.
Your app needs to actively sell itself to the customer as much as the marketing site, your sales people, etc.
Conversion must be engineered into the product and you have to be willing to ask for the sale. And don’t forget… you don’t have to wait until the end of a Free Trial to ask for the sale.
In fact you should ask for the sale as soon as the prospective customer (not trialist, not user, but PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMER) completes their CCAs.
And of course, you have to sell how your customers buy so consider that when making it “easy to buy” within the app!
Bonus: Make it Easy to Share
Viral Expansion Loops – both internal within an organization/account and external with distributors, trading partners, colleagues, friends, family, social networks, etc. – are critical to getting a product to “sell itself.”
I’ll cover this in an upcoming post on “Orchestrated Virality” but for now just know that virality doesn’t happen by accident or organically, and when it appears that way – at least for commercial products – it is a highly engineered process, not magic, created by the team behind the curtain.
I’m a consultant… I can help you turn your product into a self-replicating, Customer-Acquisition machine… contact me today and let’s talk about how to make that happen.
- Lincoln
(972) 200-9317
This post is written by Kevin Wang, Chief Instructor at Tealeaf Academy. Tealeaf Academy is an online school for developers, and offers intensive, project based online bootcamps on web development. If you think this post is useful, you should check them out!
At Tealeaf Academy, creating a “Study Together, Progress Together” experience for our students is at core of our way of teaching. One of our core tools is the discussion board where students ask questions, share ideas, collaborate on homework assignments, and teachers quickly jump in to help students get unstuck on problems. One of our recent priorities was to reduce friction in discussion board usage and encourage more discussions with a complementary email notification and a “reply-to email to post on discussion board” workflow. Once we implemented the below code using the Mailgun Routes API, activity on our discussion board increased three fold, and questions are now typically getting answered within an hour, sometimes even minutes, and students are able to move on the next set of tasks a lot quicker. Here’s how we did it:
Our workflow would go as the following:
- When a post (most likely, a question) is created, all course participants are notified by email notification
- Course participants can reply to the email notifications directly from their email inbox, without having to sign into the course
- That reply will be posted on the online discussion board, and are also sent to other course participants, to keep the conversation going.
Why we choose Mailgun
The key piece of this workflow is to receive and parse inbound email messages. We looked around for several email service providers, and in the end picked Mailgun because:
- It is very developer friendly - We are developers, and Mailgun speaks to us. The APIs expose a lot of low level options that allows tweaking. We like the Routes in particular - It’s a nice layer of abstraction that makes integration with apps very easy. (see how we use it below)
- It is the most feature complete service we have found - we can use Mailgun for transactional emails, campaigns as well as email lists - it’s nice to have just one service provider to handle everything we need.
- The price is reasonable and the upgrading path to dedicated IP and custom DKIM is nice, even we do not need it yet.
- The support is top notch. There is a live chat that I can talk to their developers directly on issues and it has been very useful for us to get issues resolved.
Setting up the email infrastructure
- The first step was to create a new domain on Mailgun. In our case, it’s messaging.gotealeaf.com which we use for sending and receiving emails.
- Next, we created a MailgunGateway as our wrapper for Mailgun’s API. This wrapper takes care of all our interactions with Mailgun through our account. Here we use Mailgun’s send_batch_messages API to send HTML emails. It allows us to send a message to multiple receivers with a single API call. We keep our API key as environment variables on the server for extra security. There is also a simple delivery filter such that no emails are sent in the development environment; On staging, all emails are sent to Chris (my co-founder) and myself, so we can test out things without fearing to spam our users; Only on the production environment emails are sent to real users.
class MailgunGateway def send_batch_message(options={}) RestClient.post(messaging_api_end_point, from: default_sender, to: delivery_filter(options[:to]), subject: options[:subject], html: options[:body], :"h:Reply-To" => options[:reply_to], :"recipient-variables" => options[:recipient_variables] ) if Rails.env.staging? || Rails.env.production? end end private def default_sender "Tealeaf Academy " end def api_key @api_key ||= ENV['mailgun_api_key'] end def messaging_api_end_point @messaging_api_end_piont ||= "https://api:#{api_key}@api.mailgun.net/v2/messaging.gotealeaf.com/messages" end def delivery_filter(emails) Rails.env.production? ? emails : "kevin@gotealeaf.com, chris@gotealeaf.com" end endAdd tracking token for posts to identify the “thread” that comments should be collated to
Every post carries a tracking token, which will be included in the “Reply-To” header in the email to collate inbound email replies to the corresponding thread. This method makes it very easy to post the correct reply to the correct thread.
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base include Tokenable belongs_to :user belongs_to :course has_many :comments, order: "created_at ASC", dependent: :destroy ... end module Tokenable extend ActiveSupport::Concern included do after_create do self.token = Digest::MD5.hexdigest(Time.now.to_s.split(//).sort_by {rand}.join).first(8) self.save end end end class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :user belongs_to :post, touch: true delegate :token, to: :post def commenter_name user.name end endSend email notifications for new post or comment
Once a post or comment is created, we send an email notification to all course participants. We are sending emails synchronously for now, but as we have more users, we’ll probably want to offload this to a background job.
class Courses::PostsController < AuthenticatedController expose(:course) expose(:posts) { course.posts } expose(:post) def create post.user = current_user post.save CourseNotifier.new(course).notify_course_participants_on_new_discussion(post) redirect_to course_home_path(course) end ... end class Courses::Posts::CommentsController < AuthenticatedController expose(:course) expose(:posts) { course.posts } expose(:post) expose(:comments) { post.comments } expose(:comment) def create comment.user = current_user comment.save CourseNotifier.new(course).notify_course_participants_on_new_discussion(comment) redirect_to course_home_path(course) end ... endThe CourseNotifier is the class where we put our application specific logic on notifications. Note that MailgunGateway is injected in as the default gateway - this is from when we used to have multiple email service providers for campaigning, lists and transactional emails. It is less of a need now that we consolidated all email delivery needs to Mailgun!
class CourseNotifier attr_reader :course, :gateway def initialize(course, gateway=MailgunGateway.new) @course = course @gateway = gateway end def notify_course_participants_on_new_discussion(discussion) gateway.send_batch_message( to: notification_recipients(discussion).map(&:email).join(", "), subject: notification_subject(discussion), body: discussion_notification_text(discussion), reply_to: reply_to_address(discussion), recipient_variables: recipient_variables( notification_recipients(discussion) ) ) end ... private def notification_recipients(discussion) course.participants.reject {|participant| participant.email == discussion.user.email } end def notification_subject(discussion) discussion.is_a?(Post) ? "[Tealeaf Academy] #{discussion.user.name} Posted a New Message on the Discussion Board" : "[Tealeaf Academy] #{discussion.user.name} Replied to a Message on the Discussion Board" end def reply_to_address(discussion) "reply+#{discussion.token}@messaging.gotealeaf.com" end def recipient_variables(recipients) vars = recipients.map do |recipient| "\"#{recipient.email}\": {\"name\":\"#{recipient.name}\"}" end "{#{vars.join(', ')}}" end def discussion_notification_text(discussion) <<-EMAIL <html><body> Hi %recipient.name%, <p>#{discussion.user.name} says on the course dicussion board:</p> "#{discussion.text}" <br/> <p>Reply to this email directly or <a href="http://www.gotealeaf.com/courses/#{course.slug}/home">view it on the discussion board</a></p> </body></html> EMAIL end endThe reply_to_address is where we insert the post token into the “Reply-To” header. The content of the emails are quite simple so we just put them here in the class. If we had a more elaborate email style, we would have used template rendering to handle it. With Mailgun’s send_batch_message API, we can call the API just once to send to multiple recipients, and the recipient_variables method is where we customize email messages for each receiver to include their names to add a personal touch.
Handling inbounding messages in the application
Heading over to Mailgun, under “Routes” in the Control Panel, we created a route as the following:
- Filter Expression: match_recipient(“reply\+(.*)@messaging.gotealeaf.com”)
- Action: forward(“http://www.gotealeaf.com/api/incoming_messages/?post_token=\1”)
When a user replies to an email, they reply it to an email address such as “reply+fj42gq4v@messaging.gotealeaf.com”, and this route will forward the email to a web hook that we expose to handle incoming messages.
class Api::IncomingMessagesController < ApplicationController skip_before_filter :verify_authenticity_token def create user = User.where(email: params['sender']).first post = Post.where(token: params['post_token']).first text = params["stripped-text"] if post && user && text.present? comment = post.comments.create(user: user, text: text) CourseNotifier.new(post.course).notify_course_participants_on_new_discussion(comment) end head(200) end endHere, we use the sender’s email to find the author, and use the post token to find the post that this reply should be collated under. Mailgun gives us the very useful stripped text which strips away the original message part to only contain the actual reply! In the end, we return a 200 header to tell Mailgun that this interaction is successful, otherwise Mailgun will think our server is down and will faithfully keep trying to call our webhook.
The result from implementing this workflow is impressive - activity on our discussion board increased three fold, and questions are now typically getting answered within an hour, sometimes even minutes, students are able to move on the next set of tasks a lot quicker and we are very happy how this turned out.
You wouldn’t bake a chocolate soufflé for your mother-in-law’s birthday party without referring to a recipe, so why would you craft a headline that way? (Image source)Ever notice those “conversion copywriting” techniques you read about for ugly, hard-to-stomach long-form sales pages?
When you implement those techniques, you end up with lengthy, nearly impossible to believe headlines, like this one:
That’s great for niche info products. Great for diet pills and exercise DVDs. Great for miracle cures.
But it’s BAD for the products and services most of us are actually selling – like productivity apps, games, SaaS, consulting services, ebooks, quilts, clothes, hardware… the list goes on.
Here’s the thing: the uber-long headline above isn’t necessarily wrong for short copy. It’s filled with some great messages. The kinds of messages that could impact your conversion rate positively, like listing highly desirable outcomes (e.g., “boosting your profits”) and showing how you remove a key pain (i.e., no time for intensive marketing efforts).
So what if we were to take the best of long-form sales page copywriting… and tweak it for our 2.0 or short-copy landing pages?
We could then develop a series of headline formulas that any startup or small business could use to convert as well as long-form converts – without gettin’ ugly or lookin’ sketchy.
Sound like something you could stomach? Then let’s do it.
What Needs to Be in a Headline?
I think we can all agree that different headlines work for different page and user goals. That said, there are some basic guidelines that you should follow in your home page or landing page headlines:
- Be specific
- Be succinct
- Focus on 1 thing that your prospects believe to be highly desirable (that you provide)
- Quickly reflect the expectations of the visitor
If there’s something unique about you that you know people want, that may be the best basis for your headline. For UserTesting.com, their unique value proposition is easy testing with a clear outcome:
If the average person arriving on your page doesn’t really know much about you – say, they’re coming from PPC ads – you should probably use your brand name in the headline and say exactly what you do.
If you can promise a great result of some kind – especially a memorable one – include it, and use the word “promise” (because explicit is good). See headline formulas B and C below for examples.
Best of all, if there is a pain you clearly eliminate or an objection that visitors may have, address it clearly. Specifically. With proof. Simply adding the phrase “without ____” to the end of your headline could move it from good to great. Unbounce does this on the home page, calling out the lack of need for IT:
As I discussed in my last Unbounce post, the best headline copy will come from the words your customers use. When you survey your customers to find out about their pains, needs and expectations, you will be better positioned than the average person to write a high-converting headline.
Before We Talk Formulas, Let’s Talk Formatting
You won’t want to believe me on some of these formatting tips, but you should. Trust me here. I wouldn’t lead you astray – I get nothing out of screwing you over, but I get to be a hero if I give you the guidance that increases your clicks and conversions, right? Right.
- Center your headlines
- Make them big and dark, dark grey (or, when on a dark background, white)
- Use “Title Case”, aka Capitalize Each Word
- Don’t use a period at the end as such visual cues present mental stopping points for your visitors
- Break up lengthy headlines with “eye rest” punctuation marks, such as ellipses and em-dashes
- Consider putting quotation marks around the headline as this can draw the eye
- Support each headline with a meaningful subhead written in sentence case, aka Capitalize the first word only
When you treat your headlines like so, something amazing will happen: your visitors will actually NOTICE them. Cool, right? After all, headlines are made to be noticed. Your visitors want to see them. Your visitors will actually read them (yay!).
So don’t hide them in the shadows or cram them into tiny spaces alongside big, meaningless stock photos. Be bold! Let your headlines shine!
Without Further Ado, Headline Formulas You Can Use or Test Today
Once you have the right meat for your headline and the ideal formatting, a headline formula comes in extremely handy and keeps you from the frustration of trying to think up a headline without any guidance.
Check these easy 2.0-style headline formulas out:
Headline Formula A: All Gain, No Pain
Get the [Rarely Seen But Relevant Adjective] Power of [What Your Product Does] Without [Pain]
For use when: Your prospects have a clear pain they’d love you to eliminate
Example: CrazyEgg Home Page
Headline Formula B: The Promise-Based SEO Headline
[Adjective] & [Adjective] [What You Are / SEO Keyword Phrase] That Will [Highly Desirable Promise of Results]
For use when: SEO is a major consideration for you, and you offer a highly desirable outcome
Example: AppDesignVault Home Page
Headline Formula C: The Explicit Promise
We Promise You This: [Highly Desirable Promise of Results]
For use when: Your visitors will believe a promise from you (e.g., driving from email)
Example: Laura Roeder Sales Page
Headline Formula D: The Comparison
[Known Competitor] [Does This Undesirable or Unimpressive Thing], and
[Your Brand Name] [Does This Highly Desirable or Impressive Thing]For use when: You know your visitors are using or considering a key competitor
Example: KISSmetrics Home Page
Headline Formula E: The Value Prop
The Only [SEO Keyword Phrase] Made Exclusively to [Highly Desirable Outcome or Benefit]
For use when: You offer something that’s both unique to you and highly desirable to your visitors
Example: Copy Hackers Home Page
How Would These Headlines Work for a Sample Company?
Let’s see how these headline formulas might work for, say, Unbounce:
- Get the Conversion-Boosting Power of Optimized Landing Pages… Without IT
- Modern, Sexy Landing Page Templates That Will Bring in More Sales
- We Promise You More Conversions When You Use Our Optimized Landing Pages
- Your IT Team Has No Bandwidth for Marketing Initiatives, But Unbounce Gets You Set Up in Minutes with Great-Looking Landing Pages
- The Only Landing Page Templates Made Exclusively to Boost Conversions
Not every one of ‘em works… but a few sure do, don’t they?
Now, you may find yourself saying, “Joanna, this is all fine and good… but why should I even use headline formulas?”
Good question… but let me ask you this: Would you bake a chocolate soufflé for your mother-in-law’s birthday party without referring to a recipe? Would you just throw a bunch of eggs and blocks of chocolate into a pan and chuck it in the oven?
No. Because there’s too much riding on getting it right.
Just like there’s too much riding on your headline to simply ‘wing it’.
It is not your job – whether you’re a business owner, marketer or copywriter – to work from scratch every single time you write copy. In fact, the more you write copy, the more you’ll see that the best copy doesn’t come from some magical creative writing lab in your mind. So why force yourself to write from scratch when you’ve got at least 5 “recipes” at your disposal?
Your Turn
I’m repeating the headline formulas below. Select at least 3 of them, and complete them for your own product. For best results, pull copy from customer surveys, as I showed in my last Unbounce post. Then, why not run a test? Landing page headline tests are extremely easy to run in most tools, and the results can give you the clear insights you can’t get from, say, a button-color test.
- Get the [Rarely Seen Adjective] Power of [What Your Product Does] Without [Pain]
- [Adjective] & [Adjective] [What You Are / SEO Keyword Phrase] That Will [Highly Desirable Promise of Results]
- We Promise You This: [Highly Desirable Promise of Results]
- [Known Competitor] [Does This Undesirable or Unimpressive Thing], and [Your Brand Name] [Does This Highly Desirable or Impressive Thing]
- The Only [SEO Keyword Phrase] Made Exclusively to [Highly Desirable Outcome or Benefit]
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We’ve survived the annihilation predicted by the Mayans and made it into 2013. Ain’t that absolutely awesome? What isn’t so great is all those testing mistakes you’ve almost certainly made through 2012, mistakes (or bad practices) that were holding back your A/B testing and Conversion Rate Optimization efforts.
For your benefit, here’s a quick recap of the sub-optimal practices you need to let go of, to truly achieve the gains promised by A/B testing.
1) Not calculating your sample size before starting the test
Many marketing folks still don’t calculate the number of visitors needed to run a test before starting the test. As pointed out by Evan Miller in his post “How Not to Run an A/B Test“, you need to decide the required sample size before the test. This ensures that you don’t get bitten by the euphoria (or depression) bug when you see your first statistically significant result and save yourself some bad decision-making.
To illustrate my point, most successful A/B test reports look like the one below.
Click image to see larger version
Notice the fluctuation in the beginning when there wasn’t enough data. It’s quiet likely that on Nov 28, statistical significance was reported but that would lead to an incorrect decision being made.
To avoid this situation, head on over to our Split Testing Duration Calculator, plug-in your values and run your test for the duration suggested by the tool.
2) You listen to your boss or the HiPPO more than the data
Data has truly killed the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) Star. While age and experience in a particular function do have their own merit, A/B testing is about letting the customer do the talking, without actually talking. So as a business, you need to develop a culture of testing which values real analytics over personal opinion brought on from years of experience.
Experience should guide “the correct way to do it” and not “the exact way to do it”.
3) Disregarding test results and going by what “looks good”
To most of our readers, this might be baffling. After all, why test if you don’t intend to push it live? Unfortunately, it’s a situation we observe far too often. A test is run, a winning variation is found but someone who holds some sway within the organization says it “doesn’t look good”. Lo and behold, the original, losing version of the page stays.
Please leave the money on the table, cos that variation just don’t look good.
Image credit: emdot @ Flicker4) Always expecting large results from small changes
One of the most commonly heard pieces of advice about A/B testing is to go for the small wins, or make small changes that get you big wins. This image we created aptly explains the problem with overusing that bit of advice.
Overly relying on “simple tweaks” instead of undertaking major design changes means you’ll just reach what is called the local maximum. That is, you can tweak all you want but the current design has reached its maximum conversion potential. However, you could achieve much larger increases in conversion rate if you tried a completely new design.
5) Sticking to plain vanilla A/B testing
You are missing out on a lot if you’re not running targeted, personalized tests. When you engage with a visitor, you’re essentially starting a conversation and there’s a different conversation happening with different customer segments. For example, the Smashing Magazine article “The Ultimate Guide to A/B Testing” written by Paras sends a lot of traffic our way. To continue the conversation, we ran a targeted test on the homepage that changed the headline and the sub-headline to closer match where they came from.
The result? For the goal being “Visitor signs up for Trial Account”, the targeted messaging is currently out-performing Control by 98.42% with 96% chance to beat original.
6) Not having a well defined Conversion Rate Optimization strategy
We see that a lot of A/B tests are done on hunches and without any planning. Someone is using part of a website and realizes that a particular UI element could do with some tweaking so he/she comes up with a hypothesis, a goal and either thinks up a variation or asks others in the office for their inputs. Based on this, one or two variations are quickly created by the in-house designer and the test goes live.
While this approach may provide small increases in conversion, you’re not truly harnessing the power or CRO. A great Optimization Strategy (PDF) starts with gathering extensive feedback from all stakeholders, pouring those insights into appropriate steps in your sales funnel and testing each step methodically.
7) Not celebrating the way a true win should be celebrated
At the time of a major A/B testing win, have you felt your body, your soul, in fact your entire existence urge you to get up and do the Victory Dance? Well I don’t know about you, but I feel like doing this dance every time one of Visual Website Optimizer tests produces a winner.
Here’s wishing you a great 2013 and loads of Victory Dances!
Follow the very interesting HackerNews discussion here.
Marketing Associate at Wingify. Have been involved with web development for about 8 years now and actively look to help online businesses discover the value of Conversion Rate Optimization.
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Facebook is one of the best at turning new users into active users. With 1/6th of the world a Facebook user, Facebook has set a high bar for activation and its team is rapidly spreading the gospel of growth (here are some notes on Facebook’s overall growth strategy from the Growth Hacker’s Conference).
Every good activation strategy optimizes the new user experience (“NUX”) to reach the “magic moment” as fast as possible. The “magic moment” is a point in the NUX when a user surpasses a metric and is far more likely to be retained. This metric varies from product to product. For Facebook, the magic moment is seven friends in ten days for a new user.
In the following paragraphs, I will break out Facebook’s on-boarding and activation strategy to see how they motivate new users to reach the magic moment as fast as possible.
The signup Facebook landing page is straight forward and contains a naked long signup form. Most inbound marketers and product gurus would probably revolt if this was their landing page. The form feels long. There is no compelling call-to-action and the design is uninspiring.
Despite the landing page’s rough appearance, Facebook has an advantage that other startups do not have: a household name. Most likely, the majority of Facebook’s new users are converting through a user-to-user action and not through the above landing page. Any visitor that stumbles onto this landing page has already been primed by Facebook’s billion active user base.
The focus of this landing page is the login form via top-right of the page. When a visitor lands on this page, the cursor moves to the email submission field in the login form. This cursor movement denotes that this landing page is designed to convert users not visitors to a action (to log in not to signup).
If a visitor does convert into a new user from this landing page, they will enter a robust on-boarding flow. After a visitor fills out the naked form, the next ask in the funnel is to search your address book to find email addresses that matches a Facebook user’s email address.
In a clever UX move, Facebook passes the email address from the previous step and places the address in the relevant email hosting service. For example, I signed up with GMail thus, Facebook placed my email in the GMail address book search. All it takes is one click to search. The call-to-action to search uses the phrase “Find Friends” which is mentally in-line with the purpose of the page.
As a tidbit, take a look at the use of the phrase “Save and Continue” as the progress button. In the far right, the normal Facebook avatar appears as if you were an active user. This word choice and the avatar sends a sense of ownership in the NUX.
If the search fails, an infographic appears that explains how to manually upload a file of emails.
Since the GMail account I was using to register did not have any contacts, Facebook did not pull in a list of suggested friends in the following step of the flow. If I did have an address book full of contacts, Facebook would immediately suggest possible friends to ask to be their friend.
Rather than displaying “No friends on Facebook” (because that just sounds lame and lonely), Facebook moves on to the next step to recommend friends based upon more targeted data.
Based upon a new user’s networks and general demographic information, Facebook suggests possible friends in the following flow. In example below, I submitted Princeton as my school network and received the following friend results.
As opposed to shooting from the hip with the cheap data from the landing page, Facebook gathers more information from a new user who does not have an address book to produce relevant suggestions. The most pressing goal in activation is to form connections on Facebook as fast as possible. Irrelavant or zero friend suggestions sends negative feedback to a new user. A new user will probably think in their mind, “None of my friends are on here. Why should I be on here then?”.
After adding a profile photo (which is very important for retention), the on-boarding process places a new user in Facebook’s core product with some growth tweaks. Facebook alters the experience to drive home to the magic moment: seven friends in ten days.
The step-by-step guide proceeding the on-boarding flow walks a new user through the privacy settings on posting and adding friends. On the top right bar next to the user’s avatar, a “Find Friends” call-to-action is added. The inherently distracting chat screen and mini-facebook are minimized.
By selecting “Home”, Facebook’s ad bar is removed and replaced with a “People You May Know” suggestion box. The UI has a larger than normal call-to-action and user photo when compared to a retained Facebook user’s friend suggestions UI. It is more important for a new user to add friends now, rather than later.
Facebook also uses feature call outs to educate a new user. These features also have a retention focus. For example, Facebook called out a Princeton Facebook group and auto opted me into the group. I identified Princeton as my university in on-boarding. I guess Facebook has not strayed far away from the importance of college connections in activation.
The “Find Friends” button in the top bar links to an in-product email address book search that is similar to the one found in the on-boarding process.
Facebook expands the number of channels a new user can search for existing friend on Facebook, even including Skype as an option to search. In this flow, the right side bar is removed and replaced with motivational text to reduce distractions.
When a new user returns to Facebook, the newsfeed is re-structured with friend suggestions, probably until that magic number is reached. At this point in the screenshot below, “Becca” (my new user) is several weeks old with three friends in non-concentric networks. Notice the additional motivational text of using my existing friend network to form connections. Facebook is using social recollection to encourage you to connect by narrowing the possibilities.
Timeline also includes a “People You May Know” box at the top.
Despite the number of scenarios, the on-boarding and activation flow have a single focus: get you to form connections on Facebook as fast as possible. Once those connections are formed on Facebook, Facebook uses email notifications and social exhaust from your friend network to pull you back into the service. Their strategy is thoughtful and very detailed. This is what it takes to get to a billion users in less than a decade.
Optimization was the name of the game for the Obama Digital team. We optimized just about everything from web pages to emails. Overall we executed about 500 a/b tests on our web pages in a 20 month period which increased donation conversions by 49% and sign up conversions by 161%. As you might imagine this yielded some fascinating findings on how user behavior is influenced by variables like design, copy, usability, imagery and page speed.
What we did on the optimization team was some of the most exciting work I've ever done. I still remember the incredible traffic surge we got the day the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare. We had a queue of about 5 ready-to-go a/b tests that would normally take a couple days to get through, yet we finished them in just a couple hours. We had never expected a traffic surge like that. We quickly huddled behind Manik Rathee—who happened to be the frontend engineer implementing experiments that day—and thought up new tests on the fly. We had enough traffic to get results on each test within minutes. Soon our colleagues from other teams gathered around us to see what the excitement was about. It was captivating to say the least.
How we a/b tested
Optimization was a science for us. We started off with a hypothesis and then we came up with several tests to prove (or disprove) it. For example, our hypothesis might be "less copy is better" and to prove that we would chose 5 areas of the site to remove copy. We used several tools to measure the affect. Optimizely for a/b tests, Google Analytics for general data gathering and the Blue State Digital tools to enhance or gut check our data. Sticking to a hypothesis was beneficial because it allowed us to retain focus on our goals. Of course not every a/b test followed this strategy, but we kept with it for the most part.
Design and Interaction
By June of 2012 our donate pages had undergone nearly 14 months of optimization. The low hanging fruit had been picked and it was difficult for variations to beat the control. We were working with a page that was engaging and had a low error rate, but it still looked like a long form. To solve that problem we started work on a variation that made the form look easier to complete. Our plan was to separate the field groups into four smaller steps so that users did not feel overwhelmed by the length of the form. Essentially the idea was to get users to the top of the mountain by showing them a small incline rather than a steep slope. We called this project Sequential because it turned our donate form into a sequenced process.
We had no idea if it would work. It was a gamble because it took a decent amount of development time, but we put our best foot forward. We placed the fields into four groups: amount, personal information, billing information and occupation/employer. We considered a number of factors to determine the order of the field groups, but the most persuasive was error rates. For months we had been tracking validation errors which occured when users submitted an invalid value in a form field (e.g. nothing in a required field or an improperly formatted email address). The occupation/employer fields generated the most errors because users would leave them blank even though they were required—people don't like giving out information they think is unecessary. The billing field group produced the second most errors because it is hard for users to enter a 15-16 digit credit card correctly.
Using this information we determined the field group order: 1. Donation amount, 2. Personal information, 3. Billing information and 4. occupation/employer. By putting the easier field groups first we not only lowered the engagement barrier (all you had to do was click a donation amount button to get started vs. typing your first name), but also to produce a sense of investment before users reached the difficult parts of the form.
Our donate pages were responsive so we enabled the Sequential functionality on screen widths greater than 1023px to keep the mobile donation process as simple as possible. We used CSS animations to switch between field groups because they are visually smoother and much more performant than their JavaScript counterparts. Browsers that did not support CSS animations were given a JavaScript fallback. For a better experience with validation errors we used JavaScript to validate the fields in each field group when users clicked the next button. This made it easier for users to find and correct errors because they were looking at only a few form fields rather than all 16 at the same time. This also had the latent effect of lowering requests to our servers since we did not process the donation until all form fields were valid.
We were very happy with the finished product because we felt like we had achieved our goal to make the donation form simpler, but how did it fare in a/b testing?
By turning the long donation form into 4 smaller steps we increased the conversion rate by more than 5%. Turns out you can get more users to the top of the mountain if you show them a gradual incline instead of a steep slope.
We began a/b testing the first iteration of Sequential on July 26th, 2012 and it replaced our standard donation form on August 7th. After vigorous optimization we ended up with what would almost be the final version of Sequential on August 7th. On November 1st we were delighted to see that our friends at the Romney campaign liked it so much.
Copy
It probably comes as no surprise that copy affects conversions. Lots of people are familiar with classic copy tests like this one. Like 37 Signals we had lots of success with altering the copy on our web pages. About halfway through the campaign we figured out that of all variables that affect user behavior (design, usability, imagery, etc.), copy has the highest ROI. This is because copy adjustments are just about the easiest change to make on a web page, yet they can produce some of the biggest gains.
In late 2011 we launched a product called Quick Donate which made donating extremely fast and easy. Users who had Quick Donate could donate with a single click through email or on the web and even through SMS. The program was cutting edge because nobody had engineered donations through email before and at the time the Federal Election Commission did not allow political campaigns to use cell phone carrier short codes to raise money through text messages (the FEC later reversed this decision after Quick Donate launched). The programs was so successful that the stats behind it are kind of overwhelming. By the end of the campaign more 1.5 million Quick Donate users donated $115 million. Quick Donate users donated four times as often and gave three times as much money. The program received a lot of optimization simply because of its success.
There were two ways to sign up for Quick Donate. First, you could create a BarackObama.com account and then, in your account settings, save your billing information. The second way we designed to be much easier. After submitting a donation we gave users the option to create and account and save their credit card using the information they had just submitted with the donation. We called this the Quick Donate opt-in page and it received a lot of traffic since the campaign brought in tens of millions of donations. The page itself was very simple: Users with an existing account only needed to enter a password and users without an account only needed to create one. Underneath the password field was the option to enable SMS donations.
We tested many variations of this page, but one of my favorites was when we adjusted the headline. The original headline of the page—which had not been tested at this point—read "Save your payment information for next time." That is pretty simple and straightforward and we definitely didn't want to make it longer. Our idea was to make the headline seem more connected to the donation that users had just made. Our new headline read "Now, save your payment information." The first headline made the Quick Donate opt-in seem disconnected from the donation while the second did exactly the opposite.
By making the follow up ask more connected with the first ask, we increased conversions by 21%. As with Sequential, we were also delighted to see that the Romney campaign loved Quick Donate.
Imagery
Photography was a huge part of the Obama brand. We had several photographers that took lots of amazing photos of the President, the First Lady and everyone else. We took advantage of this by testing a ton of images. We tested photos just about everywhere from donate pages to sign up forms and about everywhere else you can imagine. As with layout and usability we learned a lot about how users react to different kinds of imagery. We found that there are many variables in photos that can affect conversions, but possibly the biggest impact had to do with the context in which the photo was used.
Similar to the 2008 campaign, our splash page was the subject of a/b tests with different photos. Optimizing the splash page with a/b tests was a lot of fun because it received so much traffic that results came in quickly. One of the splash pages we ran was for a contest called Dinner with Barack. If you won, you got a free trip for yourself and a guest to have dinner with the President. To sweeten the deal even more the First Lady would be there dinner as well. If you want to see what you missed out on, you can still watch video from several of the dinners.
We had so many great pictures of the previous Dinner with Barack contest that we wanted to see which performed the best. In the following test we had two photos. The first was a medium shot of the President at the dinner table, but it didn't have much context as you nothing else was in view/focus. Previous tests showed that large photos with focus on the President increased conversions. The second photo had a wider frame that revealed the First Lady and two dinner guests. We hoped that users would be more likely to convert if they could see just how close they would be sitting to the President of the United States during dinner.
By changing the photo on the splash page we lifted conversions by more than 19%.
Conclusion
We knew from the beginning how valuable a/b testing could be in helping us achieve our goals and we took it seriously. We spent countless hours thinking critically about user psychology and implementing our ideas with a/b tests. We had developers working around the clock to ensure that we always had an a/b test running. In looking at the overall results I think you could say our efforts paid off. We increased donation conversions by 49%, sign up conversions by 161% and we were able to apply our findings to other areas and products.
However the affect our optimization efforts had on conversion rates was not the only benefit. Along the way we uncovered lots of interesting ways in which design, imagery, copy, usability and page speed affect user behavior. We were able to answer very specific questions like what kind of form input and label alignments are best for conversions and error rates. We were able to second guess our assumptions about how a web page should look and behave. We learned how to answer questions and we ended up with a treasure trove of best practices.
You think your landing page is top-notch, right? Maybe. Perhaps. Probably not. Most landing pages suck and it’s easy to run a marketing campaign that doesn’t deliver the results you’re hoping for. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Admitting you need help is the first step towards making your page better. But how do you do it? It’s not like there’s a 12-step program for this type of thing. Actually, there is. But for the sake of making this post meaningful, let’s pretend there isn’t.
Using the Checklist
To find out how good your landing page is, check off everything you are currently doing and you’ll see your score add up in the counters (hopefully a lot). This will show you how good or bad your page is, and after you’re finished you can make a to-do list from the remaining items.
Score: 0/50
Total Score: 0/50
Note 1: If the checklist item doesn’t apply to you (e.g. it mentions video or a form when you don’t have one on your page), then check the box anyway.
Note 2: If the counter isn’t going up when you check all those boxes, give the page a refresh. It’s finicky.
- Does your landing page headline match the message on your ads?
- Is your landing page messaging focused on a single purpose?
- Could a stranger understand the purpose in 5-10 seconds? (test this)
- Is it clear who your company is and what you do? (a logo and tagline)?
- Do you have a simple secondary description to enhance the headline?
- Do you use bullet points to describe the benefits of your product/service?
- Are you using a relevant and original main image or video that shows it being used (context of use)?
- Does your page message have the clarity of a 30-second elevator pitch? (Read out your page copy to someone and see if they understand it.)
- Is your primary headline phrased to answer the question “What is this page about?”
- Have you removed extraneous links (like the global nav) – to remove page leaks?
- Does your landing page explain how your product/service is unique (USP)?
- Does the writing focus primarily on benefits rather than features?
- Did you resist asking for any unnecessary information in a form (be completely honest cos it’s bad)? (check the box if you aren’t using a form).
- Do you explain the value or size of your lead gen giveaway (discount amount, number of ebook pages, $ value)?
- Do you provide examples of previous customers using or complimenting your product/service? (Testimonials and other trust factors)
- Do you offer multiple contact methods (phone, email, live chat)
- Do you make it clear what the visitor will receive by clicking your CTA?
- Does your landing page appear to be professionally designed?
- Does the design of your landing page match the visual style of your ad creative? (Banners)
- Does the design match the style of your main website or brand? (Only relevant if you will end up there after clicking the CTA)
- Do you use lightboxes to show extra information without leaving the page?
- Do you provide a privacy and or terms & conditions statement/link?
- Are you providing a sample (preview of first chapter etc.) of your giveaway, if applicable?
- Do you show certifications or logos of partners/affiliates/security registrations (like Verisign)?
- Are your claims and facts verifiable?
- Do you repeat your offer in the form area to reinforce what the purpose of your form is?
- Do you use visual cues (eye direction or graphical arrows) to direct attention to CTA?
- Is the CTA large enough to stand out from 6ft away?
- Does the CTA use contrast to stand out from the rest of the page?
- Is your CTA in a prominent position near the top of the page?
- Are you including a link to your privacy policy next to the email field of your form?
- Are you using your confirmation page to provide the new lead with further instructions? (share this page, follow us, download this extra free ebook, register for this webinar).
- If your offer is time limited, do you make this clear for the sake of urgency?
- Are you creating a separate landing page for each inbound source (email, social, PPC) and see which gets you the most conversions.
- If you use video, have you set it up for user directed playback (vs. an autoplay)?
- Do you end your video with a call to action?
- Have you limited the number of CTS’a on your page to 1? (Unless it’s a long page in which case it’s okay to repeat it).
- If you are getting people to sign up for a webinar, are you showing the number of registrants as a form of social proof?
- Leave this box unchecked if you have an exit popup window.
- Are you doing A/B testing on your pages?
- Are you seeking feedback from your customer to help develop a hypothesis for your next test?
- If you have a multi-step process (sign-up etc.), do you make it clear to visitors? (30 seconds, 3 steps etc.)
- Have you optimized your landing page to get a paid search quality score above 7?
- Do you use a separate landing page for every promotion/campaign?
- Have you tested using a short page vs. a long page to understand how much information your visitors need to convert?
- Does your landing page follow the principle of unity, where every element of the page is focused on explaining a single concept?
- Have you Krug’d your landing page? (Remove 50% of the copy, then delete half of what’s left. (To ensure maximum simplicity and clarity).
- Leave this box unchecked if your form button says “Click Here” or “Submit”.
- If you use a form, is it encapsulated in a colored background box to make it clearly stand out as the most important part of the page.
- And finally, have you ever used Unbounce? (Had to ask).
Score: 0/50
Total Score: 0/50
So what’s your score? It would be great if you’d share it in the comments to show how great a marketer you are. And remember to take the unchecked items and use them as your to-do list.
Get Your FAQs Straight: Convert Your Curious Customers
Your FAQ page represents one of the most valuable moments in a conversion funnel. Nowhere else does a visitor so deliberately indicate that they want to know the details of your product or service.
Are you guilty of neglecting this important page? A page, that when given the proper attention, can actually boost your conversions and more importantly your:
SALES!
Well if you are guilty of neglecting this aspect, then here is the short answer:
You can improve your FAQ pages by…
Streamlining navigation through questions Prioritizing clarity over precision in language Connecting the answers in FAQs to other steps in the sales funnel so that no visitor goes uncapturedBut as we all know, the devil is in the details. So let’s go over how you can improve your FAQ pages for more sales and conversions, while making your customers happy in the process!
In business, the customer may not always be right, but when it comes to getting better conversions through your website - it pays to listen to what they want. In fact, by asking the right kinds of questions, you can get vastly more information and insights that go well beyond your typical analytics package.
For retailers, shopping is the art of persuasion. Though there are many factors that influence how and what consumers buy. However, a great deal is decided by visual cues, the strongest and most persuasive being color. When marketing new products it is crucial to consider that consumers place visual appearance and color above other factors such as sound, smell and texture.
As a general rule, your homepage will be the first encounter a visitor will have with your business. Great care, therefore, should be taken to design and structure your homepage so that readers will digest and act on your business message. Below we've identified certain qualities that compose an effective homepage.
How To Design Compelling Call to Action Buttons
Search Engine Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: The Showdown
Attracting a potential customer is hard enough. Grabbing their interest and retaining them is even more difficult. It's important to design your site so that user frustration is kept to a minimum, thereby maximizing customer retention. Below are some examples of what not to do when designing your website.
You should already know that clarity trumps persuasion for making sales. In fact, to borrow a metaphor from direct-response expert Dean Rieck, your copy should be like a shop window-completely invisible, affording a perfect view of the thing you're selling. But as with most important things in life, that's easier said than done.
10 Best Practices to Optimize the Language of Your Calls-to-Action
10 Little Known Factors that Affect Your Conversion Rate