Quick notes on things you never, EVER do when attempting to improve conversions
Never give people too many options
Everything that leads off-site (or even outside of your intended conversion path on-site) that DOESN’T lead to your ideal conversion event is considered a “leak”
*ahem* ADVERTISING
Be mindful of the balance between grabbing attention & destroying UX
I strongly recommend never going for the quick buck or employing shady sales tactics
Remember…
This is an incredibly valuable skill, but one that takes a lot of time & testing to develop
If you don’t have at least 200-250 visitors per day, I’d recommend not worrying about ANY of this at this stage of your business
Sometimes you will consider sacrificing the long-term relationship if it doesn’t bring enough value to the consumer (i.e. highly transactional niches/content) or you make substantially more money by removing your conversion event
An online business owner’s wealthy has a DIRECT correlation to their respect & attention towards data — so never be voluntarily ignorant of your numbers!
There is SOOO much more to know — we’ve just scratched the surface
But this should be more than enough for the stage of business IMP is intended for, but if you find yourself needing more, get in touch so that we can discussing “leveling you up”!
If you successfully engage the visitor on your website, you only lose control if you screw up (e.g. betray their trust, give them too many distractions, lose credibility, etc.)
This is why selling your own products is often much more desirable (but also significantly more work) than selling someone else’s products
…if you know what you’re doing
Handed off/referred elsewhere
You almost always lose control the MOMENT that visitor leaves your site
Therefore you should do everything possible to:
Establish an ongoing connection with them before they leave your site so that you can regain control in case you lose it (e.g. subscribe to an email list)
Note: This step is optional for highly “transactional” niches/websites
Pre-sell them as much as possible
If possible: Incentivize them to buy through you vs. others (e.g. offering bonuses, “help keep ____.com funded”; not always allowed or necessary)
General rules of thumb:
Once they’re engaged, you’re in control (unless you screw up)
Once they leave your site, you’ve lost control
So do as much as you can to make sure you can reconnect with them down the road, or that they’re as likely as possible to convert on the site you’re referring them to!
Also known simply as “A/B testing” or “split testing”
The practice of running two variants (an ‘A’ variant and a ‘B’ variant) against one another
Once statical significance is reached (Google it for a detailed explanation), you have a “winning” variant which usually becomes your next control
What can you A/B split test?
Just about everything in a digital marketing business
Headlines
Body text
Calls to action (button OR entire paragraphs)
Images
Color variations
Email subject lines
Email calls to action
Telephone scripts
The list goes on and on…
How do you setup a split test?
Every tool is a bit different
If your tool allows it, you can find it easily by Googling it
If your tool doesn’t allow it and you’re working on conversions… you need to change tools.
“How do I correctly conduct an A/B split test?”
Remember: Your results are only as good as your test!
You may begin by running wildly different variants against one another (such as two entirely different landing pages), but once you’ve found your “control” variant…
You should only test ONE ELEMENT at a time
e.g. One headline, background image/color, button color, button call-to-action text, etc.
Run until your test has statistically significant data
Don’t start another test involving those elements until the previous test has concluded
Once you’ve established a new control, you could keep launching tests & improving as long as you want to keep improving
BUT… keep in mind that even if the earlier stages in your funnel convert BETTER, it could negatively impact the later stages of your funnel
So keep an eye on how the metrics shift across the entire funnel!