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Sales Funnels
How To Get An Army Of Affiliates PAYING You To BUILD Your List Of Buyers
Yes, you read that headline right. In fact, you might even want to read it again.
You can totally get affiliates to PAY YOU for the right to send you buyers.
I ran across this a couple of years ago, and I have to say I was impressed. In fact, I just about joined this myself, and I’m a seasoned pro. This was done by a group of seasoned marketers, but there’s no reason why a new marketer or marketers couldn’t do it, too.
Last time I checked, this funnel I’m about to describe is still up and running and going strong. I don’t want anyone to actually steal their exact system, sales copy and funnel, so I’m going to just give you the highlights and you can fill in the rest.
Build A Basic Sales Funnel
First you start with a sales funnel. You’ve got a squeeze page offering a terrific little “how to do marketing” type of lead magnet. Once visitors grab the lead magnet, or even if they try to click away without picking up the lead magnet, they are then directed to a sales page for an online marketing membership site.
The membership site has several levels, with the lowest level being free to join. Of course, they highlight the free level in the headline to keep people on the page, and then they extoll the virtues of the other levels. Each level has more and better content, better support and so forth.
The free level is fairly basic but does give enough info for a newbie to make a start in making money online.
And of course, each level is more expensive than the previous level, with the prices skewed a bit to encourage visitors to choose the highest level.
I’ll give you an example of that pricing to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:
Level 1: Free
Level 2: $29 per month
Level 3: $44 per month
Level 4: $49 per month
These aren’t the exact price points they used, but you get the idea. You see there is very little difference between level 3 and 4 in terms of price, but in terms of content there is a big difference.
This is a great psychological ploy, because it gets the prospect to study the differences between levels 3 and 4 while forgetting all about level 2.
And of course if they’re going to get a paid membership, they’re most likely to choose level 4.
The content is drip fed each week…
…and if you’ve been paying close attention, you’ve realized I haven’t really shown you anything new yet.
Offer Affiliate Programs!
Here it comes, so hang on to your seat, because THIS is how you get affiliates to PAY you to send you a list of BUYERS:
(I love this bit!)
All of the levels offer a built-in affiliate program that sets the affiliates up to sell their own memberships for all of the levels they qualify for.
This means if they are a level 2 member, they can give away level 1 and sell level 2. If they happen to sell level 3 or 4, they still get paid, but not as much.
But if they are a level 4 member, they get to sell all four levels and KEEP ALL the money.
That’s right – they get to keep 100% of what they sell if they are level 4.
I hope this is making sense. It sounds complicated at first, but it’s actually fairly simple once you understand the concept.
Thus you’ve got affiliates paying (in our example above) $49 a month for the privilege of selling memberships and keeping all the money.
That’s a great deal for the affiliates, right? Absolutely. You can see why I almost jumped on it.
The affiliates don’t have to worry about hosting, fulfilment or any of that stuff, because the membership takes care of all of that.
The affiliate gets a unique sales page URL, squeeze page URL and membership area.
The content is automatically drip fed into that member’s area. The subscriptions are managed for them, the levels are managed for them… all they have to do is make sales by promoting their squeeze page URL.
The affiliate gets to build a list of prospects and buyers simply by promoting the URL, and of course they are earning residual monthly income, too.
The list of prospects and customers stays in the system and cannot be exported. Affiliates can only email their lists from inside the system. So if they drop out and stop paying their monthly fee, they lose their lists.
This can make for some very sticky affiliates who never leave.
Clarify Your Terms And Conditions
Now for the icing… in the terms and conditions, it is made explicitly clear that the membership site operator(s) have access to all of the prospects and customers who sign up.
This means they can email prospects and customers any time they like, making any offer they like. PLUS, the site owners can also place offers in the membership area as well.
Now think about what I just said… affiliates are paying you $49 a month (or whatever price point you choose) to be able to build you a list of prospects and customers.
And the affiliates are getting a terrific deal, too, getting 100% monthly commissions and the ability to email their customers and prospects from within your website.
It’s a true win / win for everyone involved, and done correctly it can yield a tremendous amount of prospects and buyers for you, as well as excellent monthly income to pay for a very nice membership site and have money left over.
When I heard about this, they were making five figures a month from the membership site fees alone. This doesn’t include what they were earning from mailing to their ever-growing email lists, or from the special promotions they continually placed in the members’ area.
Imagine if you were earning 5 figures from your membership site AND having a team of affiliates working hard to build your list of prospects and buyers. Sweet.
I wish I had started my first site this way – I’d probably be retired today.
6 Copywriting Techniques That Will Boost Your Conversions
If you’re wondering why your landing pages aren’t making you as much money as you had hoped for, you might be using common landing page copywriting techniques the wrong way.
While the six copywriting techniques we’re about to cover have been proven to work, too many marketers use them in a way that cancels out their otherwise potent conversion power.
This really is too bad because your landing page could be raking in larger profits if you only paid closer attention to how you implement these proven techniques.
The good news is that once you become aware of how badly you may be implementing these techniques, you can quickly fix them.
The key is to become aware that you’re using them the wrong way in the first place.
1: Tell A Story To Personalize Your Landing Page’s Value
Storytelling is one of the most powerful landing page copywriting techniques you can use. Not only do you pull your reader into the scenario your offer addresses, you also create emotional urgency with your offer.
Once emotionally engaged, chances are much higher that your viewer would enter his or her email address or make a purchase.
Awesome, right?
Well, sadly, too many marketers tell stories that are simply worthless.
They are duds.
They seem too good to be true. They show extreme conditions. They simply fail to convert.
What went wrong?
The stories most marketers tell in their landing pages fail to focus on putting a human face on the problem the reader is facing.
Instead, these low converting landing pages tend to present almost ‘too good to be true’ situations.
If you want your landing page stories to convert, take the most probable circumstances faced by your target audience members and base your stories on these.
These realistic stories are more believable because more of your audience members can relate to them.
By the way, if you are serious and want to avoid the most serious mistakes that novice copywriters make, then make sure you download this free report called Copywriting Blunders. This is a premium free report that takes you through each and every one of the worst mistakes a copywriter can make and you can find it here.
2: Use A Question As A Header Title For Your Landing Page
Questions are very powerful ‘centering’ devices because they draw your prospects attention to one central concept or a small set of concepts. Questions help narrow and define the problems and situations your offer addresses.
If a question is well-defined, it is easier to present your solution and it is easier for the prospect to see the value in your solution.
Sadly, too many marketers use a header question that has little to do with the questions their target audience members care about the most. For example, the question focuses on cost when most users are actually interested in saving time.
To fix this problem, figure out the primary concern of your target audience members and pose relevant header questions.
3: Change Up Your Font To Emphasize Key Points Of Your Pitch
When you’re talking to somebody, you normally change your tone of voice when you are trying to emphasize certain things. By the same token, text in bold or italics or larger, ‘special’ fonts tend to be noticed more.
The problem here is that too many marketers overuse these font changes. They use them so much that the reader is confused or reads the text like the formatting isn’t even there.
To maximize the impact of special fonts when emphasizing key points in your landing page text, make sure you use them SPARINGLY.
Keep special fonts to a minimum so when you do emphasize certain words, they truly STAND OUT.
4: Use testimonials from happy customers
One of the most powerful selling tools you can use is social proof. People are more likely to buy whatever you are offering if they see that other people have had positive experiences with what you’re selling.
Pretty simple, right?
In fact, this is so simple that you’d think this would be hard to screw up.
Wrong. Marketers actually blow this all the time.
The key problem is RESTRAINT.
Steer clear of using overly positive testimonials that may look fake. People are very suspicious of overly positive testimonials. ‘Over the top’ recommendations make them skeptical.
Make sure you only use REAL testimonials on your landing page.
Real testimonials are grounded in reality. This means there’s a mix of both positive and not-so-positive elements in the testimonials.
Above all else, use testimonials from happy customers who got results that are not outliers.
Otherwise, your testimonials might seem too good to be true and won’t carry much weight with people you’re trying to convince.
5: List Out The Benefits Of What You’re Promoting
One of the most common, yet powerful, copywriting tips you’ll ever come across is to write out benefits of your product, not features.
People buy based on benefits not features. Benefits solve their problems. Benefits are easier to understand. Features, on the other hand, tend to degenerate into so much sales talk and technical jargon.
Sadly, too many marketers list SO MANY BENEFITS, they flood their prospects with information. This data overflow leads to, you guessed it, lower conversions.
Your landing page shouldn’t read like a laundry list or check list. Instead it should be focused on a very small set of benefits which were strategically selected to appeal to your target readers. To figure out which benefits to focus on, ask your target audience members.
Of course, you need to cross reference this information with the landing pages of your competitors to make sure you’re operating in the right ballpark.
6: Link Your Call To Action With The End Result Your Target Customers Want
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One of the most useful copywriting conversion tricks you could ever learn involves pairing a call to action to a specific benefit the reader wants.
For example, instead of relying on the tired and weak “Click Here” try using “To finally get rid of the high costs and headaches of random outsourcing, enter your email here to take your labor sourcing results to the next level!” See the difference?
People buy because they are looking for solutions. By pairing the action you want people to take with the benefit they are looking for, you increase the likelihood they will take that action. Clear, right?
Well, marketers tend to blow this technique when they end up listing a ton of benefits with the call to action. Not only does this result in horrible run on sentences, this dilutes the conversion power of your call to action.
The reader is simply too confused to take any action at this point.
The solution?
Focus on one central benefit and pair that with the conversion action.
This is quite risky because your target audience might be looking for a number of benefits instead of just one.
This is where split testing comes in. Test different landing pages with different action-tied benefits and see which pages produce the best results with your traffic.
Don’t Be A Victim Of ‘Proven’ Landing Copywriting Techniques
Make no mistake about it, the landing page copywriting techniques we’ve just covered can turn your landing pages into quick winners.
However, you have to use them the right way. Avoid the common implementation pitfalls outlined and truly take your landing page conversion rates to the next level!
How To Make The Most Of Your Traffic And Monetize It
If you are a marketer of any description you will know that traffic is the lifeblood of any business.
Simply put: No traffic, no business!
A lot of marketers get so caught up in tracking their traffic stats that they forget to make the most of that traffic. Tell you what, traffic is worthless if your visitors aren’t buying what you’re selling, joining your list, or taking some other important action.
So how do you make the most of your traffic and monetize it?
First off, make sure you are indeed bringing targeted traffic to your site. You don’t want just anybody visiting your website or hitting your sales/squeeze pages. Do this and you’ll wonder why you’re getting a lot of visitors but no sign-ups or sales!
Does this sound familiar? Yes, traffic is a numbers game, but you need the right high-quality targeted traffic or you won’t make any progress and you won’t make any money!
So, whatever methods you are using to drive traffic to your website, make sure you have your targeting dialled in and you know your ideal customer is to make the most out of your website traffic.
And secondly, use this little “traffic checklist” to monetize that traffic…
Determine Your Primary Goal
The first thing you need to do is figure out the primary goal for EACH page of your website. Depending on the page, this primary goal (and monetization strategy) might involve getting your visitor to:
- Make a purchase
- Take advantage of an upsell offer
- Join your list.
- Call you.
- Fill out a form.
- Share content/tell their friends.
- Enter a contest.
- Click on a link.
- Clicking on ads, including affiliate offers and AdSense ads.
- Complete a CPA (cost per acquisition) offer, such as filling out a credit card application.
- Read or watch content.
- Visit you offline (if you run a brick and mortar store).
- Ask for a free consultation.
- Register for an event, such as a webinar or contest.
And so on. Be sure your primary goal is the one that will make the most of your traffic in terms of monetization.
Here are two best practices when it comes to monetizing traffic:
- Be sure to pick just ONE primary goal for each web page (and, overall, one primary goal for your website as a whole). Because if you create a page with multiple goals, your prospect may get confused and not take any action at all.
- Focus on your own products first. There are plenty of ways to monetize traffic as mentioned above, including putting offers from third parties in front of your visitors. Be sure to focus on promoting your OWN offers first, as this will always be more profitable (because you get both the profits and the list).
Next…
Design Your Site Around Your Primary Goal
Now you need to design each page of your website around your primary goal.
For example:
- If you’re designing a lead page with the goal of growing your list, then remove all other content and extraneous links, so that the page is focused on getting people to join your list.
- If your goal is directly sell a product, then create a high-response sales letter and plug up sales leaks such as external links.
- If your goal is to get people to click on AdSense ads, then create highly engaging content and embed those ads within the content.
The key here is to try to remove all superfluous distractions that may stop your visitors from taking the action you want them to. Remember, less is more.
Next…
Create An Exit Traffic System
Despite your best efforts, people are going to hit the back button on your site and bail out without joining your list, without buying a product, and without clicking on any ads.
That doesn’t mean that they’re poor-quality visitors who’ll never buy anything from you. Instead, it could mean they just didn’t see the right offer, or they’re in a hurry, or you didn’t sufficiently persuade them to take action.
The problem is that if they leave, they’ll probably be gone for good. They’ll forget about you. So that’s why you need to stop them when they’re going out the door and put an irresistible offer in front of them.
For example, redirect your exit traffic to a highly enticing lead magnet so that you can get people on your list before they leave your site. For best results, create multiple lead magnets so that you can offer the lead magnet that is directly related to the page the visitor was viewing before they tried to leave the site.
For instance, if your visitor was reading a blog article about how to set up a Facebook ad campaign, then offer them a lead magnet (such as a report) that gives in-depth instruction and “done for you” ad templates.
TIP: Don’t know how to redirect exit traffic to another page or create an exit pop? No problem. You can search for “exit traffic scripts” in your favorite search engine, or you can use a service such as Thrive Leads or Conversion Gorilla.
Many folks will say that they don’t like exit pops or redirects, especially marketers, but the simple fact is, they work but use them sparingly.
And finally…
Test And Tweak Everything
One of the best ways to monetize your traffic is to test and track all parts of the process to find out what really works.
Specifically:
- Test offers to see which ones appeal the most to your visitors.
- Test ad and link placements, including in the header, footer, sidebar, and directly embedded in content.
- Test your headlines, benefits and calls to action to see which improve conversions.
- Test your upsells to increase your per-transaction value.
- Test the design of your pages to improve overall response.
Let’s wrap things up…
Conclusion
So there you have it – a quick and effective checklist for making the most money with your traffic.
To recap:
- Pick one primary monetization goal.
- Design your web pages around this primary goal.
- Test and track everything to optimize response.
As you can see, this “traffic checklist” is pretty simple, but very effective! So put this plan to work for you today to start making more money from all your traffic.
7 Ways To Persuade Customers To Buy Your Upsells
If you want to make more money with your business, one good place to start is on your order forms.
Think about it…
You have a prospect with a credit card already in their hand. They’re in a buying mood.
So there’s a good chance that if you put a related offer in front of them (the proverbial, “you want fries with that?”), they’ll take it. And that means you’ll make more money with every customer who walks through your door.
So how do you create a backend or upsell offer that gets your prospects clicking the “Yes” button? Like this…
1. Make Sure The Upsell Enhances The Main Offer
The very first thing you need to do is make sure any upsell offer is tightly related to the main offer. In fact, not only should it be tightly related, ideally your upsell should enhance the use or enjoyment of your main offer.
Take the classic example at a fast food restaurant. I guarantee that if you walked into McDonalds and ordered a hamburger, any well-trained clerk would ask if you wanted fries and/or a drink with that. And a lot of people say yes to this offer, because fries and/or a drink enhances the enjoyment of the burger.
Now you can do the same thing, no matter what you’re selling. For example:
- You’re selling a meal-planning app. Offer a low-fat cookbook as an order form upsell.
- The main offer is a copywriting course. You can offer personal copy critiques on the backend.
- Your main product is all about setting up and running a successful blog. You can offer tools on the backend, such as a package of useful WordPress plugins and professional themes.
- Your main product is a “how to get out of debt” course. You can offer an upsell that includes items such as a debt-management workbook and personalized debt-management counseling.
- You main product is a set of kettlebell training videos. You can offer the kettlebells themselves as an upsell.
In other words, don’t just toss any ol’ offer in front of your prospects. Be sure your upsell and main offer go together like… well, like hamburgers and fries. J
Next up…
2. Offer An Irresistible Deal
Dropping a related offer in front of your prospect is great. But turning that offer into an irresistible deal is even better.
Take the fast food example again. If you order a burger with a small fries and drink, the clerk will ask you if you want to “biggy size” the order for just a small extra charge. The deal is irresistible. You get a LOT more food for just a tiny bit more money.
No matter what you’re selling, you can do the same thing.
For example:
“I usually charge $997 per month for this sort of coaching. But as a valued member of my new copywriting club, you’ll get a special price of just $497 per month for this same high-quality coaching…”
Next…
3. Use Short-Form Copy
You’ve got an eager prospect sitting in front of your order form with their credit card in hand. Now is not the time to put another long sales letter in front of them. They’re eager to buy. Putting another wall of text in front of them might just have them hitting the back button and abandoning the order form!
You see, you’ve already done the hard work of getting them into the necessary emotional state needed to make a purchase. You’ve already built your credibility. You’ve already established trust. You don’t need to do these things again.
So what you need to do now is simply focus on the benefits of the upsell offer. In fact, your upsell may be nothing more than a benefit-driven headline, a list of benefits, and a call to action.
TIP: As always, test to find out for sure what your audience responds to the best. Test different headlines. Test your bulleted list of benefits. You might even test short-form copy against a short sales video.
Next…
4. Frame The Price
The next thing for you to remember is that you’ve already sold your prospect on purchasing the main offer. They’ve already agreed to whatever price you’re charging.
So when you extend the upsell offer, you’ll want to frame the price so that it focuses on the upsell only.
Let me give you an example…
Let’s suppose you’re selling a home study course for $99, with an upsell offer for $25 for an app:
When it comes time to ask for the order, do NOT do this: “Would you like to add this offer to your order for a total of $125 for the course and app?”
Suddenly that sounds like a lot. The prospect is going to start second-guessing their purchase. And you could lose the entire sale.
Instead, focus on the upsell price only: “Would you like to add this app to your order for just $24 more?”
Ahhhh… that’s better. That sounds doable. And since the prospect is already planning on spending $99, that extra $24 doesn’t sound like any big deal.
It’s all in how you frame it. 🙂
Next…
5. Create A Sense Of Urgency
Nothing gets people clicking the order button like a real sense of urgency. And one great way to create this sense of urgency is by making your upsell offer scarce.
For example, you might create a one-time offer. This is an offer that’s only available right now. If the prospect doesn’t grab it, they won’t be able to get it later. Or if the product is available elsewhere, the prospect will need to pay full price.
A good example of this is when you go shopping on a site like Omaha Steaks. If you spend a certain amount, such as $50, you’ll get a list of “add on specials.”
These are tremendous deals that you can ONLY take advantage of while you’re on the order form. You can still buy the steaks themselves later, but you’ll pay through the nose to do it.
That creates scarcity and a sense of urgency that gets people agreeing to order your upsell.
For example:
“Special one-time offer: add this meal-planning app to your order right now, and you’ll get it for 50% off the regular price! If you leave this page, this offer disappears for good… so click here now to grab your discount before it’s gone!”
Next…
6. Use A Strong Call To Action
The good copywriting rules apply to your upsell just as they do to your main offer. And that means you can’t just drop the order link in front of your prospects and expect them to click it. Instead, you need to provide a strong call to action. This means you tell prospects what to do next, and give them a good reason to do it.
For example:
Click here to add this app to your order – and remember, this special offer disappears when you leave this page, so order now!
Generally, your upsell page is going to have two options. One option is “Yes, add this to my order.” The other option is, “No thank you, I don’t want this.”
Those should be the only two options on the page. Prospects will either add to their order and continue making the purchase, or they’ll skip your offer and just stick with their original order.
Now here’s a little trick you might consider testing and using…
Phrase your “yes” and “no” options in a way that helps persuade people to click the “yes” options.
For example, let’s suppose you’re selling some sort of weight-loss information. Your option buttons might look like this:
“Yes, I want to get ready for the beach!”
“No, I don’t want to get rid of my love handles. J”
See how that works?
The “yes” option is positive and provides a benefit. The “no” option forces the prospect to agree with something that they probably don’t really agree with. That’s going to make them stop and reconsider your offer.
Here’s another example:
“Yes, I want to save money on heating and cooling bills!”
“No, I don’t want to save money.”
Another:
“Yes, I want to boost my conversion rates and make more money!”
“No, I don’t want to make more money.”
One more…
“Yes, I want to run a new marathon PR!”
“No, I don’t mind running as slow as a turtle. J”
And finally…
7. Make It Easy
If you followed all the tips above, then you have a prospect who’s as ready as she’ll ever be to place her order. At this point, your goal is to make it as easy as possible for her to place that order and grab the upsell.
Don’t make your prospects jump through hoops. Don’t slip unnecessary steps between them and their order. Don’t put obstacles in the way. Because if you do any of this, the prospect is likely to lose their enthusiasm and abandon their shopping cart.
Here are the dos and don’ts to follow:
- Do make it one-click easy. If you’re presenting an upsell right after the customer has already filled in the order form, then make it as easy to buy the upsell as clicking a button. In other words, do NOT make your prospect fill out the order form or their credit card all over again.
- Don’t make them go through a gauntlet of upsells. Sometimes marketers throw three, four, five or more upsells in front of the prospect. They can’t get to the order form without accepting or declining these offers. Or, worse yet, they can’t get to their purchase without seeing all these offers.
- Don’t do that to your customer! Instead, put one or at most two well-placed offers in front of them. But if they decline, send them straight to the order form. Don’t make them go through a gauntlet of offers, which will make them feel like carnival workers are barking at them.
- Don’t make them “register” before ordering. If you need your customers to create an account, then have this account co-created during the purchasing process. Even if the amount of “work” for the customer is the same, framing is the key here. If a customer is suddenly forced to “create an account” before they can place an order, they may just dump their cart.
Now let’s wrap things up…
Conclusion
You’ve heard the saying, “strike while the iron is hot.” When it comes to sales, the iron is about as hot as can be when you have a prospect filling out an order form. That’s why it’s a great time to “strike” by offering an upsell offer they can’t refuse. So boost your sales by inserting upsells on your order forms today – and boost your conversions using the seven surefire tips you just discovered!
Conversion Rate Optimization (What It Is And How To Do It)
Before we begin, we need to understand what Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) actually is. CRO is basically when you are trying to increase the number of your website visitors to take a specific action, such as opting into your list, buying your products or services, or anything else.
To be effective at CRO you really need to understand who your visitors are, how they move through your site, what actions they take, and what it is that is stopping them from completing your goals.
What is a conversion?
A conversion is the general term for a visitor completing a site goal and these goals come in many shapes and sizes.
If you use your website to sell products, the primary goal (known as the macro-conversion) will be for the visitor to buy your products(s).
There are smaller conversions that can happen before a visitor completes a macro-conversion; an example of this is to opt-in to your list to receive emails. These are called micro-conversions.
Examples of conversions:
- Buying a product from the site
- Requesting a quote
- Subscribing to a service
- Opting in to your email list(s)
What is a conversion rate?
Your site’s conversion rate is the number of times a visitor completes a goal divided by your site traffic.
If a visitor can convert in each visit (such as by buying a product), divide the number of conversions by the number of unique visits to your site.
If you sell a subscription, divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors.
Conversion rate optimization happens after the visitor arrives on your site. This is different from conversion optimization for SEO or paid ads which focuses on who clicks through to your site from the organic search results, how many clicks you get, and which keywords are driving traffic.
Conversion Rate Optimization is part of the sales funnel strategy that’s increasingly being embraced by modern marketers.
It is incredibly important if you are buying traffic via paid ads to minimize initial ad spend and possibly make your offer a self-liquidating offer.
One of the issues are all the distractions that are present in the life of a potential customer. An average shopper might start browsing on their desktop, stop to make a cup of tea, continue searching on their mobile, lose their signal while on the go and revisit the page later in the day. This is where retargeting can play a huge role in bringing these visitors back to your offers, but you will still need to persuade them to take the action you desire.
Important Conversion Rate Optimization Metrics
Conversion rate optimization only works if you’re tracking specific key metrics.
As you are continually testing and making changes to your website and funnel, you need to know what specific impact those changes are having on your visitor behaviour, number of sales, opt-in rate, and more.
And there are a number of things you should be keeping an eye on.
The key metrics you need to be monitoring and analysing are:
- ROI
- Bounce rate
- Average time on page
- Pageviews
- Unique visitors
- User experience (UX)
- Number of Customers
- Page load time
The key to successful CRO is to be constantly be testing BUT only change one element at a time. Split-testing is the key to successful CRO
The good thing about many of the newer page builders such as Click Funnels, Convertri and OptimizePress 2 is that they do have some built-in split-testing functionality so you can quickly change an element and clone a page and run traffic to both versions to see which is converting better. Once you have a clear winner, you can change another element to see if the conversion rate goes up or down.
It’s this methodical and systematic approach to split-testing that will enable you to really optimize your conversions.
If you want to dive a bit deeper into split-testing you can use tools such as Split-Test Monkey which is really easy to use but very powerful, and then you can do all your split-testing from a single dashboard, rather than possibly jumping from one page builder to another.
Ok, so now you understand what CRO is and how important it is, let’s look at 4 ways to increase the conversion rate on your website.
1 — Eliminate Unnecessary Choices And Distractions
An important part of high converting landing pages is being crystal clear on your objective for that page.
Your page shouldn’t try to get people to do more than 3 different functions…
The page can quickly become overwhelming and confusing, and a confused visitor will quickly leave your page, it really is as simple as that!
3 conversion points are the absolute maximum, but if you can, try to have just one conversion point on the page.
For example, if you are creating a sales page for a product/service, you need to minimize leakage and there should be only one call-to-action and that is the buy button.
There should be no navigation menus, and the only other links you should have are the legal requirements for using paid ads and for legislation such as GDPR.
Everything else is a distraction form the objective which is to get the sale.
The honest truth is you’ll only likely to get 1 click at best on your page so you want to eliminate any unnecessary choices.
If you want people to download an eBook.
Or start a free trial.
Or schedule a sales call.
Make sure that every element of your page works towards that goal.
The only exception is your home page and possibly blog posts (when you’re not targeting specific content to attract opt-ins to collect emails).
2 — Eliminate Unnecessary Distractions
After you have decided on the 1–3 (hopefully 1) conversions you’re looking for on this page, you have to understand what’s going on while the visitor is on that page.
What’s currently acting as a distraction and taking away attention from your ideal conversions?
How do you figure out what’s going on with your page?
Well, there is a great free tool which can really help you. And that tool is…
Google Analytics
There are a couple of things to keep an eye on in Google Analytics:
Firstly, there is On Page Time
A very general rule of thumb for “on page time” is between 1–3 minutes per page. If you have a look and see that the average on page time is under 1 minute you definitely need to try to improve that page!
This information can tell you a lot about what your visitors are experiencing and why they are behaving in such a way i.e. leaving!
People may be leaving the page after only 10–15 seconds because they can’t find the information they’re looking for quickly enough (many people have very short attention spans and a lack of patience)!
People may be leaving your page because you’re revealing the price before they’re truly convinced and sold on your offer.
Secondly, there is the 1st page traffic sources send prospects to
What is your biggest traffic referrer? Google, social media, email?
Whatever your top referral channels are, you can analyse the data and create reports which will show you which pages people visit from specific sources.
This is really valuable data and allows you to compare relative volumes of traffic from different sources within the same dimension; e.g. the traffic from different search engines, or social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.
Overall comparisons like this allows you to make some initial opinions about which channels are most effective or offering the best ROI (Return On Investment) if applicable.
You can also use it to work out other things such as:
- Are they warm or cold traffic?
- Where are they in their search process?
(Most search engine visitors are probably in the awareness phase of the buying process, but if most of the traffic to that page is coming directly from an email, those visitors are probably much closer to the decision phase.)
- Are they in the top or middle of the funnel?
- What’s their level of problem awareness?
(Think about it: someone who reads 1 page and goes straight to an offer is much closer to making a purchasing decision than people who go on to read 1–3+ informational pages after reading an initial informational page.)
Once you have looked at the data and know where your traffic is coming from, level of awareness etc. you can then focus on optimizing elements like the messaging and aim it specifically towards that particular type of traffic.
As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts to the buying process but looking at this data should help you narrow down what the specific sticking points of the step you’re optimizing are and ensure that you are making the necessary tweaks to increase performance.
3 — Simplify Design
Part of the reason why people might miss important information on your website is that the design of your website is too busy.
It should be said, that it is much better to have an understated, fresh, modern and minimalist design especially on sales pages.
Understanding how people read on the web can help you make conversion rate optimization decisions.
Just think about how you act when you are on different styles of sales pages; which ones are you more likely to stick on and read the sales copy
Here are a couple of design guidelines to use as a starting point:
Less Style Is More
We’ve all seen really sexy looking sales pages, with animated image flying in left, right and centre, but even though you can appreciate the design, do they make you want to buy? Are they sometimes style over substance?
Many times, a sales page may use white transparent text backgrounds over images or white text on a black background. This might look nice and communicate your personal style, but it’s difficult to read.
If the image is important and serves a purpose, it should be featured outright. If it doesn’t, get rid of it!
Choice of Colours
Most of us aren’t professional graphic designers and it shows in our sales pages. One of the biggest issues is choosing the wrong combination of colours, leading to a clashing palette.
If you don’t know much about colour theory and colour wheels, then use a tool such as Coolors to generate colour combinations that work together?
How many colours should you pick? At most, it is best to stick to less than 6 colours. (Plus, Black and White.)
4 — Streamline Your Message
Once again, less is more. One of the mistakes that novice business owners make is to create pages and marketing assets that are not well organized
The sections don’t usually have clear functions and this leads to confusion and a lost (potential) purchase.
This goes all the way back to point one where you need to ensure that every element on the page directly supports your specific conversion(s) goal and if it doesn’t, you should remove it.
Okay, we have covered a lot of stuff in this post! Don’t worry; conversion rate optimization might still feel overwhelming to you even after reading a great post like this. 😊
The thing is, you are now more well informed than many of your competitors and you can start to put this into action on your pages and funnels.
Use the built-in split-testing functionality of page builders such as Click Funnels, Convertri and OptimizePress 2 or use a dedicated split-testing platform such as Split-Test Monkey to test and tweak your landing/sales pages.
Now the only way you’re going to get more clarity is to start! So, go to it and start optimizing your content and pages today. Good luck!
