conversion checklist

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!

{Conversion rate optimization explained|Conversion rate optimization|Conversion rate}

How To Increase Conversions (3 Simple Tricks That Can Massively Increase Conversions)

As I have stated in numerous articles and videos, many people believe they have a problem with traffic, but I believe that the actual issue lies in converting that traffic.

Just think about this:-

If you have the same offer with the same amount of traffic but you double conversions, then you’ve effectively just doubled your sales and profits, too.

So, how do you do that you might ask?

Well, here are 3 simple tricks that can massively increase conversions:

1: What’s In A Name? Everything

You pour your heart and soul into a blog post, article – even an entire book – and nothing happens.

No one reads it. No one comments. No one shares it on social media. No one buys your book.

Yet the content is excellent, it’s well-written and it’s entertaining.

You know that people SHOULD be reading it.

So how do you fix it?

9 times out of 10 it’s as simple as changing the title.

That’s right – relaunch with another title and see if you don’t do a whole lot better.

I know of one fellow (retired now) who spent his career finding under-appreciated books, buying the rights and re-titling and re-releasing them.

He made a fortune doing this before the Internet blew up.

So, go back and find your content that didn’t do as well as it should. Polish it off, do any necessary updating, and most of all give it a new title that is irresistible.

You just might just have a new best seller on your hands. This always comes down to testing and if you know that the content is good but it isn’t selling, start by doing this simple hack and see if the title sparks off a flood of sales; you may be surprised!

2: Stop Being So Bossy!!!

BUY THIS! DO THAT! DO IT NOW! CLICK HERE!

“This is the greatest so-in-so ever and you will fall in LOVE with it, even though you don’t even know what the heck it is yet…”

Let’s face it – in the name of brevity and enthusiasm we tend to tell our customers what they should be doing and how they should be doing it.

We have their best interests at heart – don’t they see that?

Actually, no they don’t. And that is a problem.

Imagine someone standing on the other side of the room from you.

They’re screaming at you that you should do what they say.

What’s your reaction?

My reaction isn’t fit to print, so I won’t but I’m sure you get the idea!

Now imagine that same person smiles at you across the room, walks over, extends their hand and introduces themselves.

Next, they start talking about this problem they have. That’s funny, it’s the same problem you have. And they sound just like you. They even have the same thoughts about the problem, the same worries and fears that you have.

How do you feel? Like you just met a kindred spirit perhaps? It’s a completely different experience for you, the “customer.”

They invite you to walk with them, and without even thinking, you are right there with them, side by side, going for a short walk.

By the end of the walk, they’ve shown you how they solved their problem. You’re elated. There is a solution! You ask if you can buy the solution and they graciously sell it to you.

What just happened?

Instead of feeling like someone was trying to command you to buy something, you voluntarily bought it because you wanted it.

All because they came over to where you were, talked to you in your own words and then walked with you to the solution.

That’s how truly great sales work. You don’t shout from the rooftops or across the room.

Instead, you go to where they are. You feel what they’re feeling, say what they’re thinking, and become a kindred spirit. Then you gently guide them to where you want them to go.

Show them that you understand their problems, have been through it and have a solution for them. Believe me, if you use this technique in all of your sales materials I guarantee your conversions will at least double, if not triple; it is that powerful.

3: Go For The Big Ticket Sales

Why do you suppose you see so many $10 products, and so few $10,000 products?

It seems like it would be harder to sell a $10,000 product.

But what’s easier – selling 1000 $10 products, or just ONE $10,000 product?

Odds are, it’s going to be much easier to sell one big product than 1,000 small ones. BUT there is a large element of trust involved in persuading someone to spend such a large amount of money in one go and this puts many marketers off as it just seems like too much hard work.

The good thing about that means that there is less competition in the high-end marketplace.

And you will also find that somebody willing to invest that kind of money is a much better customer overall unlike many low value customers who nowadays seem to expect everything for $10!

Take a look at Jon Chow as an example. If you don’t know who John is, he is an extremely successful blogger.

John Chow opted to sell the big products and it paid off big time. In just 2 years, he grew his blog from $0 in revenue to more than $40,000 per MONTH.

To do this, he worked a whopping 2 hours per day.

And he didn’t even do his own selling. Instead, he licensed a phone team to sell big ticket items for him.

If you want to sell big ticket products, I would highly suggest hiring or licensing a professional phone team. They’re going to be able to convert prospects at a much higher rate than you can through online marketing.

Offer a free product that totally ROCKS to get the prospect’s information.

Work on building that relationship and let your phone team do the rest.

And in two years? If you follow in John’s footsteps, maybe you can be making $40,000 a month as well.

These are three very different methods that all have the same end goal – to increase your conversions on everything you sell. Use them wisely and the sky is the limit!

5 Even More Powerful Content Marketing Secrets

As I stated in my previous 2 posts, there is no single magic trick that will skyrocket your blog’s growth overnight. But fortunately for you, there are a lot of little things you can do, that when combined, will lead to steady continuous growth – the kind of growth that seems to take on a life of its own. In this final post in this series I will give you 5 more powerful content marketing secrets so you now have 15 tips that you can use to make the most of your content marketing strategy. If you want to take a look at the other 10 secrets you can find them here and here.

OK, without further ado, here are content marketing secrets 11-15.

11: Build Real Relationships with Your Fellow Marketers

Your fellow bloggers and marketers have the ability to send vast amounts of traffic to your blog. But before this will happen, you’ve first got to build real relationships with them.

This means reaching out and connecting without expectation of receiving anything.

Think of it as making friends because that’s exactly what it is.

If and when they later send you traffic, cool. But in the beginning, focus solely on building the friendship.

So how do you go about becoming friends? Here are a few tips…

Follow them on social media
Engage their content on social media with likes and comments
Share their content on social media
Leave valuable comments on their blog posts
Subscribe to their newsletter
Ask them how you can help them with whatever they’re doing at the moment. For example, you see a blogger talking about their latest product they’re creating and you’re a whiz at video editing – ask if you can help them edit their videos. Yes, for free.
Do interviews with them for your own blogposts, podcasts, products, etc.
Buy their stuff and let them know you bought it
Meet them on Skype, or for coffee, or at a conference

12: Open A Twitter Account, Connect It To Your Website And Get 1,000 Followers Fast

If you don’t already have a Twitter account, go ahead and get one for your blog.

Then focus on getting 1000+ followers in the first week or so. The key here of course is to get targeted followers, not just anybody. You want folks interested in your niche.

You already know who your target audience is. Now make a list of Twitter accounts they are likely to be following.

You can either find the Twitter accounts of your competitors to see who is following them.

Or you can do keyword-based targeting using an app such as: http://narrow.io/, https://statusbrew.com/ or https://www.crowdfireapp.com.

Use the ‘copy followers’ menu to add the Twitter accounts from your list. Follow those people who look like a good match. After a day or two, you can unfollow those who did not follow you using the same app.

13: Use Pinned Tweets To Increase Engagement

You can stick one of your tweets at the top of your profile page. Then when anyone visits your profile, they will see this particular tweet.

Make it a good one – something that points to your best or most recent piece of content.

Doing this is simple: Visit your Twitter profile and select the tweet you want to feature. On the bottom right of the tweet, click the three dots. Select “pin to your profile page.”

Refresh your page and you should see your new pinned tweet.

14: Use Embed Tweets In Your Content For More Engagement

Just one click is all it takes for your readers to engage with your posts when you embed your Twitter updates.

Plus, an embedded tweet is a sign of social engagement, further extending your Twitter reach. And it’s easy to do.

Simply login to your Twitter account, go to updates and select the tweet you’re going to embed.

Click on the three dots at the bottom right of your tweet. From the drop down menu, select “embed tweet” and just copy the code and insert it into your blog post.

15: Think About Using Buzzsumo To Get Your Content Shared (Paid Strategy)

Asking random people to share your content won’t work. But asking people who have already expressed interest in your topic AND shared content on that topic can work really well.

Here’s what you do:

Create a list of articles that are similar or related to your content.

On Buzzsumo, paste the links to each article one-by-one. Click on “View Sharers.” This will show you everyone who shared the content.

Yes, it’s a paid feature, but as of this writing you can try it for free.

Add these people to a list and approach them on Twitter.

Here’s where it gets tricky: If you send out the same tweet to too many people too quickly, it’s going to look like spam. Instead, create variations of your tweet and send them out over a period of time.

Your goal: To make contact with these folks, hopefully to become friends and get them to comment on and share your content.

OK, there you have it. Now you have 15 really powerful tips that can make a really big difference in the efficacy and success of your content marketing efforts. Pick and choose which ones to start with and implement them, and once you have them up and running, try implementing a couple more.

If you do this on a consistent, regular basis, you won’t believe the difference this can make to your business by positioning you as a premium content producer and authority in your niche. And hopefully this authority will increase trust and ultimately end in more sales and profit for your business.

To get the most out of your content marketing you also need to be able to convert all these visitors and readers into buyers and if you would like a handy resource to refer to about increasing your conversions I have a great free checklist that will become an incredibly useful tool for you, and you can get it here.

OK, get to work, implement these strategies and watch your business grow!

Winning Tactics For Increasing Conversions

Increasing conversions begins at home.

Many marketers believe that they have a traffic problem, but this is rarely the case. Traffic is everywhere! You can find free traffic via social media and forums or you can pay for traffic via advertising. However, if your visitors aren’t buying, then traffic isn’t going to help! You need to be able to convert your visitors into buyers and there are a few solid principles that you can follow to increase your chances of this.

By the way, if you want a handy resource to refer to about increasing your conversions I have a great free checklist that will become an incredibly useful tool for you, and you can get it here.

K.I.S.S. i.e. keep it simple

You need to ensure that people who reach your website are able to take immediate action, without being confused in the process. Guide them by the hand and show them exactly what you want them to do; don’t assume anything.

For example, if you are sending people to a landing or squeeze page, you want the incentive offer to be bold, upfront and centre and the opt-in form above the fold, so they don’t have to scroll down to see your opt-in form.

It is absolutely critical to make sure you’re using a powerful headline to grab their immediate attention, and are featuring benefits via bullet-point style so that the information is broken down, easy on the eye and simple to digest.

Here are some other things to bear in mind:

Make Visitors Do Less Work.

If you are sending visitors to a squeeze or landing page, it’s important that you only ask for the information that you absolutely need. The more information you ask for, the less likely they are to opt-in. People guard their personal details jealously and with good reason.

Keep it Simple (again)!

Bearing the previous point in mind, your opt-in form should only ask for their name and email address to minimise objection and increase your opt-in conversion rate. Remember that you can segment your lists later when your subscribers begin to open and respond to your various email campaigns, but to maximize opt-in rates, you need to keep it really simple.

It shouldn’t take your visitor more than a few seconds to fill in the required information, so they can subscribe to your list.

Minimize The Need For Too Much Navigation

Keep the page crisp and clean so that you don’t confuse visitors about what action they should take. A confused visitor will likely leave the page and may never return so you need to make it as straightforward as possible for them. Remove ALL unnecessary words and navigational options.

Spend more time on an awesome headline than on graphics because a compelling headline will capture their attention and convince them to continue reading every single word on your page until you have closed the deal. It really is that powerful and can persuade visitors into becoming buyers, and makes believers out of the sceptics. Simply put, less is more.

Copy What Is Working For Others

Become an avid study of successful landing and squeeze pages from competitors within your niche and save yourself time by designing your opt-in pages around what has proven to work. You really do not need to reinvent the wheel here and if you know a page is working for someone else, then it makes sense to use a similar formula in your offers.

Offer An Irresistible “Bribe”

You need to ensure that you are offering something of clear value that resonates with your target audience. Don’t try to be something to everyone on one squeeze page. Create different offers/pages for different types of potential customers. This way you can really start to segment your lists up front so that you’re really able to connect and communicate with specific customers via your email sequences which are tailored to their specific interests. This can have a massive effect on open rates and engagement as you are writing specifically to their wants/needs/desires/concerns.

OK, you have put all the above into action. Great, so what is next; how can you increase conversion rates even more?

Well, next, you need to understand the importance of a powerful USP and how it’ll set you apart from the competition. And believe me, it’s a game changer.

Do you know what an USP is?

Basically, it’s what will allow you to stand out from your competition so that you’re able to maximize sales and build a brand recognized for value.

Arguably, one of the most important elements of branding is to find your company’s Unique Selling Proposition, or USP.

Some people call this the Unique Selling Point. Either way, your brand needs to offer something that makes you different – something they don’t, can’t or won’t offer – to differentiate you from your competitors. What is it that makes you different or unique? Why should someone choose your company or products over your competitors? You really need to spend time figuring this out and then you need to integrate that USP into your sales copy as well as all other aspects of your sales funnel. It needs to be everywhere, in all aspects of your copy, blog posts etc. so people can see it and (hopefully) resonate with it.

Most likely, your product will already have a USP; your job is to identify what that is, and highlight it in your sales copy and marketing campaigns.

It all begins by evaluating your product objectively. Ask the following questions to help you find its USP:

How can it improve someone’s life?
How can it help your prospect?
What does it offer that other products fail to provide?
Is your product easier to use than the competitions?

Now, it goes without saying that before you even think about creating your USP, you need to know your target audience. Again, here are some questions to get you started:

What is most important to them?
What are they struggling with the most?
How can you truly connect to your target audience?
What is their greatest challenge?

The closer you know your audience, the easier it will be to develop a USP that means something to them. This process will enable you to create an ideal customer avatar; give them a name too! The more you know about this “person”, the better.

There are many different strategies that you can use to create a USP for your product. Direct marketing legend Dan Kennedy uses a specific question that he needs to answer to identify the USP and that question is, “Why should I choose to do business with you versus your competitor?” The very reason that you created a product in the first place could hold the key to defining your USP.

Think about how your product is different than others on the marketplace; how does it add more value? How does it address a question, concern or simplify a process, such as reducing a learning curve, saving your customers time or money?

Your USP will differentiate you from your competition; more than any other aspect of a marketing campaign ever will.

Follow these simple strategies and I can virtually guarantee that your conversions will increase. And this will result in more opt-ins so you will have a bigger list to market to and hopefully more sales and profit for you.

So, get it done! 😉