Peep Laja from Conversionxl.com argues that Optimizing your conversions is better than just getting more traffic! Incredibly actionable advice
Today we're pleased to chat with Peep Laja, an expert and leader in the lucrative field of conversion optimization.
The science of testing is knowing how to prioritize tests, so that you're efficient with your time. Running tests with a specific hypothesis rather than just changing button colors help you learn more about your customers.
In the instance of a checkout page, you might hypothesize your users are concerned with security so you might add testimonials, credit card and security logos to gain credibility. On the other hand, taking that strategy too far could create anxiety for the customer with security being an issue.
If the goal of your website is to sell, then that should drive all of your decision making. Instead of just making the logo bigger, or changing colors, designers need to be keen of the objective while making decisions to drive sales and not just aesthetics. Without a good hypothesis or test, you won't be able to learn and are likely to get discouraged.
A common test that everyone should run on their site is the primary message and value proposition users see. Another thing to look at one your site is the desired action you want users to take, versus the potential distractions on the page. For instance Amazon's checkout page removed nearly everything except the checkout button including the site's global navigation.
Peep explains that a common mistake sites run into is the paradox of choice. Keeping the call to action focused and simple with minimal distractions is difficult but important. Too often we run into sites pushing their call to action above the value proposition. Instead, it's a better approach to offer value down the page or further into your sales funnel.
Using free tools like Google Analytics is sufficient enough to track your sales funnels and goal conversions. Most people look at their vanity metrics, but analytics are a tool to get insight on "what" is going on with your visitors. As an optimizer, you have to figure out the "why".
For instance you could look for conversions segmented by browser and device. If you see zero goals achieved for a segment, there's a chance you have a bug preventing users from completing the action on your site in an older browser or platform you're not supporting.
A tip is to attach a dollar value to your goals even if there isn't one directly. Then you can use reporting to find high traffic pages that aren't converting, and likewise the pages that are successful you might learn from.
Peep explains how we can look at our retention data to glean over time what types of conversations or content that could be scaring people away.
We share an appreciation for 37 Signal's book ReWork, and Peep reminds us how they were able to format it in a way that draws readers in with one page chapters.
Smoking Hot Coffee is currently shot and produced fairly raw, which might be attractive to some of our audience, but too long and uncut for others. We'll continue to evolve, and hopefully test our assumptions strategically.
Here's two ways he suggests to find a great topic to start a blog post:
1. Find something you are so passionate about, that you want to tell everyone who doesn't know about it's awesomeness.
2. Research something that I don't know about, but want to learn about, becoming a teacher and presenting your findings. The best way to learn is to teach.
Posts hundreds of words in length are generally cheaper, easier to write and less valuable than someone who's spent time organizing a few thousand words.
When Peep struggled with the topic of pricing, he decided to do the research. What would become his most popular post, started by reading a book and compiling research and scientific material.
Peep specifies that he has a policy not to claim anything with out backing and a link to credible sources. Maintaining credibility is a must to facilitate sharing.
The post he wrote about pricing was so informative to the internet audience, that it reached the HackerNews homepage three times! When Tim Ferris tweeted about the post, he saw 15k new visitors! Clearly the success of his blog wasn't an accident and his strategy is focused.
Peep tell us he's lucky to have the support of his wife, who encouraged him when he was uncertain about writing a blog in his second language.
And while he saw tons of SEO and marketing blogs, there wasn't anyone talking a lot about conversion optimization. Instead of an uphill battle, he found a gap where he would soon become an expert.
The focused approach of succeeding at a primary target, then allows you to expand into other areas building on what already works. Both the "4 hour work week" and Gary Vaynerchuk have demonstrated this powerful approach.
He's modest about only starting blogging a year and a half ago, and describes himself as a "spring chicken" looking for ways to help entrepreneurs.
The conference isn't your usual crowd, but instead less than 100 people with real face to face conversations on the smart way to do conversion optimization. A perfect opportunity for CEO's and those looking to drive more sales online.
When unbounce doesn't fit your needs, or you don't want to do it yourself, and you need conversions, use should use Landing Page Makeover which develops landing pages using the scientific method.
Usability testing and asking customers who are looking for a landing page to talk over their first view of the page are useful. Integrating live chat and support tools can also be helpful but depend on the product or service being sold.
We're familiar with really long sales pages found during the early days of the web, which must be effective, because they're still common and often successful.
Long form sales copy is great when you have one thing to sell. The thought sequence of the customer lends itself to storytelling. A good single product page contains all of the sales material, testimonials, and rebuttals to common objections customers might have, similar to a good sales pitch.
Rather than focusing on seeding content onto social networks, it's important to make sure that it can stand on it's own quality. Offering sharing buttons for the top social channels is good, but giving too many options creates the paradox of choice.
Now that the blog has 100,000 readers a month, the audience is growing itself without any paid traffic. This is a great way to announce his upcoming conference by posting to the Conversion XL blog and e-mailing 9,000 subscribers.
The subscribe form on the Conversion XL homepage converts to roughly 8-9%, wow! Visitors to the blog pages convert at up to 2% using an elegant interface at the bottom of the page. Using a scroll triggered box converts better than fixed position alternatives.
It pains us to hear that RSS isn't a focus, in the shadow of the Google Reader shutdown, but email is a good substitute. There's clearly a massive audience of return readers to the blog each
month.
We can tell that Peep enjoys the game and science of testing hypothesis with creative experiments. He's clearly focused and conveys a culture of making people more money using a data driven approach. It's great that other's have the opportunity to learn through his blog and upcoming conference.
Thanks to Peep for enduring our show and inspiring us to convert!
ConversionXL http://conversionxl.com/
The Need to Optimize
Peep runs a consultancy agency of ten people, to help companies make more money by turning existing traffic into dollars. Previously he's built a software as service startup, working in real estate, non-profit fundraising and saw an opportunity while working at an SEO company in Panama. There, he saw clients happy with additional traffic, but weren't getting what they needed, more sales. Since then, about five years ago, Peep has been optimizing conversion and making people more money.Know your Audience
Quality traffic sources are important. People who StumbleUpon your site aren't likely to convert. You won't be selling farm equipment to the HackerNews audience. Search engine traffic is relevant, but difficult to break through the incumbents.Profit / Marketing Spend = Efficiency
Instead of simply throwing more eyeballs at the problem, how do you strategically approach optimization? Peep says design is crucial, but often left to the highest paid person's opinion. And while heuristics and best practices can be a good starting point, its dangerous not to have your own hypothesis. Experimenting is the best way to test assumptions and learn from the results.The science of testing is knowing how to prioritize tests, so that you're efficient with your time. Running tests with a specific hypothesis rather than just changing button colors help you learn more about your customers.
In the instance of a checkout page, you might hypothesize your users are concerned with security so you might add testimonials, credit card and security logos to gain credibility. On the other hand, taking that strategy too far could create anxiety for the customer with security being an issue.
Conversion Optimization is the Future
Organic search engine optimization is impossible for new companies trying to rank a keyword, pay-per-click is too expensive these days, and the design is getting better across the board. The best way to approach this environment is to focus on making the most of the existing traffic. Design is one of the first things you can do to improve your conversions.If the goal of your website is to sell, then that should drive all of your decision making. Instead of just making the logo bigger, or changing colors, designers need to be keen of the objective while making decisions to drive sales and not just aesthetics. Without a good hypothesis or test, you won't be able to learn and are likely to get discouraged.
A common test that everyone should run on their site is the primary message and value proposition users see. Another thing to look at one your site is the desired action you want users to take, versus the potential distractions on the page. For instance Amazon's checkout page removed nearly everything except the checkout button including the site's global navigation.
Sales Funnel Goals
Leading a page with a large visual can be a helpful way to retain a user when they land on your page.Peep explains that a common mistake sites run into is the paradox of choice. Keeping the call to action focused and simple with minimal distractions is difficult but important. Too often we run into sites pushing their call to action above the value proposition. Instead, it's a better approach to offer value down the page or further into your sales funnel.
Using free tools like Google Analytics is sufficient enough to track your sales funnels and goal conversions. Most people look at their vanity metrics, but analytics are a tool to get insight on "what" is going on with your visitors. As an optimizer, you have to figure out the "why".
For instance you could look for conversions segmented by browser and device. If you see zero goals achieved for a segment, there's a chance you have a bug preventing users from completing the action on your site in an older browser or platform you're not supporting.
A tip is to attach a dollar value to your goals even if there isn't one directly. Then you can use reporting to find high traffic pages that aren't converting, and likewise the pages that are successful you might learn from.
Tracking Engagement
Amul brings up our conversation and retention of our podcast content and how we might improve. We track our audience drop off and have been making assumptions as to why they might not be staying for the entire video.Peep explains how we can look at our retention data to glean over time what types of conversations or content that could be scaring people away.
We share an appreciation for 37 Signal's book ReWork, and Peep reminds us how they were able to format it in a way that draws readers in with one page chapters.
Smoking Hot Coffee is currently shot and produced fairly raw, which might be attractive to some of our audience, but too long and uncut for others. We'll continue to evolve, and hopefully test our assumptions strategically.
Advantages of Long Form Blog Posting
Peep is notorious for his epic long blog posts. Full of sub headlines, bullet points and images, people can't help but share his valuable content. Short blog posts are popular because it's easy to do. Posting something packed full of organized content and media stands out.Here's two ways he suggests to find a great topic to start a blog post:
1. Find something you are so passionate about, that you want to tell everyone who doesn't know about it's awesomeness.
2. Research something that I don't know about, but want to learn about, becoming a teacher and presenting your findings. The best way to learn is to teach.
Posts hundreds of words in length are generally cheaper, easier to write and less valuable than someone who's spent time organizing a few thousand words.
Quality Content
Just throwing words at the post isn't a magic bullet for success. Distilling your thoughts, passion and research into a clean blog post requires time and effort.When Peep struggled with the topic of pricing, he decided to do the research. What would become his most popular post, started by reading a book and compiling research and scientific material.
Peep specifies that he has a policy not to claim anything with out backing and a link to credible sources. Maintaining credibility is a must to facilitate sharing.
The post he wrote about pricing was so informative to the internet audience, that it reached the HackerNews homepage three times! When Tim Ferris tweeted about the post, he saw 15k new visitors! Clearly the success of his blog wasn't an accident and his strategy is focused.
Courage to Blog
We admire Conversion XL's strategic success and Peep makes it look easy. However, he had obstacles to overcome before starting.Peep tell us he's lucky to have the support of his wife, who encouraged him when he was uncertain about writing a blog in his second language.
And while he saw tons of SEO and marketing blogs, there wasn't anyone talking a lot about conversion optimization. Instead of an uphill battle, he found a gap where he would soon become an expert.
The focused approach of succeeding at a primary target, then allows you to expand into other areas building on what already works. Both the "4 hour work week" and Gary Vaynerchuk have demonstrated this powerful approach.
Another Experiment
We're really looking forward to what Peep has up his sleeves with a conversion optimization conference, events and educational series.He's modest about only starting blogging a year and a half ago, and describes himself as a "spring chicken" looking for ways to help entrepreneurs.
The conference isn't your usual crowd, but instead less than 100 people with real face to face conversations on the smart way to do conversion optimization. A perfect opportunity for CEO's and those looking to drive more sales online.
When unbounce doesn't fit your needs, or you don't want to do it yourself, and you need conversions, use should use Landing Page Makeover which develops landing pages using the scientific method.
Dog Food
We ask how they're optimizing their own site. They use a control page, a qualifier variable, measure the success of a longer page vs a three step process. The tool they're using for split testing is visual website optimizer.Usability testing and asking customers who are looking for a landing page to talk over their first view of the page are useful. Integrating live chat and support tools can also be helpful but depend on the product or service being sold.
We're familiar with really long sales pages found during the early days of the web, which must be effective, because they're still common and often successful.
Long form sales copy is great when you have one thing to sell. The thought sequence of the customer lends itself to storytelling. A good single product page contains all of the sales material, testimonials, and rebuttals to common objections customers might have, similar to a good sales pitch.
Getting the Ball Rolling
Peep started to put one and one together with his shared passion and pain pricing products, with a gap he saw in the HackerNews community on the topic. Keeping that audience in mind helped him find the opportunity to gain interest in his blog.Rather than focusing on seeding content onto social networks, it's important to make sure that it can stand on it's own quality. Offering sharing buttons for the top social channels is good, but giving too many options creates the paradox of choice.
Now that the blog has 100,000 readers a month, the audience is growing itself without any paid traffic. This is a great way to announce his upcoming conference by posting to the Conversion XL blog and e-mailing 9,000 subscribers.
What's your E-mail Address?
We feel like email is the best way to keep in touch with people between all of the changes to blogs and social networks, and wonder how Conversion XL is trying to collect more newsletter subscribers.The subscribe form on the Conversion XL homepage converts to roughly 8-9%, wow! Visitors to the blog pages convert at up to 2% using an elegant interface at the bottom of the page. Using a scroll triggered box converts better than fixed position alternatives.
Retaining Readers & Favorite Subscription Channels
Jeff want's to know the best way to retain a massive flow of incoming traffic, but Peep surprisingly tells us that hackers don't hang around, but their influence draws in a broader crowd than just hackers. TLDR.It pains us to hear that RSS isn't a focus, in the shadow of the Google Reader shutdown, but email is a good substitute. There's clearly a massive audience of return readers to the blog each
month.
The Thrill of Running Experiments!
Amul brings up the fact the blog's efforts must be bringing in like minded clients. Customers who need his expertise call Peep and he is able to put a clause in the contract to have the final say in the design. We share his pains and value on the importance of design choices.We can tell that Peep enjoys the game and science of testing hypothesis with creative experiments. He's clearly focused and conveys a culture of making people more money using a data driven approach. It's great that other's have the opportunity to learn through his blog and upcoming conference.
Thanks to Peep for enduring our show and inspiring us to convert!
ConversionXL http://conversionxl.com/