“Excuse me, do you sell rabbits?” – That’s the question that often comes to mind when I first go over communication collateral, positioning and web strategy with new clients. These are the things that are supposed to win business – to convert website visitors into actual customers.
An adorable little girl walked into a pet shop and asked, ‘Excuse me, do you sell rabbits?’
‘Yes,’ store owner answered, and leaning down to her eye level he asked ‘Would you like a white rabbit or would you prefer to have a soft, fluffy, black rabbit?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t think my python really cares.’
Yes, I know, the joke is really not that funny, but neither is the state of some web sites. Just look at the sites that you find yourself browsing today. In the first 5 seconds can you say what the business is about and what is in it for you? And it’s not surprise, as if positioning and messaging would be easy, if understanding what choices to put in front of customer and what he really needs would be easy, everybody would do things right the first time, and convert like there is not tomorrow. 🙂
Those who operate online businesses have mastered this task, but if you, as many of our The Couple’s Business clients, run an “off-line” business you might feel you just don’t have the time and tools to dive into the complex world of web conversion optimization. You need to interact with clients, fulfill commitments, nurture existing customers, deal with operational challenges, and at the same time take care of your family and make sure that your act is “together”.
I can relate… When I was working for multinationals or technology companies, or today as we manage significant budgets serving our SocialAgenda Media clients, it is easy to hire and manage a team of web ninjas who can monitor the performance of sites, squeeze pages, sales pages etc. But as one or two people running their own small operation and tight on both financial resources and time, it might look like an overwhelming challenge.
Let me share with you a simple PLAN OF ATTACK YOU CAN ADD TO YOUR DAILY SCHEDULE TO TACKLE THE WEB CONVERSION GAME…
It will help you to feel more productive and confident that the web site on which you spent precious dollars, is actually of service to you.
Let me tell you about my daily routine and show you some stuff…
I wake up at 5 am (you don’t have to). I kiss Jan good morning (again, you don’t have to although he likes it 🙂 and make myself a cup of delicious homemade chai tea. As pre-breakfast I have it with brie or blue cheese (a bit challenging to get good selection here in Panama, but gorgeous beaches compensate for this little inconvenience) 🙂
I take my tea and laptop and get comfortable on the balcony acknowledged by roosters that alarm the world about the coming sunrise and disappearance of stars from the sky… While all my browser windows and programs open I have a moment to enjoy the morning breeze and the sound of waves, and… then start digging into my analytics…
If you don’t have Statcounter and Google Analytics setup, do that. I use both as they give me different presentations of the data. I check stats on all my current sites. SocialAgenda Media’s blog produces steady inflow of traffic and I already know readers’ browsing patterns. Some other sites are not on top of my agenda this month, so I just take a glance, to make sure there are no unexpected patterns that might indicate a problem… This month my sole focus is on the Couple’s Business web site, since it’s newly launched (3 weeks) and I’m still learning what our buyers’ journey is.
Every day I try to spot patterns:
- How visitors enter and exit the site
- How much time they spend on which pages
- How they navigate the site travelling from page to page
I don’t like to pass this task to my coordinators or outsource it, as I need to have a better understanding of how I should alter:
- The business model
- The positioning
- The incentives for navigation in the site
The analytics findings will effect:
- Site design
- Site content
- The menu and interlinking of the content
- And even the training programs – the offer
So, based on user behavior that I observe via analytics, almost daily I tweak some elements on the site and see how they affected prospect’s behavior on the site and their conversion into leads.
HERE ARE A FEW EXAMPLES:
We started conversion experiments with insulated videos located at the bottom, and sometimes at the top of blog posts. The videos are not locked – they can be watched, and then, since they are placed inside of a conversion box, users can choose to opt-in to see more videos, read more articles etc…
As a second experiment we added a pop-over lead capture form, and experimented with timing, the point at which it appears on the page.
I noticed that the pop-over caused the time spent on pages to slightly decrease and conversions to increase.
At that point I needed to make a decision, whether I want user to spend more time on the site and explore, or generate more sales leads. I decided that, at this point, my goal is to offer first time visitors the best possible expedience on the site, as well as uninterrupted time for consuming content and getting to know us, our values, our approaches and to consume some of the insights we share on the site.
Then we decided to respond to the success of Jan’s 65 birthday give-away of free coaching sessions and introduce free sample coaching sessions to the Couple’s Business.
That yielded a good inflow of leads, but as we predicted – many from people who are not financially ready for coaching or not ready to commit to the hard work. That is not a problem for us since we have done a lot of pro-bono work in our lives (all healers and teachers can probably relate to that, as we all have a similar goal – to positively impact as many lives as humanly possible, to offer people transformation they need to live happier)… While philanthropy is part of our work, right now the focus is to build a sustainable new businesses that like other businesses we launched, can be run while we travel the world, soaking up life experiences… So, I needed to add a ‘barrier to entry” and accept free coaching requests only from those at least willing to consider engaging with coaches. We don’t require commitment, and as promised, deliver the introductory session for free, but at least the process now weeds out those who are least likely to derive any benefit…
Btw, not sure if anybody noticed but at first I by mistake added the wrong form – enrollment for The Business Academy, which is affordable, yet not free. I hope it was clear that it was a mistake. Please don’t hate me. 🙂
The more detailed form we added obviously decreased the inflow of leads, but allowed us to build a list of more qualified prospects. But hey, if you are curious, nothing prevents you from taking advantage of the offer. Go ahead, signup for the introductory session, take it for a ride while it’s still there 🙂 We definitely will soon drop this method from our sales funnel since it consumes a lot of time, and our goal is leveraging our resources and having enough time for each other and enjoying nature. 🙂
The next test was to try a pop-over that specifically dedicated to the free coaching session giveaway.
Monitoring statistics during 3 days didn’t really lead me to definite conclusion, whether it effects conversion or not, I might still test it, but my feeling is that it’s too early to introduce it for first time users. I believe it will be better if they find it while browsing. So, for now, I took it down, again, to offer a more uninterrupted experience for our first time visitors…
Well, those were the first few experiments that informed us how to tweak our offer and structure the sales funnel.
This morning though I discovered a tweak that SIGNIFICANTLY boosted conversion and increased time on the site.
It’s less about placements, timing, and elements. More about messaging and positioning, in another words – “rabbits” :-). I will share it in one of my next blog posts, as it’s time for breakfast… (Jan is cooking today. Yey! 🙂 ) I will share many other experiments that I played with, and planning to conduct.
Note, for now we have minimum content and don’t buy traffic, we are still in the exploratory stage. Also I didn’t use any paid tools just yet. For now I do exactly what our customers will learn during coaching (after together we complete product “visioning” exercise, product development spec and business modelling). You will learn how to start building online presence for your offline or online businesses – for free at first. You will lean how to do high level testing of all components of the business, and when everything looks more or less validated, upgrade to more advanced tools and implement more advance strategies…
So, if you are interested in a boost in performance for your existing business, need to advance your digital strategies or improve your love relationships, please learn more about our 4 month online coaching program for individuals and couples and enroll at the crazy early birds discount rate (90% off, no kidding :-)) while it’s still available.
