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Episode 211 - How to Increase Your Website's Conversion Rate
871 Plays1 year ago
This is a little bit of a different format as we've done in the past. We published a blog post about increasing your website's conversion rate and are using the podcast episode as an extension of what we publish about on the blog. If you like this format, be sure to let us know so we know to record more podcasts like this one.
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check 'em out at https://daveyandkrista.com/cro-increase-website-conversion-rate/. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
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Transcript
Content Strategy with Lead Magnets
00:00:00
Speaker
And so one of the things that we built into our content creation workflow, like within the outline that we use, we call it a content brief. This outline that we use that then turns into a blog post, we make sure that we have a lead focus. And what we mean by that is we make sure that we tie that post somehow into some sort of lead magnet that we already have running.
Podcast Introduction with Davy Jones
00:00:25
Speaker
You're listening to the Brands That Book Show, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs who want practical tips and strategies for building engaging brands, crafting high converting websites, and creating reliable lead generation systems for their businesses. I'm your host, Davy Jones, co-founder of two agencies, a brand and website design agency, Davy & Krista, and the digital advertising agency, Till Agency. And I ask questions so you can find answers.
Boosting Website Conversion Rates
00:00:54
Speaker
Today, we published a blog post about increasing a website's conversion rate or website conversion rate optimization, CRO. We thought it would be fun to record a podcast episode on how we're implementing some of the ideas that we discussed on the blog on our own website.
00:01:09
Speaker
So it's a little bit of a different format than we've done in the past. And if you like this format where we share a little bit more about the experiments we're doing on our own website and use the podcast episode as sort of an extension of what we publish on the blog, then be sure to let us know so that we know to record more episodes like this one.
00:01:25
Speaker
Also, if you are looking to take your brand to another level, take your website to another level sometime this winter, then be sure to check out our line of stunning, semi-custom brands, or easy to customize show it in WordPress website designs, all of which can be found on our website over at davianchrista.com forward slash shop. And if you're looking for a more done for you option, then be sure to reach out and we'll send over some information about custom brand and website design.
00:01:54
Speaker
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check them out at davianchrista.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts. Now, on to the episode.
Davy's Sauna and Ice Bath Experience
00:02:07
Speaker
All right, it is the end of the week, but I'm still feeling unjust. And why is that? I know, but tell more listeners. Because I've unlocked just a absolute new level to my morning routine. The three hour long morning routine. It's not a three hour long morning routine, but I did sauna this morning and then do an ice bath right after the sauna. It is exhilarating. It's like subject your body to 150 degree temperatures and then 50 degree temperatures. Sounds like torture.
00:02:36
Speaker
The Sana is enjoyable for me. I don't mind heat. A lot of our friends make fun of me because I will go running in the hottest part of the day in the middle of the summer. That's what I prefer. The heat index will get 110 where we live. I love it. The cold plunge is more challenging for me, but I love how I feel after I get out of the cold plunge.
00:02:57
Speaker
I realized though, as I say all these things out loud, I am a very easy guy to make fun of. Yeah. I literally heard this podcast the other day and their banter starting the podcast, they were making fun of pickle ballers, which is one of your favorite hobbies and cold planners. I'm like, this is Davey. Like Davey is this person that they are making fun of. And they were not even making fun of like the same person. They just made fun of those two things. And I'm like, this is Davey's life.
00:03:21
Speaker
I check all the boxes. Check all the boxes. Very hateable hobbies. All right. I love them though. And I'm feeling great. And that's good because we're about to have, I think a very packed conversation. Okay. All right. So what are we talking about
Debunking Conversion Rate Myths
00:03:34
Speaker
today?
00:03:34
Speaker
We are talking about website conversion. We are talking about conversion rate optimization, sometimes called CRO. Oh my goodness. Anyways, we are talking about how can you increase the conversion rate on your website? And there's a lot to unpack there. And I think, one, there's just a lot of bad information out there. As I was putting together our own post, and I was doing the different SEO research involved, whenever we write a post, I noticed that just a lot of the stuff that ranks for this topic, very bland.
00:04:03
Speaker
I just think of it as kind of a boring topic.
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah, and it focuses, well, I mean, it's, I don't think boring is the right word, but a lot of the advice is like, well, increase your page speed, you know? And it's like, yeah, website speed correlates with conversion rate, you know, the slower a website loads, that can hurt your conversion rate. I often think that's sort of a red herring, you know? It's like, don't get me wrong, website speed is important, all right? But I think for a lot of people who are struggling with conversion, a lot of times, you know, one day, like if I'm asked to do a review and they're like, I think it's the website speed,
00:04:35
Speaker
I'd say nine times out of 10, I'm like, I don't think it's the website speed. Right. You know, website speed is an easy thing to blame things on because it's quantifiable. You can use a test online and it's going to kick out a score, you know, and oftentimes it's going to be like a letter score like grades, you know, like ABCDEF, right? And so it's my website, it's an E, I'm probably not converting.
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, and so that's probably the reason. I think a lot of times though, when I'm actually doing a website review, it's like, well, the design here is just off. And when I say design, I don't mean just the aesthetics or the imagery. I mean like how the imagery works together with the copy, you know? The language is just not compelling enough on a website.
00:05:11
Speaker
So anyways, the blog post that corresponds with this episode covers a lot of that stuff, right? You'll see website page speed on there, but it's down at the bottom of the list. And I think I even mentioned that in the blog post, but definitely take a look at that. That'll give you a lot of ideas for different things that you can do to potentially try to increase, you know, different conversion rates across your website. What I want to do in this episode though, in, I want to try to do this within 20 minutes. All right.
00:05:37
Speaker
I want to talk about some of the things that we're doing on our website to try to improve our website's conversion rate. And I want to talk about what it even means to try to improve, what do we mean by website conversion rate? I think that's probably a good place to start.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think so too. So basically, one of the problems with talking about a website's conversion rate is that there are a lot of conversions that can happen on a website. When you talk about a conversion, what we're talking about is getting somebody to take a desired action. So whatever action it is that you desire people to take on your website, that is a conversion or can be a conversion.
00:06:11
Speaker
So, inquiring, purchasing, downloading a free guide in exchange for an email, that's what you mean? Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. And typically when we're talking about conversion rates, we're talking about, you know, getting somebody to download a free guide, getting somebody to inquire, or getting somebody to purchase, right? Right. Those I'd say are like kind of the big three.
00:06:27
Speaker
However, you might have smaller conversions that are maybe a little bit harder to measure and also maybe not as worth your time to measure. Like on your about page, the conversion on your about page might be getting somebody to then click to your services page, right? So you can really take a very granular look at these things, but any desired action you're hoping for, that can be a conversion, okay? What I wanna talk about those are those big three that we just mentioned.
00:06:55
Speaker
You know, getting somebody to download a guide or something comparable and give you an email address for your email list or to inquire, you know, and I'd say those are two very similar actions there and then getting somebody to purchase. Okay. All right. So I thought it'd be fun. Just talk about some of the things we're doing on our website, some of the things that we're thinking through. Hopefully that spurs on ideas for you all listening. And if people have questions about this, I'd love to do future episodes on it as well. If people like this format where we're talking through some of our own tests.
00:07:25
Speaker
Okay, that sounds good. Cool. So let's see, where should we start? I think maybe just talking about some of our goals. Okay. You know, one of our big goals always is to increase the number of leads we're getting. So that's not just people who are inquiring about our web and brand design services. That definitely counts as a lead.
00:07:43
Speaker
So if you're a service-based business, like a photographer, you're probably trying to get more people to inquire. And not just more people to inquire, but more qualified people to inquire. So that's something we're always trying to do. But we're always also trying to build our email list, right? Because email lists are just one of the most consistent, just a marketing and sales channel that you can count on.
00:08:06
Speaker
Would you say this is true for every business across the field? Because I feel like sometimes when I'm working, oftentimes when I'm working one-on-one with clients, I have a hard time convincing them to start a mailing list. Would you say though that you have a hard time convincing service-based businesses in particular? Yes. And would you say it's mostly wedding industry businesses?
00:08:25
Speaker
It's both. Like today I was trying to send a client an example of a portrait photographer lead magnet and I went back through several portrait photographer websites that we've designed recently and I think all of those people had said, no, I don't want to do lead gen right now. And so I just couldn't find a good one. I would say it's definitely harder for some businesses than others. It's a wedding industry. The challenge is that people are only engaged for so long.
00:08:47
Speaker
people still use email lists successfully. And if you can get it working, again, that's awesome because you just have sort of this automated way to nurture leads. And hopefully, I think for a lot of people that we know, that turns into more inquiries for them. Portrait photographers
Email List Building Value
00:09:03
Speaker
though have no excuses because portrait photographers, I mean, let's say you are a family photographer, like families probably want new photos every year or at least every few years. Some families probably want new photos multiple times a year.
00:09:15
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, so if you had like a thousand person mailing list, you could probably sell your services continually. Yeah. Especially if you're doing like mini sessions, but even if you're not doing mini sessions, even if you just have a certain amount of sessions, you take a month, right? That is a built in list of people you can email. You don't have to wait for them to email you, right? You can be emailing them saying, Hey, this is my availability.
00:09:35
Speaker
and you can be emailing them just kind of the latest and greatest around portrait photography. And yeah, it's gonna take a little bit of brainstorming to figure out what that looks like for a portrait photographer specifically. But again, I mean, I just think our email list is I think the most valuable channel for us. And we have Instagram and we do all the other stuff too. I'm not saying those things aren't important. But anyways, we're always trying to improve the number of leads on our website. So what are some ways that we're trying to do that right now?
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, so one of the ways that we're trying to do that is through our blog. Our blog posts are some of the most visited pages on our website. We blog regularly. We rank well for a lot of the searches that we target.
00:10:20
Speaker
which is good because we teach on SEO and that's something like whenever I write a post, I go through the process. I go through a process of trying to do the SEO research. Even if the post I'm writing, I know it might be a long shot to rank for. Sometimes I do create posts that are just helpful and I know they're not going to rank well or whatever. But anyways, point being, we have a lot of people who visit our blog.
00:10:42
Speaker
And so of these people visiting our blog, we're just trying to think through, okay, how can we get some of these people to take the next step and sign up for our email list, right? And so one of the things that we built into our content creation workflow, like within the outline that we use, we call it a content brief. This outline that we use that then turns into a blog post, we make sure that we have a lead focus. And what we mean by that
00:11:08
Speaker
is we make sure that we tie that post somehow into some sort of lead magnet that we already have running. So if, for instance, the blog post is about website design or improving your website's conversion rate, then the lead magnet that we're going to promote throughout that post is going to be our website conversion assessment, which is a free quiz that people can take that will give them a detailed report on how they can improve their website.
00:11:37
Speaker
And I think in the past, it was sort of an afterthought. It was like, well, if people like our blog enough, then maybe they'll go to some of this other stuff. Or we would sort of haphazardly have popups on our website that would promote whatever kind of the latest lead magnet was. So we're just trying to get a little bit more targeted with the specific lead magnet that we put in front of people and how we put it in front of people.
00:11:57
Speaker
And we are now embedding that in the middle of the blog post, correct? Yeah, so we're doing a few different things here. You'll notice that throughout our blog post, you can go and it's embedded in, you know, typically like a third of the way down and then at the very bottom, right? So there's multiple calls to action for it.
00:12:13
Speaker
So we're trying that. What we're going to test that against are going to be pop-ups and different variations of pop-ups as
Optimizing Blog for Lead Generation
00:12:19
Speaker
well. So one pop-up will just pop up when you scroll a certain amount of the way through an article. We'll probably test that against exit intents. So when you go to click out of a page, a pop-up showing up before you exit the page.
00:12:32
Speaker
So one of the things you'll notice though is that we're not doing all of that at once. And the reason we're not doing all of that at once is because we want to get solid data on how each of these things convert before we run a million tests. And we just don't have time to run a million tests at a time. Yeah. And it might be kind of annoying for our visitors to have that many pop-ups and things happening. For sure. Like all of a sudden you have the embed and then you have a pop-up when you scroll and then you have the exit intent.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yes, that would be very overwhelming. So we're trying to keep those sorts of things in mind as well. But another thing that we're trying to do to increase the number of leads is at the very top of blog posts, we have a call to action now. So it's a little note and it says something like, hey, thanks for reading this post. If you're interested in brand or website design, click here. If you are interested in, I don't know. Easy to customize brand and website templates and then the links to our shop.
00:13:22
Speaker
Exactly. And so we just started running this, you know, I was saying like the last month or so. So time will tell whether this has increased the number of leads that we're getting. But what we've ensured is that anybody who lands on our website, first thing, you know, hopefully they see is a nice note from us. And two, they understand exactly what it is that we do and offer. Right. You know, and so just a little bit of a gentle push, you know, for people who might be interested in that.
00:13:49
Speaker
service, even if maybe the blog posts are reading isn't directly correlated. And if you were a service provider, like solely a service provider, do you think you could do some of these same things that we're testing? Oh, 100%. You know, I think like if I was a wedding photographer, for instance, like you could put that a similar note at the top of your blog and say, Hey, this session features, I don't know, you might have to change it for each session. But I was thinking what you could do is something along the lines of like,
00:14:17
Speaker
This wedding was shot at the Chesapeake Bay Beach Club, one of my absolute favorite venues. If you're also getting married on the waterfront, you know, reach out here or something like that. Could you put that in the blog post text or do you think you'd have a separate call out? Like we do separate call out at the very top.
00:14:33
Speaker
I'm like visually, I'm thinking technically how to make that work for each blog post. Well, you'd have to update it for each blog post. Like right now for ours, it's the same across the board. Right. So you could do something similar to that. But you know, if you can get a little bit more personal like that, you know, or it's like, hey, interested in just Bay Beach Club where this session was shot. Because a lot of times what happened, like check out this page that just features Chesapeake Bay Beach Club weddings. Right. You know, because a lot of times like the posts that show up, you know, I'm thinking back to our wedding photography business.
00:15:03
Speaker
like we'd have a blog post that ranked for a given venue. So it'd be cool to call people to see all the other work we've done that we wanna feature at that venue. I know your designer wheels are turning. Yeah, they're like, this might be hard to do it for each blog post. I'm thinking on it though.
00:15:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But I definitely think a surface-based business can do it. Like, anybody could take that idea and apply it to their business. Right. Yeah. All right. So that was kind of increasing the number of leads in a place where we know people visit, right? And so basically the thought process there was like, what pages are people visiting? Oh, wow. You know, lots of people visit our blog on a monthly basis. How can we try to pick up some more leads there? Right. So that's kind of the thought process over on that side.
00:15:46
Speaker
Now, again, thinking to are just conversion rates in general.
Enhancing Lead Magnet Landing Pages
00:15:50
Speaker
For us, it's important to have an understanding of your customer journey. What happens, I think, for us or what we see is that people learn about us either through the podcast or the blog or whatever. They visit our website. Then from there, they sign up for our email list and then at some point purchase or book our services.
00:16:10
Speaker
So trying to look, you know, sort of at the beginning of the customer journey or towards the top of the funnel, right? Where, for instance, that, you know, people going from maybe having just heard of us to actually signing up for our email list, you know, taking a look at the individual landing pages where that happens, I think, is another opportunity to improve your conversion rate. For us, we have a lead magnet right now called the website conversion assessment.
00:16:35
Speaker
And one of the things that we've realized is that this lead magnet, it's more expensive to run than some of our other lead magnets. And what I mean is we run ads to a lot of our different lead magnets and the cost per conversion is a little higher.
00:16:51
Speaker
But the end conversion, like the likelihood that that person purchases is higher as well. So it's worth it to spend a little bit more on each lead. However, the conversion rate of the landing page itself is low.
00:17:06
Speaker
So for the website conversion assessment, if you wanted to take this free quiz, you would go to the landing page, you would click on like start quiz, you put your email in and you take the quiz, right? The conversion rate of that landing page, like how many people start and finish the quiz is about 32%.
00:17:21
Speaker
30% is, I think, on the low end of what I would like to see for a freebie. Now, it's a longer quiz, so that makes a little more sense than it would be on the lower end, but I think we could get this up to at least 40%. So that's one of the other things we're working on right now, is A-B testing a landing page for this conversion assessment, for this free quiz. Because if we can increase the conversion rate, if we increase the number of people who take this quiz rate, then theoretically, if the conversion rate of the people who purchase is the same,
00:17:50
Speaker
then we should also be able to increase our bottom line revenue. So that's something else that we're working on right now. But you'll, again, just kind of unpack our thought process there. It's one, noticing that we have a lead magnet that's doing a good job of converting people and then figuring out how we can improve that thing.
00:18:09
Speaker
And it's not, I think testing different lead magnets is important and we're gonna talk about that in a minute as well. But I think people are so quick to say, oh, this isn't working quite right, so I'm gonna go do something else. I'm gonna try something else entirely. When really at the end of the day, maybe tweaking a few things within this landing page could make the difference.
00:18:28
Speaker
And so when you say that, are you tweaking like a headline, like the copy, the image? Like, are you making those tweaks? Is that what you're referring to? Yeah. And so this is actually where the blog post that corresponds with this episode really comes in handy. So if you're looking for a list of things that you can do, I would check out that blog post because some of the things that we're looking at are one, the hero spot. All right. What does the hero spot say? Is it as benefit focused as it can be?
00:18:53
Speaker
Does it really drive home why somebody would want to improve the conversion rate on their website? Like you said at the beginning of this episode, when you hear conversion rates optimization, your eyes just sort of glaze over, right? But if we start talking about like increasing the number of inquiries that you're getting, increasing the number of sales you're making, maybe that sounds a little more exciting to you.
00:19:12
Speaker
I don't know. So you can A-B test those things. We're talking about potentially, you know, boosting trust signals on the page. So for instance, like right now, I don't think we have any testimonials on that landing page. Could we add some social proof on that landing page that makes it more likely that somebody would go through this quiz? So those are some of the things that we're testing on the landing page. And actually we have a YouTube video and it's actually a review.
00:19:36
Speaker
that a past client asked me to do of one of their, I think, webinar registration pages. I highly recommend checking that out. I just think there's a lot of good information in there. It's about a year old at this point, but I think the information is still awesome. Yeah, it is a good video. Cool. So that's one other thing that we're doing, I guess, on just kind of a very specific scale, like just looking at this one lead magnet landing page, how can we improve the conversion rate of that?
00:20:01
Speaker
Something else that we're doing, though, is testing different lead magnets. Like I said, one of the things that we noticed about the website conversion assessment is that when we run Facebook ads to it, the cost per lead, the cost per somebody taking that quiz, is a little high. Higher than a lot of our other lead magnets that we run. Is there another lead magnet that we can make that would be comparable to the website conversion assessment?
00:20:29
Speaker
But also help us cut our lead costs maybe in half. Because that would put us in a really good spot. Because again, we'd be able to spend, if we spent the same amount of money, we theoretically be able to get maybe double the leads. And that's double the people going into this funnel and then hopefully double the people converting at the end. Maybe not double. But again, as long as conversion rates remain the same, the percentages at least, then that should increase our bottom line revenue.
00:20:56
Speaker
Right. So that's something else we're doing. One of the lead magnets I won't give away yet because we still need to build it. So after we build it, I'll report back on this. You mean me, right? Yes, we are waiting on you.
00:21:11
Speaker
Again, another lead magnet that we're building is an SEO lead magnet. And what we're going to do is actually that content brief I was talking about that helps me organize my thoughts for a blog post. It helps me in the research process. It helps me create an outline. It makes the writing process so much easier. I'm actually going to give that away.
00:21:31
Speaker
And so what we're interested in is we notice that some people, they are interested in the SEO stuff, like the SEO content that we put out, but it really drives them to get a new website, which is interesting to me. You would think that, okay, somebody downloads an SEO lead magnet, they then go buy the SEO course. And obviously, that's kind of the end product at the end of that funnel.
00:21:54
Speaker
But one thing we notice is that people, it also increases likely that people will also buy a website design. So that's something else that we're going to test and see how that performs against the website conversion assessment. Anyways, anything else we should cover? I don't think so. I feel like that was a lot. You know, hopefully you find that interesting.
Listener Feedback on Podcast Format
00:22:11
Speaker
We would be interested in your feedback on this episode for a number of reasons. One, because a lot of times when we record podcast episodes, there is a corresponding blog post, not always.
00:22:22
Speaker
And I'd say a lot of times the content is fairly similar from the blog post to the episode. And I know part of the reason we do that is because some people would just prefer to listen to it and some people would prefer something they can read or skim quickly. So that's why we do it that way.
00:22:39
Speaker
it'd be nice too just to talk about some of the other things sort of related to those topics, right? So if you like us talking about some of the experiments we're doing, some of the ways that we're thinking through things like conversion rate across our own website, then let us know. We'd love that feedback because we'll do more of this in the future. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.
00:22:59
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the brands of bookshelf. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, and sharing this episode with others. For show notes and other resources, head on over to DavianChrista.com.