Here’s the transcript from the presentation:
Hi there! My name is Dan Norris from WP Curve.
I’m going to be running through 6 conversion killers for websites. I’m doing this as a presentation for BoostSuite.com.
Now in this presentation I’ll be talking through basically features of websites that make it harder for people to convert. And when I talk about a conversion, generally I’m talking about email opt-in but it could be applied to whatever else you want people to do on your website.
So number one I’ve got here is not having compelling opt-in bait.
Now, some established websites don’t have to have bait to get people to opt-in to their emails but generally when you’re starting out, and generally for most businesses, it makes more sense to give people a reason to opt-in to your site and give something away in return for their opt-in.
So I’ll show an example here. KISSMetrics is a good example. If you look at the content they’re providing on their site, they’re giving away a whole bunch of stuff. This one here is the one I’d like to point you to, “The fastest ways to get traffic, signups, and paying customers”, and this is a SaaS bundle and if you click that they actually take you to a landing page which I’ll talk about later and they’re giving away something that’s really valuable that has a whole bunch of free stuff in there for people in their target market and that would be something that I put my email address in for.
If it just said, “subscribe to my emails”, I mean if they’re KISSMetrics maybe I’ll do that because they’re so well known and they’ve got such a strong brand, but for most other websites I wouldn’t be putting my email address in just for that.
So number two I’ve got here is having poor design, and again, I could use any of the examples here to talk about design but, I guess conversions is all about convincing someone that you’re trustworthy for them to give you their email address and they should take things to the next stage.
Having bad design is a big trust killer. Design can be really simple like the example I have here is Help Scout, which is just a really nice, simple, clean design. You can see beautiful images. These images are specific to their blog posts. They’re not just some random clip art. Really beautiful, original images. Really simple, clean interface. Only two things over in this right-hand sidebar so clutter is a really big killer of conversions when it comes to design. Really beautiful buttons. Simple. Just really clean and elegant design.
And this site is always going to convert better than the site that’s ugly, where the sidebar is filled with clutter and that kind of thing. So use a really nice theme or get a really professional custom design if you can and that’s going to help your conversions. If you’ve got really poor, really old school design and non-responsive, all of those things you would expect from a modern website then that’s going to kill your conversions.
Number three I’ve got here is having weak copy. This is really just about having copy that really doesn’t encourage people to sign up.
The best example I can give you here is QuickSprout.com which is Neil Patel’s blog. If you have a look at the copy he uses on these opt-ins, it’s really quite powerful so, “Neil helped us grow to 500 million page views a month” and he’s got people on there that are well known that have got them saying directly this is the result of what you’ll get. “Neil increased TechCrunch traffic by 30%”, so this is really compelling copy. “Free course that will double your traffic in 30 days, secret bonus valued at $300 so it’s pretty aggressive sort of copy.
It’s not just “sign up for my emails”. So I guess you need to think about who your target market is, what are the words that appeal to them, and what will get them to give away their email address in return for something you’re giving to them.
Number four I’ve got here is no proof and I’ve touched on that a little bit with the Neil Patel example but, if you’re going to make a claim, if you’re going to give something away and claim that it’s going to help someone’s business, well how do you prove that? How do you prove that you’re trustworthy.
The QuickSprout example is really an excellent example of that because there’s a whole bunch of proof elements in here like specific quotes from really well known people who Neil’s target audience would know. People would know who this person is, who their website is, and that is really strong proof that supports Neil’s claims.
Other things like if you’ve got 30-40,000 people in your email list, then saying “join 30,000 people and get my weekly emails”, that could be a proof element as well because it makes people feel like there’s a bunch of other people that are doing it and it proves that your emails must be good if 30,000 people are signed up for them.
It could be a bunch of things. If your website is featured in the New York Times or if your business has been on TechCrunch or whatever, those logos can help. Really anything that proves your claim and testimonials can be good as well. Just having that supporting proof can be really good for conversions and without it you’re not going to get much conversion action at all.
Number five is not using high converting locations. A lot of people will set up a blog or set up a site and put an opt-in in their right-hand sidebar and then just forget about it.
In reality, there’s a bunch of other locations that are likely to convert much higher than the sidebar. The best example I can give here is ConversionXL.com.
If you have a look at this, this is the homepage. As you can see there’s really nothing hear other than a big opt-in so this is going to convert very well compared to a normal homepage. That can either be seen as a welcome gate or a feature box depending on what you want to call it or how you look at it. It’s probably more like a feature box since the navigation and everything is still in place.
The homepage is obviously a high-converting location. If you go to the blog page, you can see that scroll opt-in on the right-hand side that comes up. That converts really well compared to a standard opt-in so all of these locations, there’s a whole bunch of locations where you can increase your conversions by having opt-ins in those locations as opposed to having just the standard sidebar opt-in.
And the final conversion killer I’ve got is not using landing pages.
I showed you briefly on the KISSMetrics blog before. So what I’ve got here is when you click on this link, you get taken to a landing page. A landing page is generally a page that doesn’t include the normal navigation and is a page that is designed for only one thing, and that is to get you to convert.
This will be filled with copy, filled with images, as much content or as little content as needed to enable you to give away your email and convert on that page. If you’re not using those landing pages then you’re missing out on a big number of conversions because a good landing page like this will tend to convert at 50%, but a normal opt-in form on your site might only convert at 5%.
There’s a huge gap if you’re using landing pages in terms of the conversions you can get.
So, that’s the main 6 points! There’s obviously a bunch of stuff you can do to get more conversions but there are the 6 ones from me.
Just recapping those, not having a compelling reason for people to convert, having a poor design, having weak copy so not really encouraging people with strong language that resonates with them to convert on your site, having no proof or no proof to back up your claims with the conversion elements, not using the high conversion locations, and not using landing pages.
Ok! So my name’s Dan from WP Curve. My business does WordPress support, and what we do is for $69 a month, we have an unlimited small fixes and support 24/7 via live chat and email. So if you’re interested in that, check out boostsuite.com/wpcurve and I’ll talk to you soon!
Hope this has been useful! Bye!
