#3 - 3 of the best tools to sell MORE and hustle less

And I can feel many of you already just shuddering and going, oh, pop ups, gross. No, thank you. I don't want to have to do those. And I am going to do a whole separate episode on how to make pop ups not suck. But the thing is that pop ups are still a really, really powerful tool. And like I said, this episode is about tools that are going to help you to sell more and hustle less.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd K. McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hey, hey guys, it's Kate McKibben here again and welcome to episode three of the Doing It Online podcast. Now today I'm putting on my geekiest glasses and my nerdiest hat, if there is such thing as a nerdy hat. And I am going to dive into one of my favorite things to talk about and that is talking tools, tech tools, software, SaaS, whatever you want to call it. Basically those amazing digital magical things that just make running your online business and having a life outside of that online business so, so, so much easier. And today I'm going to share with you my three favorites that actually help you to sell more and hustle less. So let's dive right on in. So I don't know if you know this or not, but I am a self confessed super nerd. In fact, I'm so ner that the only two things I've ever won in my life, number one was I won the VHS box set of the Neverending Story Part 2, which was a terrible movie. And I also won female Entrepreneur of the award for tech back in 2015. So I think those are both pretty officially nerdy things. And besides, you know, having some decent coke bottle glasses, I think I am a bonafide nerd, geek, whatever you want to call it. And the other reason why I know that I am a super nerd is because nothing seems to excite me more. Sorry, boyfriend. When I find out about a new tool, particularly one that does what it's supposed to do, anything that's sort of clever, that's going to make your life easier, that's going to help make your life more automated and, you know, end up making your business run better is just something that. It gives me goosebumps. It really does. I could talk about Them for hours. My poor team. Every time I find a new tool that or they get like, send a little notification that's like, you know, please create an account for this. They just all roll their eyes because they're like, oh, gosh, what's Kate doing now?

So, needless to say, if anyone's going to give you recommendations around what tools work and which ones don't, I'm your girl. I've tried them all. I've tried them, some of them multiple times, and I'm here to recommend some of my faves. So to start off with, as I said, today's episode is all around the kind the tools that are gonna help you to sell more and hustle less, which is what we all want more of. Yes. So let's kick off with a one that I actually bought a little while ago. As of this episode going live, it is currently available for a lifetime license. So we'll have the links in the show notes. You can go check it out. But you know, I'm a sucker for a lifetime license. I have a lifetime license to most things. But if you, if you think it sounds good, you might want to jump onto this one quickly before they switch on over to a monthly pricing model. Um, but the first tool I'm going to recommend for you guys is one called Convert Box. So what Convert Box does is it actually creates, you know, those banners at the top of your website or pop ups full, what they call welcome mats when the entire page is taken over and I can feel many of you already just shuddering and going, oh, pop ups gross. No, thank you. I don't want to have to do those. And I am going to do a whole separate episode on how to make pop ups not suck. But the thing is that pop ups are still a really, really powerful tool. And like I said, this episode's about tools that are going to help you to sell more and hustle less. This is something that you can set up and have running. And the thing I love about Convert Box is it's super smart. So you can have a couple of different things in there, set them up and say, you know, only show this to people who visited the site more than once. Only show it to them if they've been on this page for longer than X number of seconds. Like, you can set your pop ups up in a way that they're not intrusive, not annoying, and particularly if whatever you've got in that pop up is super valuable, they actually work really well. So well, in fact, that I turned one on the other day and it is converting at 9%. So that means 9% of people visiting my website and they're not landing on a signup page, they just, you know, they're landing on a blog post or they're coming in through from social or something like that. 9% of those people are being added to my email list and it is not costing me a thing. Now of course I have a funnel set up. That's what I'm all about. And that's where the helping you to sell more part comes in. But even if you didn't have a funnel for all these people to go automatically into, the fact that you're going to be automatically growing your email list every single day without having to spend any extra money, I think that is, you know, that's tick, tick, tick as far as I'm concerned. So Convert box. One of the other things I really like about Convert Box is a few things. It's really, really smart. It also isn't platform specific so you can use it on any platform. So if you're on Squarespace, WordPress, ShowIt, it will work across all of them. I personally use ShowIt with the WordPress add on, so I was really, really psyched to find something that would work across all of my pages. The other thing I really like about it is particularly for those crazy people out there who do launches is you can actually schedule your pop ups or your banners or whatever it is you want to put up there to go on and off at certain times. Which means there's just one less thing you have to be worried about when it comes to launch time. And I actually attested this as well. I created a welcome mat. Like I said, that's one of those ones that comes up, takes over the whole page. And you know, you normally say something a little bit shaky and you've got a button like hey, click here if you want to check it out. And this was just set up to help guide people towards the product that I had a promotion on. And we were getting. Hang on, let me just Double check this.

37% of visitors to my website were clicking on the tell me more button and going through to my sales page like, how crazy is that? And it was so simple to set up, only took a few minutes. It looks really nice, it's really easy to use. So again, tick, tick, tick, Convert Box is definitely a tool that is going to help you to sell more and hustle less. Hey guys, it's just Kate here. So first of all, I just had to quickly stop by and say thank you so so much for listening to supporting my brand new podcast. It really means the world to me. And to help kick this puppy off with a real bang, I actually have an amazing free bonus just for you guys. Which is I'm giving away access to my 5 day mini business accelerator workshop worth $97 totally for free to everyone who leaves a 5 star review of the Doing It Online podcast on itunes right now. This five day workshop walks you through creating your own killer online business plan for your online course. Business one that is scal profitable and enjoyable too. It's chock full of my very best lessons and strategies from over 13 years online and today it's yours for free. All you have to do is step one open up iTunes, click on this podcast, click write, review and then click those little five stars and share what you love most about the show. Step 2 Head to Kate's Bonus.com that's K A T E S B O N U S.com Kate's Bonus and Pop in your contact details and itunes account name so we can know the review is from you and we can send you your login details for your bonus. It's that simple. Step one leave a five star review. Step two head to katesbonus.com and send us your details. And that's it. And as an extra little thank you, I'll be choosing my favorite reviews every week and sending that lucky reviewer an exclusive I do It Online mug so you can sip along in style while you listen to your favorite show. So what are you waiting for? Hit pause, go, leave that review, then head over to katesbonus.com, pop in your details and claim this amazing five day workshop for yourself. I'll see you inside. So number two, and this is actually a co winner because there are two options here and it's really more about what they do for your website. And basically this second tool that I think everyone who has online products online offers does, launches funnels. Whatever it is you do needs to have is you need to have a really killer urgency software or countdown software or whatever you want to call it. Now of course the best one in the market is Deadline Funnel. And if you're smart, you can usually get away with just as in and by means smart I mean if you reuse some of your funnels and some of your timers, you can only get away with just using their basic plan which is about I think $37 a month. These things do change quite regularly, so don't quote me on that.

But it Is, you know, it's a really great tool. It's really easy to use. You can customize it. Again, it is not platform specific. It'll work across whatever you're using. And that's one of the things, the real beauties of it is that you can set it up and have the same time as showing in your emails and on your website and on your blog posts. And if you're using like a lead pages or something to do your sales page or your opt ins, it can show there as well. It can even show on your checkout. So you can have the same time as counting down to the same time showing easily across everything without having to do any code or anything complicated. So it is a really, really great tool. And just for that alone, you know, the fact that you know it, you can have these countdown timers and for anyone who's going but do I need to have countdown timers? Yes, yes you do. I've tested, I test everything. I've tested it very thoroughly of, you know, doing sales pages and offers and things that don't have some sense of urgency. Like some like this is going away soon, you have to make a decision. And the conversion rates are so much lower, like up to 50% lower. So if you're doing any sort of, sort of live launches or promos or offers, you know, just to start off with, you want to make sure that you've got some kind of urgency, some kind of deadline, some kind of, you know, this bonus goes away today or this early bird discount goes away or the doors are actually closing, like you need to have those to help us humans out there to be pushed into action because you know, we need it, we need that little extra push. And yeah, deadline funnel is one of the best ones out there to do that. Now for those of you who are like, oh, I don't want another monthly thing and I'm only going to use it every now and then, there is another great option out there. It is not quite as feature packed but it will get you there. It will do most of the same things. It's called website countdown and it's websitecountdown.com let's go check that out. It is a one time price rather than a monthly price. Last time I checked it was around $67 once. So again, big saving there if you are a bit more budget conscious. But either of those pretty much if you sell something online, you need one of those tools. All right. And now this brings me to number three and this is something I've only Actually been playing with a little bit. But again, as I said, today's theme is about tools that can help you to sell more and hustle less. And this one is all around helping you to increase the value of your checkout or of your sale or your average order value, depending on what terminology you want to use. So. So what I'm recommending to you guys today is you need to have a checkout software that has the ability to add an order bump. Now, I personally kind of dismissed order bumps, and for anyone who doesn't know what they are, that's like when you go to the checkout page, like you've already clicked through the sales page. You go into the page, you're putting in your details to actually buy, and there's only a little box, and it's normally ugly. Like, it'll have a red outline, it's yellow background, it's just text. And, you know, and it's for an offer that's maybe, you know, $97 or $37 or it's, you know, just something a little bit extra. It's kind of like the online equivalent of, you know, having a mars bar or, or a chocolate bar next to the checkout at. When you're at the supermarket, it's that exact same thing. It's like one little, oh, may as well, I'll just grab that kind of thing. And I never really gave them much thought because I never thought they looked great. And they're always just for such a little amount. I'm like, eh, what's the point? You know, Do I really, really need that? But this year, I've been all about, you know, playing with things, new things and testing new things. And order bumps was one of the things that I actually tested, and I was blown away, you guys. It was crazy how well these worked. So I added a really, really simple order bump onto my offer, and it converted at 46%, which means that 46% of people who are purchasing my offer also purchased my order bump, which means I added an extra $97 to 46% of my sales. So just think about that for a second. And the craziest thing is, is it's the easiest thing to set up as long as you have the right tools. And I'll tell you the ones I recommend in just a sec. Because you don't need to go and design a sales page. You don't need to shoot a video. You don't need to do anything crazy. All you need to do is literally inside whichever of these shopping carts or tools. You go for tick a box that says you want to add an order bump, tell them how much it is, and you write a little heading and just like one killer sentence explaining what it is and you know, why they need it and how powerful it is and how much value it is. And it's, you know it's going to go away if they don't grab it now like that, you know, all you have to do is nail that sentence and if you go and have a look at a few examples and you'll be, now that you, I've said the word order bumps to you, you'll start seeing them everywhere, because they are everywhere.

You'll notice there's a bit of a formula to it as well. So all you need to do is nail that sentence. And if you, if you create an auto bump and it's not converting at higher than 20%, you know, it's so easy to tweak the sentence. Like you just jump in and tweak. Like it's not something you have to go back to the drawing board. Like with so many other things where you're trying to increase the value of the sale or try a new offer, it's seriously one of the fastest ways you can add extra revenue to whatever it is you're selling, whether you're launching, whether you are, you know, doing a funnel, whatever it is. So that is, you need a checkout, you need some software that allows you to do an order bump. Now one thing that surprised me is actually there's quite a lot of checkouts out there that don't have these, which I thought was really odd given how powerful they are, given how easy they are. But the ones that do and the ones that I've played with and can recommend ThriveCart, Kajabi, SamCart and ClickFunnels. Now, if any one of you guys have been hanging around me on the Internet for a while, you'll know I have a real love hate relationship with clickfunnels. And it's definitely love is not winning. And it, and it sadly never will because I do find them overly complicated and fiddly. But they do have, I would say they do probably have one of the best options for the order bump and it does allow you to probably make it look one of the nicer ones as well. So, you know, there's a little plus column for good old click funnels. But yeah, crazy, just adding in that one simple little box, like, who would have thought? As I said, you've probably seen them everywhere. Can Convert at some and from the stats I've read, it's not, you know, the sort of the range you want to be aiming for. For one that's working well, as I said, anything over 20% is good, but 30 to 60% is kind of the range you want to aim for. Like how amazing is that for a little checkbox? So that is why there's number three. It probably should be number one. It probably is. If you go and take away anything from this episode, just adding that will start making you more money. Like how great is that? So those are my three things. Guys. You need a killer pop up software. I know, I know pop ups, they're gross but they don't have to be enough. You do them right. And convert box is my favorite. You need a really great, really smart countdown tool. As I said, Deadline Deadline Funnel is the best out there. Website Countdown is also pretty good. Um, and you need to have a checkout or a shopping cart that allows you to do order bumps. So my faves, ThriveCart, Kajabi, SamCart or if youf Must ClickFunnels. So I hope that has been helpful. Guys, I would love to know if you have used any of these tools before, if you're going to use any of them. If you do go and implement them, what results you get, make sure you tag me over on Instagram @Kate McKibben or DM me, let me know. I wouldn't be thrilled to nerd out with you about these, but otherwise guys, I will see you all for our next episode. We've actually got something really exciting coming up. I'm doing a special series Ella's part of kicking off this brand new podcast. We're going to be doing a special series of five killer episodes which are the five secrets to creating five figure months in your course business. So make sure if you haven't already hit subscribe so you do not miss out and I will see you in episode nine. Number one.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing it online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@StealMyFunnel.com.