Unlock the Power of Post-click Experience: Roadmap to Convert Leads into Customers

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Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Marketing Inc. I have an awesome guest with me today, Mr. Khalid Sala. If I pronounce that right, I know I was playing with it a little bit before I did a decent job. Okay, good. Well, welcome to the show. So excited to have you. So for those who are listening or watching that may not be familiar with you, why don't you give the audience a little background into who you are, what you do, and kind of bring us up to the present in your career.

Sounds. Sounds great. Thank you for having me. So I am what you call a recovering software developer in some previous life. I used to be a software developer, fell into marketing unintentionally back in 2006 and very specifically into what we call nowadays conversion rate optimization or AB testing. Back then when we first started, didn't even have a name. Nine months later after we started, they're like, hey, this is called conversion optimization. And I was sitting in that room and I'm like, oh, finally I know what I'm doing so I can explain it to my mom and the rest of the world. I co founded a CRO agency, second CRO agency, Invesp, to start to start in the US back in 2006. And about four years ago, I don't know, I decided to create a conversion rate optimization platform. Fake Pie is the name of the platform. I always joke with my friends. I tell them I have a knack for coming up with weird names. I mean, invesp for the agency, Fake Pie for the software. It is what it is. The platform basically is designed to help anybody and everybody who's interested in improving their site conversion rates to do just that.

Awesome. Very interesting. So this is not a topic that we've covered on the show in a while, so I'm excited to dive in. This is definitely, definitely something that is very important for people in particular who are running paid advertising, which is what we focus on a lot on this show. So why don't you give us some of your initial steps that you might take when looking at, you know, I guess we're going to talk about funnels, but tell me, I guess before we even go there, what is it that you primarily focus on when it comes to conversion rate optimization or a B testing? Is it the funnel? Is it the ads? You know, what are those different assets that you're typically looking at?

Yeah. So for our type of work, we are focused on what we call post. Click after somebody lands on a website or landing page. So really it's very funnel focused. However, I always tell every company that we work with, you know what, we have to look at your ads, whether you're doing something on Google, Facebook, Instagram, whatever. It Might be because whatever the ads guys are doing will impact us. Correct. If they're sending good quality traffic, oh, you know, our job is going to be much easier. If they're sending not so grassy traffic, you know, our job is going to be harder and everything that we do will impact them as well. They might be sending the most amazing traffic and we screw things up for them and they'll be like, hey, what's going on here? Why aren't people converting? Why aren't there any sales? In our type of work, whenever we start with a company, we kind of divide the work into stages. The very first stage is, you know, we look through the site, we look through the funnel and we say, hey, what are some of the quick wins that we can see on the website? That's always the question that we ask. We've, We've done over 32 at this point, 33,000 AP experiments in the last 17 years. Set up experiments, which means we have just a lot of knowledge there and we can look at the funnel and we say, you know what, this is wrong. This is absolutely horrible. You know, we can fix this. And I always tell every company that we work with, we call this process stop the bleeding. Because we're going to stop bleeding. Some of those conversions now that might take. Fixing all these things might take two to three months. And the meanwhile we're doing a whole bunch of activities, really kind of drilling really deep, doing a bunch of what we call expert reviews. So like another standards in the CRO conversion rate optimization industry to say, okay, are we matching those standards? We're doing lots of usability testing, we're looking at competitors, not copying them, but maybe learning and getting inspired by them. We spend a ton of time in analytics, heat maps, session recording, kind of to say, hey, what's the data telling us? So all of these exercises usually give us a ton of issues on our website. I was looking at one of the companies that we're working with now. They just kicked off and we've done this exercise with them for the past three weeks and we have about 180 issues that we've identified where we think we can come in and make changes and see an impact on conversions.

Awesome. Yeah. So lots to dive in with this. I think the first thing that you mentioned was how important it is to not just look at the page itself, but to look at the traffic that is being driven to the page. Because at the end of the day there's gotta be congruency between the ad and the landing page, whether that is the offer itself, the messaging, the visuals. If you get somebody with the best ad in the world, but they hit a page that does not really feel like what they just clicked from, they're going to be confused. And a confused mind does not buy or, you know, really take that next step. So very, very, very important. I see this all the time on the paid ad side. People will have usually an ad that's typically not very strong, but maybe it's going to a page that is pretty strong, but they're, they're wondering why it's not converting. And you can start to look at that page, of course, but if you don't address kind of the root cause, which would be that what somebody is actually seeing is not what they're getting when they hit the page, it doesn't really matter what you do to that page, you're still going to struggle. So great insight there. So let's say somebody is driving quality traffic, traffic from whatever platforms they are utilizing to a funnel. What are some of those just out of the gate best practices that you are looking for when you first start to work with a client?

So I'll just kind of iterate what you even just said. That's continuity between the ad and the landing page where somebody lands on the website. I always tell everybody, your ad, your email, anything that the visitor sees before they say, you know what, I'm going to click through and see this website and see if they have what they're, you know, what they're saying or what they promise. I tell them that piece is making a promise to the visitor. So, okay, you're promising me something great. And then I click and I land on your website. I was like, what happened to the promise? Where am I? So that's absolutely matter of fact, makes life so much easier when you see that, you know, disconnect between the ad and the landing page. The other thing that's weird we love to look at is the headline on the page. So think about this. The goal of the headline is several things. One is to tell that visitor, yes, you are in the right place. You know, and so the visitor is like, okay, I, I am in the right place. And then the goal is to say to the visitor, let me pique your interest a little bit more so you can stay on this, on this page and read through it. Sometimes the ads get way too creative that I look at the. Sorry. The headlines get so creative that I'm like, I have clue what this page sells. You know, I can literally take this headline and put it on a restaurant or I can put it on a manufacturing company. I'm like, your, your ad is, you know, your headline is so vague. Other times I see headlines that are just so dry, you know, And I'm like, okay, that's fine. At least, you know, by the way, like, you know, dry headlines are better than those vague headlines where somebody says, I don't know what you're selling.

Yeah.

But I think successful and powerful headlines kind of mix the two. Here's what we do and here's kind of the benefit why what we do is interesting to you and really addresses your problems. So headlines are, can really make a difference. Now there are other things on the page and I focus usually on the top section of the page. That's prime real estate, right?

Yeah.

Because that's really when I'm going to. When a visitor lands, they're going to be looking through and deciding, should I stay, should I leave, should I continue navigating the images that you use there. Those can be powerful. If you are using, let's say you're even like you have a single landing page and you have a form on the page. How much information you're asking. Remember again, every time somebody lands on the page, whether they say it or not, subconsciously, they're really not sure. And sometimes we expect a lot from our visitors. But guess what? Visitors are finicky. They're not ready to hand over their information and it's so easy for them to say, you know what, goodbye and good luck. There is about another 10,000 other links or places that I can go to. I'm going to leave your site.

Yeah, so definitely several things we can really dig into there. The first thing, let's start with the headline above the fold is where we need to spend the initial time focusing. Because if that doesn't convert, they're never going to get lower on the page. What headline formats or formulas do you see that work well across a lot of different industries? What are some of your favorites after doing so much testing?

So there's two things that I do. Let's say, you know, we work with a company and they tell us, okay, well help us. We don't have customers and I need you to give me a formula. So I tell them I have a very simple formula that I apply. This is kind of just to start with, what do you do? What's the benefits of what you do? Why are people interested in and what is the biggest hassle that they, that your customers have with buying your service? For example, you know let's say you work with a company that sells online golf training. So you look at somebody who's interested in, like, you know, golfing, like, oh, this is really interesting.

I love golf.

Yeah. Oh, me. Me too. I mean, well, and if I love it, I spend a lot of money, you know, learning it. We shall see next year. You should ask me. I'm like, there you go. But imagine this. Everybody wants to learn golf. Okay? And imagine this, you know, learning golf from top PGA trainers. Wow, this sounds really interesting because, like, you know, it plays to an emotional side. It's like, I'm gonna learn from, like, you know, a super, like, you know, experts. It applies. It plays to the emotions of the person. But what's the biggest concern that you have when you have, like, you know, somebody from the pga? You're looking like, oh, it's going to be expensive. You know, that's the first thing that comes to your mind, whether you're saying it or not. So you continue to say, without paying the outrageous fees. It's like, oh, okay, yeah, okay, let me continue. So that's one formula that I like to apply. There's a whole other side of things where if the company's established, let's say a company's been around for two to three years. What we tell them is, give us people who have bought from you in the last 30 to 60 days and let us just have a conversation with them. And that conversation is usually anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour to really understand their journey and why they bought. So let's go back to, like, another golf lessons. Let's say I'm interviewing somebody, and I would start the interview by saying, hey, so let's say it's like, you know, Mark Jones. Hey, Mark Jones. So, Mark, I'd like to understand what was going on in your life that day when you decided, you know what, I'm gonna just buy those, like, you know, golf lessons. Mark will answer me. And then in most customer interviews, people start moving forward. So how. What do you think about our lessons? What do you think about our instructors? We don't do that. We actually go backwards. So, Mark, when was the first time you thought, like, you know, about buying golf lessons? And we sort of go back and it's like, oh, well, actually, like, it happened because, like, you know, a friend was telling me, and why was it? We drill really deep into the motivation, so we're building that customer journey. Why is this powerful? Because you've been there, I've been there. We probably look at a Headline or a copy of a page and you think to yourself, it's a marketing person who wrote this. It is so obvious, the jargon is so obvious. Versus if you interview somebody and you interview five, six people and you look at their words and you wordsmith them a little bit and you put that and use that as a headline. When you do that, guess what happens? Other people, other visitors come to the page and they look at those headlines that you took from your customers and they think to themselves, gosh, man, I was just thinking about that yesterday. Those headlines are so powerful. They don't have the business jargon that sometimes, you know, some, some companies fall into, our marketers fall into. Yeah, I find, I find that formula absolutely amazing. We're working with a, with a broker that helps physicians sell their clinics. And traditionally, I mean, like, you know, this is a multi million dollar business. So they had all the business jargon. So I told them, hey, let us interview a whole bunch of the doctors and let's see what they say. And it's funny because everybody says like, you know, I was like, I was wondering, you know, what kind of money my clinic is going to get. I was wondering, I was thinking, what kind of like, what kind of like, you know, dollars I'm going to get. And I'm like, you know what? This is exactly the headline. If you've ever wondered what your clinic is going to get, we are here to answer that question. You know, so we, I'm like, okay, let's, let's play with that headline because that's really now. And it's funny, the minute we deployed that landing page, they usually get about two conversions a week. Their VP of marketing emailed me. She's like, oh, we got five conversions today. Now what? I told her, I'm like, I'd love to take credit for that, but I'm like, let's just wait a little bit because sometimes, you know, things, you just get lucky. But you can see an impact of a powerful headline on the people and persuading them to convert.

Okay, so let's get a little bit more in the weeds with that. So you've got this great information from these people who've purchased. You've kind of identified some of those triggering events that may have be. Have caused them to seek this out for the first time. Tell me how you're actually phrasing some of those pieces of information in your headlines. Are you using them as quotes or are you just tying that information into the headline in a way that the reader can kind of see themselves in that.

So multiple ways. Sometimes we take it as a story. I'll go back to the program brokerage that I just mentioned. One of the doctors said, you know, we thought our business was worth $700,000, but then when we got the offer, we actually managed to sell the business for 2.4 million. Wow, great story. You know, that's a headline. That's a very powerful headline. They thought that their Clinic was worth 700,000, but they sold it for 2.4 million. And to 2,400,000, we actually put the zeros because that's very powerful.

Yeah.

And then we actually described. We took the words of that doctor and we're like, you know what? We don't need to do a whole lot. Let's just put the story. And not only that, we are going to link to that doctor where people can see him actually on LinkedIn and Instagram, so they can actually see that they are a real person. Yeah, that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to think about, okay, what are the concerns that people have? So those become headlines in different sections that we know we need to address them. Especially if you interview seven people. And he thinks, like, everybody is bringing this point up again and again and again. Guess what? My website is my salesperson. When I'm not there, my landing page is my salesperson. So I need to address those issues. Let's not leave them out there where people wonder. One of the things that I absolutely love to do, and we've done this now for a few years, is having a section on every landing page that we work on. We've asked our customers why they chose to work with us. Here's what they said, and we summarize some of the things I was. I'm looking for to work for the best. You know, I want somebody who has experience. We mentioned that, and we have like a whole bunch of text around that. But those things speak to everybody because, like, oh, yeah, yeah, I match this. You know, I want to work for the best. Or yes, I'd like to actually retire. Or I'm looking for financial stability, but I'm really not sure because I had all that I need to pay. You want people to see. And what's amazing is we deploy these sections on landing pages. We use heat maps, and we can always tell when people are actually reading because you can see the mouse movement. I'm like, oh, yeah, you can see a lot of mouse movement. People are super interested in this section. And it's just Very powerful.

Yeah, I love that. So you typically, when you find, let's say, a really great customer story, as you mentioned, that's going to be top of the fold. You know, maybe the headline is, I thought my practice was worth 700,000 and I ended up selling it for 2.4 million. And then maybe kind of some sub headline style or that sub paragraph that's talking more about, you know, Dr. Jones wanted to sell his practice, but had no idea what it was worth. He thought it was worth about 700 million. Finally, when he connected with us, we were able to help him sell that for 2.4 million. If you want to be our next case study, you know, click here to get started. Is that kind of the format that I'm hearing?

That's exactly. That is exactly the format. Now, let me tell you how we start with this, because I always think of somebody landing on the page, somebody walking a store. Correct. Or they walk into that brokerage firm, or they walk into any business. The first thing that you need to tell them is a powerful headline that says, you are in the right place. And let me pique your interest because, you know, I know you're worried about selling your business, but we actually sell it faster than anybody else will get you the highest return. We'll do this, we'll do that. Like, you know, somebody says, oh, yeah, okay, let me hear some more. Next thing that I always say, I'm like, okay, we kept him. We kept this visitor on the page. We kept them in the store. I always think of, like, you know, the page as a physical store. Next thing I need them to say, I need them to feel is like, we're actually very legitimate. So I like to show social proof. And usually it's a competition, and we always test that. Do we show social proof? So if you've been mentioned in different magazines, if you have a number of reviews, that's one option. Correct. That's social proof. Another way to do social proof is to have success stories, actual success stories, because success stories are very powerful in two ways. One is they make you dream about, yeah, my story could be also another success story. And at the same time, they are providing social proof. Correct. They're kind of like, you know, like punch, punch, jab. I was like, oh, let me show you two different things. Okay, so now I'm like, you know, I'm like, I can see this. And then I go from that to, again, show another way that we work with people. Here's why people hire us. 1, 2, 3, 4. And then I go to another section again, like, you know, this is, by the way, long copy formats and very powerful. We go from that to say, you know, here we've asked our customers why they hired us, and here are the seven reasons they told us. You know, and then we put that. That's kind of the format. Heat maps are very powerful because you can have. You can come up with amazing copy. Correct. And each one of those sections make perfect. Makes perfect sense. Like, oh, yeah, this is really good, and this is absolutely amazing. But how do you arrange them on a page? It's a whole art. Correct. And there's also science behind it. So whenever we come up with a page, we're like, okay, this is our best guess. As somebody is thinking about this, we can assume that they have a problem. You know, they say, yes, we convince them that we are the best company to fix that problem. And we show them why we are the best. Okay, we deploy that. We look at the heat map. And the heat map, because it tracks how people are navigating around the page, where they're clicking the data tells you actually what sections people are interested in. Yeah, it's very powerful. I was looking at the heat map for a page, and it was just, there's lots of activity at the top with the headline and the form. A little bit of activity around the social proof. And then it's like a desert, like, you know, desolate. Nothing is happening. I'm like, okay, well, this section, people are not interested in this is not people not interested in this. And then all of a sudden, like, you know, you see a whole bunch of activity again, I'm like, wow, you know, four sections down, this is what people are looking at. And it was an online course, and the section that people were looking at so initially was like, oh, here's the online course. Here's what provides. Here are the instructors, and there's a whole bunch of information about the company, a whole bunch of information about the instructors. People are interested in that. And then you see the bottom section where it says, here's the actual material, material that we cover. Here are the different chapters. Oh, my God. Everybody was clicking on that now, looking at it. And I told them, like, listen, your people, your visitors only. This is what we're interested in. We need to move that up. Let's. Let's give people what they want. Generally, I like to use supporting headlines. So I do a main headline, sub headline that kind of like expands a little bit. And then I actually like to even add a paragraph that expands a Little bit more. And if you, some companies don't like paragraphs, they're like, oh, you know, understand it. I'm like, okay, we'll do some bullet points to highlight the different things that are very unique about you. Things you are the only one who can claim. Why would a person choose to do business with you versus somebody else? And by the way, this is one of the funniest things because every company we work with will mention about the same things initially. Oh, we have the most amazing customer service. And I'm like, like, no, no, no, no. Because your competitor is going to say the same thing. We have the most amazing prices. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I mean I, I need actual facts that I can use that no one else is gonna, gonna be able to, to use. And they're like, okay. So going back to the brokerage, one of the things that they said, you know, they're like, okay, well you know, we have, in terms of collective experience, we have 70 plus years collective experience. I'm like, okay, I like that. They're like, we have $210 million of sales last year. Let's put that we closed deals three times faster than anybody else. Like, okay, these are facts. And these people love numbers. Correct. It's like, please. You know, because they are very powerful and they're intriguing. You know, if you've, if you've helped 50 businesses last year, this is very, very powerful. Now one thing that we do, and I have to say this because I might look at some benefits and, and you know, and sub headlines and I always think to myself, like, oh, this is absolutely great. People are going to convert, they're going to love this. And then we deploy it, we use it on the website or the landing page and people don't like it. And I'm like, really? People? I thought this was great. Okay, so one of the things we do is we love to a B test, you know, the different headlines. I'll just mention the story because I spent about two hours doing this analysis today. So we're working with a company, they sell earbuds, they're out of Europe. And when we did our initial analysis, we've noticed right away they don't have any social proof the company's been around. They have about 40,000 orders last year, about 5,000 reviews. And I'm like, why don't you guys mention that on the site on the main language? You're driving lots of people using Google paid ads. So I'm talking to their VP of marketing. Absolutely Amazing Liz. And she's like. She's like, oh, this is so obvious. She's like, just throw it on the page. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm like, should I use the number of orders? Should I use the number of reviews? You've actually been mentioning a whole bunch of magazines and you also have some influencers. And she's like, no, we're not going to waste time on this. They all sound good. Pick any of them and they all. They will all be fine. We literally went back and forth. I'm like, let's just test it and see which one you know. People like. What do you think? You know, Ali, what do you think of those four different things? Because we actually tested them between the number of people that bought from them, you know, 40,000 people, or they have 4.9 star reviews out of 4,000 people. They have mentions in GQ magazine, a whole bunch of other magazines, and they also have a whole bunch of influencers that actually said, oh, their earbuds are really great. What do you think? Which one do you think will convince people to buy this? This is really great featured. So, okay, so I bet because whenever we come up. So there's theory behind each one of them. And like you said, you know, I can. This actually makes sense. Oh, no, this actually makes more sense. I said, I'm like, you know, I'm sure the influencers are going to be absolutely amazing. This is what's going to make the difference. So here's the thing featured in. I'm sorry to tell you, reduce their conversion rates by 17%. Influencers, which I said, oh, this is going to be absolutely amazing. Reduced their conversion rates by 12%. The Star reviews increased their conversion rates by 4%. The number of orders that they caught last year increased their conversion rates by about 7.5, close to 8%. Now. This is. Yeah, but here's the strange thing. Think about all the. All the different. All these different ones that we just mentioned, whether it's influencers featured and correct. The number of looking at the star reviews and the number of orders. The only one they could actually fake, there's no way to verify, is the number of orders. They could literally just come up with a number like all the other. That's the reason actually, when. When I was talking to the team, I told them, this is. This is not going to work because people are going to see through it. While you're saying 50,000, maybe it's looking at 60,000, maybe it's 10,000. How would I know? People absolutely loved it. Now this works for this type of website. Another website can be a different story. But that's kind of the fun side of what we do. So here's the thing about video. About anywhere between 10 to 15% of your visitors are actually going to click and watch the video. Very powerful. Now there's 85% who are not going to watch the video. Like, okay, so we kind of keep those numbers in mind. Those who watch the video are probably three times high. There's a three times higher chance of converting them. So I have 15% with a three times chance, higher chance of conversion versus 85% who did not watch the video. Not going to care. Not going to care for it. So what's the trick there? How many visitors are you driving to the page if you're only driving, let's say a thousand people to the page. Well, okay, so 15%, that's 150 that have a higher chance. Correct. And then the other 850 people are going to say, I'm not going to look at it. It's a lot different if you're driving 100,000 people. Correct. The numbers there matter a lot. That's one thing. The other thing that most people don't pay attention to is, you know, people find it very funny when I say this sometimes, like, you know, they spend, spend a ton of money on producing these videos and people don't feel that they are real, the right video. And what are people saying within the video can. Can really make a huge difference. I'll go back to like, you know, the brokerage because, you know, they're working with doctors, millions of dollars. And I'm like, I need videos, guys. And they're like, oh, we need to send a crew. And they need to record. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I don't need a crew. I just need them on their iPhone as long as I can verify this. And I want. They're like, really? But the image. I'm like, no, no, actually this works really well. We're working with a store that does blinds and shades. I'm like, can I take pictures? And they're like, oh, yeah. Well, again, every. Every one of those companies, they love to send cruise. And I'm like, no, no, no. How about we give somebody after we installed the blinds, how about we give them $50 discount or a gift certificate for an order from our store? But I want them to take actual pictures. And this is so powerful when you use those pictures or those videos because they convey a very Strong message and people can see themselves. Whether by the way it's videos or pictures, it is case by case analysis that you have to do. I always tell our team and I joke about this, I've been in this industry for so long and I tell them the biggest benefits of working and doing what we do is very humbling. Every time I think to myself I'm like, this is so obvious. You know, I'm always surprised. So one of the things that just kind of more recent things that happened to me, I speak quite a bit at different conferences and sometimes some of those are E commerce conferences. Now every time I go to an E commerce conference, you know, I'll pull up a category page and I'm like, guys, you have an add to cart button on your products in the category page. And they're like, yeah, because people might add an item to the cart from the category page. I'm like, when was the last time you actually clicked on an add to cart from the category page? I mean, heck, I have to go to the product page, I have to look at it and I'm still not sure I'm reading the reviews. I'm going back up. It's a struggle. So I'm like, does it make sense? Actually I've used the word stupid to have the add to cart button on the category page. And I kept on repeating that. Well, lo and behold, of course because I said that we get this one clients and every time we see the add to cart I'm extremely, this is such an easy win. You know, we know we're going to increase their conversion rates because we're making the design cleaner. People are going to go to the product page. So we do that and we see that their sales dropped. So I'm like, hey guys, what happened? I mean this is, this is like kind of consistent for the past, I don't know, 16 years. We know we're gonna like do well and like people love to add to cart and but mind you, this is an electronic store which in my mind I'm like, if it's an electronics, I need to go to the product page. I was not convinced. So I'm like, guys, you have a problem in your data. That's my first thing. I'm right, the data is wrong. But just go back and analyze it. So the look back now this is a store in Europe. So they come back to me and they say, you know what? We find out that people in this particular country, they don't go to the product page. They actually click on the add to cart from the category page. I'm like, what? And I had to go to Google Analytics and look at the data and I'm like, wow, you know, okay, live and learn. You know, I was like, this is surprising to me because I've always said one thing and now I see a case where I'm like, oh, this is case by case. You know, just like you have to analyze your data. The most important thing for me, when I look at heat maps, I want to see a scroll how further down people are scrolling. If you have a section on the page where people are not getting to it, 20, 30% of the people are only seeing this section. The other 70% have left the page already. I always ask myself a question, is there something important in this section? And if there is something important, something that you really think is very critical, guess what? Most people are not seeing it. So let's move it up now. This brings up a very important fight that will always happen. What do we put on top of the page? What do we put in the middle? What do you put on the bottom? Because now, you know, that's, you know, homepages specifically or landing pages are political battles. Oh, this is, this is the most important thing. And this is the next important, like the next second most important thing. Well, maybe people are not interested in that. They're actually interested in something else that you have way on the bottom. Most people are not seeing it. We need to move it up. So you. But that's kind of the power of heat maps, even social recording to say, you know what, here's what the data is telling us. Let's now have a conversation based on the data. Now we might say we're fine, we're going to keep things as they are, but at least we're making the decision based on data and say, you know what, yes, I will still keep that section here or whatnot. So whenever we look at a website, one of the things that we do think of us. And I always like to give the example of an E Commerce. The same applies to a lead gen or a SaaS group. There is always a funnel. It will come from one page to the next to the next to the next. I'm like, okay, so E commerce. Look at a homepage, category page, product page, cart checkout, SaaS plus a homepage, maybe the pricing page and then the subscription lead gen. Oh, homepage services. About us. Oh, contact us. One of the things that we do is we say, okay, for each one of those pages we can actually calculate if I increase the conversion rate by 10% on your homepage, on your subscription page, or maybe on the contact us page. What is the dollar value for that page? And it's surprising because, like, in a 10%, sometimes you might say, I used to say, when we first started on this, and this is a long time ago, cart and checkout for E Commerce are the secret because people are already there. You already got them, like, now they added the items to cart. Let's just get them to finish plot that credit card and give it to us. And then we start doing the math and it's like, okay, what's the value? If we get 10% more of the visitors to click on the add to cart, is that better or is it the checkout? You play with the math and it's different from one website to the next, but we can actually assign a dollar value for each steps of the funnel. This step of the Funnel is worth $25,000. This step of the funnel is worth $65,000. This one is worth only $5,000. Guess what? I'm going to take the step that generates the most money. Okay, so we've decided on the step. There's a ton of things on that step. Well, you know, the headline's not that great. The image is absolutely horrible. You have benefits at the bo. Heat Maps are telling us this. You know, we talk to customers and they're telling us that you can literally identify probably 20, 25 different things on a page. Then what you need to do is to say, okay, I know this is my most important page, but I actually have limited time and budgets probably, and I need to have the most impact very quickly. So let's prioritize those different things. So we use a whole bunch of methodologies, frameworks to prioritize. And I always joke with people because we have about 18 different things that we measure for each one of those problems. Problems. And they're like, that's a lot. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna simplify life for you. You know, because when you peel an onion, two things happen. One, you cry. Two, you discover that, you know, all onions are about the same. So really, what I'm prioritizing, all I do is I'm looking at the thing that I think will have the most impact and will require the least amount of effort that actually will have, like, you know, it's a lot faster to implement. Now, whether we're gonna actually impact, you know, whether it's going to impact conversion or not. That's. That's a Whole other story. And you evaluate. It's like, well, changing the headline actually might have, you know, 5, 10% lift. And in terms of effort, that's actually very easy. It depends probably on the company that you're working with. We worked with one company where every time we need to change a headline, it was like a committee meeting. And like, you know, a whole bunch, like, three weeks later, I was like, guys, for God's sake, this is painful. You know, so, yeah, it depends. It depends on the company. Smaller companies, they're like, yeah, just. Just change the headline. Give me, give me more money. Bigger companies are like, oh, no, we have to discuss the CEO and the chairman of the board. You prioritize. Now you have a problem. You're like, okay, this is the problem that I think I can fix right away. Okay, so it's the headline. I can come up with different headlines. And that's where really, where AB testing comes in hand. Now, one of the things that we do, most people say, well, go ahead and do an a B test. Let's say we have a headline and we're going to create headline 2, 3, 4. We think they're better than the original headline. We'll assist them out. One of the most important things that you do before you do any a B testing is you ask yourself how many visitors are coming to the page, oh, there's 10,000 people. And what's the conversion rate right now of the 10,000 people? Only 1% actually place an order. So that's 100 orders that we're getting or 100 contacts. We use those numbers to say, okay, if I run an a B test, how long will the a B test take? It might take a week, two weeks. This is based on your numbers. You actually determine how long the A B test is going to run Prior to launching the A B test. Most people skip that step. They're like, oh, I'm going to do an a B test and let's launch it. It's almost like, you know, I always tell people, people find a B testing a little strange. They're like, oh, it's new. I'm like, no, no, it's not new. Have you taken medicine? They're like, yeah, I take medicine every now and then. Every medicine you take is a B tested. It's been around, like, now for 70, 80 years. You know, we a B test it. It's always original, and then there's other variations, and you decide the size. So there's nothing new about it. We're just doing it in a New context, but you decide on the size. Oh, we're going to run this a B test for three weeks. You know, we put those like, you know, variations and like, in the AB testing software, we run it and then we see after three weeks, which one is the winner. So I'll mention a couple, a couple of things. One was absolutely surprising to me that just. I'm like, really? Huh? This is interesting. So, you know, right now, people, I mean, we've solved this problem for the most part, but there were supply chain issues, correct? Especially in the last couple of years, you want to order something, you're not sure if it's gonna arrive. Really annoying. Working with one company where they're like, you know what? We want to be transparent. We should tell people when they should expect to receive the item. Especially if people buying something for Christmas, guess what? We're going to tell them this is going to arrive before Christmas, after Christmas. We're like, okay, this sounds like a great idea. Maybe we should test it out. And this is a fascinating kind of discovery. We've tested in so many different ways. It turns out for this particular company, you want to show people, you want to show them that this item is going to ship and arrive on the product pages. You want to skip completely mentioning anything about when the item is going to arrive on the cart page. And you want to mention during the checkout. But it's very small. If you make it larger or if you make it more prominent, people don't buy. If you mention it on the cart page, people don't buy. I'm like, and this was one of 27 different things that we've tested. We're like, wow, that's an interesting combination where I'm like, I did not expect something like that. Some of the other things that we like to test, by the way, right away I mentioned social proof. To me, that's kind of an ace in the hole. Now what kind of social proof? I don't know. We'll see. We work with a company that sells kind of Blu Ray blockers, the glasses, and we're debating what kind of social proof. We're like, oh, there's so much for that company. There's a whole bunch of science research that they've conducted and they got all these studies. They spent. Spent a ton of money on them. And it's amazing because the husband and wife team, you know, started out of Australia, they're doing really well. And they're like, oh, we have all these studies that we invested in, or we also have our Podcast. Imagine this. They have their podcast where they talk about like, okay, again, like, you know, glasses and whatnot. Like, I'm like, let's test it out. But I was like, almost certain. I'm like, the science is going to win. Well, guess what? For their customers know, the science laws lost horribly. It was like, it's like, just remove any mention of science. Now with other companies, I'm like, no, no, no, bring science it. At least let's test it out before that company for that particular market segment. We know that scientists and mission science. Science doesn't make. Doesn't make any sense. I'll mention something to you back in 2000, I think that's 2009. It's horrible. I'm like, I've gotten to the point where I'm old enough that I forget the exact year, but I think it was 2009 where we did a case study with Google. They've tested 4,000 shades of the register button whenever you create an account with Google. Now, only Google can run an experiment like that because Google has the traffic. And actually, it's funny because if you look at those colors, you will not be able to tell the difference. Like, really? I mean, who would have known 4,000 shades of blue really make a difference? The one that's won, by the way, increase registration by 8%. And you look at it the one before and the one after, I'm like, they look the same. Don't really understand now, for most people, I tell them, don't focus, by the way, on the color of a cta. Now, unless you have something really silly where I'm like, I can't even find the cta and I need, like, you know, magnifier. I'm like, don't do something as silly as that. It just needs to stand out. It needs to be very clear. But outside of, you know, the headline, the CTA I love to test benefit. I love to figure out which section is important to the. To the visitors and move it up or down, kind of change the location. Sometimes people think that I've already mentioned this in my headline. I don't need to mention it again. And I don't need to emphasize the fact that, you know, we have this feature or like there is this thing that's unique about our business. We've already had it in the headline. And I'm like, really? So you expect people to remember that? And then they're like, what does that mean? I'm like, like, repeat it, Repeat it once, repeat it twice, repeat it three. Times. And they're like, but. But people are gonna say. I'm like, okay, you don't use the same exact headline, but you can communicate the same message in multiple ways. And I always give the example of teachers back in, like, you know, elementary school and like, you know, middle school and, like, you know, high school. Successful teachers will teach you the thing in multiple ways. Correct. Because some people understand, like, visually, sometimes people, People like, you know, listen, I'm like, your website is doing the same thing. They're like, really? You're taking me back to high school? I'm like, yes, I am taking you back to high school. Repeat the information again and again. And you test it out and you might say, you know what? No, people didn't need for the information to be repeated. Or you might find out that, yes, actually it is very, very useful to repeat that information. Social proof is very powerful. Incentives, urgency, you know, corrects. Like, and you see this with. With Amazon, correct. It's like, I'll order this. If you order in the next hour and 40 minutes, you're going to receive it tomorrow. I'm like, okay, this is really good. One of the things, you know, every person Nowadays, 73% of people in America have Amazon Prime. 73 of households. When Amazon rolled Amazon prime back, I think it's 2007, 2006, 2007, because they wanted to sell. Everybody is like, you know, you're going to get the items and you don't have to pay for the shipping is free. Free, Free. They actually mentioned the word free seven times in two lines of copy. So I was sitting with my team and I'm like, do you see how many times they told you? Do you have any doubt that is free? They're like, no, no, it was very clear that is free. I'm like, yes, they make sure that you understand that it's free. They repeated it again and again. And can I make them two? I say, I love data, but I think the most successful exercise of improving a funnel or website conversion rate is talking to customers. Nothing is more powerful than that. And it's funny because every marketer you talk to will tell you, oh, yes, you know, talking to customers is very important. But very few marketers actually spend the time talking to customers, actually having that dialogue. And part of it is, this is intimidating. Correct. It's like, oh, what am I going to tell them? What am I going to talk for, like, 45 minutes? Oh, it is. It's like, you know, it's like your customer is going to give you A trove of treasures. Like here, here's all the insights on how you can sell me better. So I usually, whether it's with clients or even with, with our own clients or like, you know, clients of customers of our clients, I tell my team we're spending a couple of hours, two to three hours every week talking to them, just kind of hearing, you know, the concerns that they have, why they bought, what are some of the considerations that they've had when they bought, what were the things that stopped them, almost stopped them from buying what things surprised them when they bought the item. I'm like, all these, all these are very insightful. And then the other insight is you might hear something from a customer and you think to yourself, oh, this is earth shattering. This is going to actually help me improve conversion rates. It might, but a B, test it because only data will tell you whether this insight that you found is actually going to help your conversion rate or not. So they can always find me, of course, on figpie. And it's a very strange spelling. Fig. So fig the fruit. It's a fruit, it's not a plant. Okay, so f I g pie p I I figpie.com I also hang out in the land of LinkedIn. You know, I spend a good chunk of time over there, so you just search for my name. Kal, it's soda.

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