“Test everything!!”
is the mantra of every marketer in the 21st century.
But for a small business or solopreneur, the volume/data is often not enough to constantly run extensive tests… not to mention the time, skills & resources required to set up a complex multi-variate testing system in the first place.
Instead of wasting a lot of time learning new technology, or figuring out how to structure & analyze large sets of data (that you probably don’t have), here are 5 simple things that have gotten positive results for other people in the past, that you can implement on your website to get results.
1. Move The CTA Above The Fold
“The Fold” is basically refering to the line of where the “first view” ends, and the rest of the site begins.
You know how when you open a website and the first thing you see? Everything you can see before scrolling is “above the fold”.
Everything else is below the fold.
Moving your call to actionabove the fold is one of the easiest things you can do.. but it can also be one of the most powerful.
The god-father of growth hacking himself, Sean Ellis, implemented this for his site “Growth Hackers” and got a 700% increase in Email Signups from this simple change.
2. Optimize Your Mobile Layout
Forego the clutter that automatic responsive design leaves for most mobile pages, and change your key pages to look great on mobile.
It’s 2019, more than 2 years since mobile overtook desktop for browsing the web, and still, a surprising amount of sites are not optimized for mobile.
More than 70% of all media time is spent on mobile, which means your mobile design should be an even bigger priority than how your landing pages look on desktop.
Make sure that your value proposition is fully legible, and that your background pictures end up looking okay & not compromising the readability of your content.
Hubspot increased their conversion rates on mobile by 10.7% by implementing a few key changes to their mobile layout.
3. Implement Single Keyword Ad Groups & Relevant Landing Pages
Single Keyword Ad Groups (or SKAG for short) is not a new principle within SEM, but it is routinely overlooked by in-house marketing teams and older agencies.
If you are using Google, Bing or other SEM ads, you need to stop being lazy with & make an effort to show users relevant content.
If you target multiple different broad keywords with one ad & one landing page, you are providing a bad user experience for your ideal customers.
This example from ConversionXL shows exactly what’s wrong with running a single ad to multiple broad keywords.
Think about the frame of mind people are when they turn to a search engine..
They want a specific solution to a specific problem, not a general category answer that might possibly contain what they want.
Implementing SKAGs has decreased CPCs by as much as 20% on client campaigns, and drastically decreased cost per lead and sale.
And I’m not alone in reporting these kinds of results.
Sam Owen of Hanapin Marketing was able to reduce CPA by 50% and increase leads per month by 106% by implementing SKAGs.
4. Improve Site Speed
“53% of mobile users will leave your site if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds.”
And worse, after just one bad experience, 85% of users are unlikely to give your site a second chance.
Think about that for a second.
You only have 3 seconds to get your site fully in front of a potential customer, or you lose half of your potential customers.. forever.
So do what it takes to improve site speed.
The faster you do it, the fewer potential customers you will lose, and give a lasting bad impression while doing so.
- Test your website speed with a tool like Pingdom, Webpage Test or gtmetrix.
- Look at your results, and Google how to fix individual problems that come up.
If you have never tried this before, you will typically get more than a few Fs, which are high ROI fixes to make, and usually fairly straight forward.
More Tips:
- Implement a CDN for larger files like scripts & images so the user gets the content served from a closer server. (For example AWS’ CloudFront or MaxCDN).
- Reduce the size of your image files by smushing them, re-sizing or otherwize optimizing.
- Upgrade your hosting to get better load speeds. (If your results show a long “wait” time during testing your page speed, this is typically an indicator that your server is slow.)
5. Make Sure You Implement Sound Copywriting Principles on your Landing Pages
The story of Initiative Q is the single greatest modern lesson in the power of copywriting… period.
Initiative Q touts itself as “tomorrow’s payment network”, and has since launching their invite-only beta managed to drive millions of sign-ups organically.
But to a marketer, that’s not the real story here.
The truth is, it didn’t take off immediatelly after opening the beta… the curve was looking less like a bell or tsunami, and more like a flat-line after they opened doors.
This doesn’t look like the curve of the latest internet fantasy money craze, does it?
And then they implemented one key change.
They didn’t do anything technical like adding a viral loop (it was already in play), they simply optimized one key piece of copy; the invite message.
The old message tried to explain the idea in somewhat dry technical terms “building the currency of the future.. blablabla”.
Their new message, leverages many an important copywriting principle, from familiarity & trust, scarcity, the power of FREE and finally FOMO.
“Initiative Q is an attempt by ex-PayPal guys to create a new payment system instead of credit cards that were designed in the 1950s. The system uses its own currency, the Q, and to get people to start using the system once it’s ready they are allocating Qs for free to people that sign up now (the amount drops as more people join — so better to join early). Signing up is free and they only ask for your name and an email address. There’s nothing to lose but if this payment system becomes a world leading payment method your Qs can be worth a lot. If you missed getting bitcoin seven years ago, you wouldn’t want to miss this.Here is my invite link: https://initiativeq.com/invite/XXXXXXXXX_This link will stop working once I’m out of invites. Let me know after you registered, because I need to verify you on my end.”_
Look at how they start of by using “ex-paypal” guys as a lever to buy some quick trust through leveraging a known brand in the space.. and ending in a climax leveraging FOMO(that is behind every craze from Tulip to Bitcoin).
And as you can see, the new copy paid off.
They experienced an increase in web traffic by a magnitude of thousands, if not millions, and by extension, conversions as well.
Don’t just focus on the technical.
Make sure that your copy, that your story, does a good job in convincing your visitors that you have something to offer, that there is a compelling reason to choose you.
To write better copy, remember a few key points:
- The customer doesn’t care about you or your company, but about how you can help them and whether or not they trust your ability to do so.
- Customers have options, what is a specific benefit of doing business with you, and not someone else?
- Give them a reason to take action NOW, not later. (Initiative Q does this brilliantly by in theory incentivizing fast movers exponentially more than late-comers.)
For more advice on tackling human inertia by writing great copy moving your visitors to action, read the following books:
- How To Write a Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab
- Building A Storybrand by Donald Miller
More Learning, More Changes & More Chances
The keys to a better performing website are the same as the keys to better performance in every area of your life.
Learning, deliberate change & risk taking combined with dedication.. played out over time.
Are you dedicated to driving even better results for your website & business every day & week?
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