THE CONVERSION ROAD TRIP NOTES - CHICAGO - FRIDAY, JUNE 5

4:40 - 5:10 PM

THE LIVE LANDING PAGE SMACKDOWN

Angie Schottmuller, Oli Gardner, Michael Aagaard & David Kadavy

A smackdown the likes of which have never been seen was had.

4:10 - 4:40 PM

DRESS COLOR & OTHER MIND-BLOWING PHYSIOLOGY KEYS TO CONVERSION

Angie Schottmuller, Conversion Optimist

Optimizing for the eye: If you can manipulate what people see with their eye and get them to convert.

People form first impressions in about 17 milliseconds. 98% of first time visitors will never return to your site.

Web First Impression Rehab

• Step 1: Confession

• Do the 5 second test: Look at your site for 5 seconds and see what you remember. They should remember:

• Identity
• Offer
• Credibility
• CTA
• 6 foot test

• Do the 6 feet test: Your CTA should be the most visual element. Then your hero image. Then your headline.
• Your user is a drunk test: Squint your eyes and move your head back and forth. Can you still tell what the page is about?

• Is the CTA blurry?
• Are distractions removed?
• Is the CTA repeated?

• Step 2: Treatment

• Identity

• Top left corner of the page. This is expected.
• Use tagline

• Offer

• Whats the page about? What do you got for me?
• Be very clear about what the user is getting
• Show a progression: Initiate (keyword / ad / social) > Maintain (text) > Enhance (visual)
• Your goal as a marketer: prospect customer + product = amazing hero image

• Credibility

• Walk the talk
• Provide trust signals and visuals

• Call to Action

• Homepage goal is segmentation of traffic for where they want to go
• Help users find their path through your site at the start
• Mind desktop and mobile users and their patience

• Make sure mobile CTA is above the fold, but not the top of page

• Step 3: Recovery

• The eye jumps 3X a second to find new information

• Lead it to your call to action

• Test complementary color CTA button
• Reserve CTA color zone (color neighbors)
• Use pure color for CTA button
• Let CTA and hero stand out, all else is the stage.

3:40 - 4:10 PM

LESSONS LEARNED FROM MOBILE OPTIMIZATION

Joel Harvey, Conversion Scientist

Mobile optimization best practices don’t exist. The only way to find the best for your site is to test, test, test.

How to Win on Mobile

1. Mobile marketplace overview

• Mobile usage is growing
• Your mobile optimized site is going to look different than others
• Understand your mobile traffic

• Each mobile device is a different experience

• Landscape vs horizontal

• Between 7-10% of users land in landscape

• One of your websites is broken or suboptimized
• Test on 3G and 4G connections

2. Optimizing your mobile site

• Mobile is screen one

• The goal of your mobile site should be to get people to your desktop site when they are serious about converting

• Dedicated mobile websites

• Responsive templates make decisions for you, some of which aren’t good
• Responsive can remove important copy or elements
• Some responsive templates can also take forever to load, like one study found 18 seconds
• Responsive requires a desktop redesign and can also decrease conversion rates

• IOS vs Android

• Not the same, vastly different
• Always test both your IOS and Android experiences

• What to test first

• Sticky header, stays consistent through device experiences
• Persistent calls to action (Parachutes)

1. Give them an easy out so they don’t scroll too much and get lost in scrolls

• Use the footer

1. Utilize CTAs

• Alternative mobile goals

1. Are we focused on the right things?
2. They are on mobile, get them to the desktop
3. Offer CTAs to email users a link so they can use desktop site

2:50 - 3:20 PM

HOW TO WRITE COPY THAT CONVERTS: ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS FROM 6 YEARS OF TESTING

Michael Aagaard, Founder Content Verve

WYSIATI

What you see is all there is.

Why is it important?

The brain has two systems..

• Intuitive thinking - fast, automatic, emotional, subconscious
• Analytical thinking - slow, effortful, logical, conscious

The Law of Least Effort

Humans naturally move to the easiest route or path of least resistance.

Competitive ease:

• System 1: Easy, “Ahhhh”
• System 2: Strained, “Arrrrgggh”

Suggestions:

• Tell users what to do upfront
• Provide simple language
• Create a conversion experience that facilitates cognitive ease
• Remember: what you see is NOT all there is
• Users are system 1, marketers have to be system 2 to facilitate users
• Think like users, have empathy - both marketers & content creators
• Utilize data and resources to answer user questions before they ask

• Data driven analysis in GA
• Funnel analysis
• Interview sales and support teams

• What questions do you get most often?
• How do you answer?

• Session playback
• Feedback polls

• Look at top answers and build out pages based on answers

• Form analytics
• User testing
• Surveys

The sweet spot is the overlap between Analytical Process and Creative Process. Focus more on Analytical Process for empathetic reasoning.

• Be aware of WYSIATI & System 1 & 2
• realize what you see is NOT all there is
• Do your homework and research
• Think like users and be empathetic in marketing and content

2:20 - 2:50 PM

SELECTIVE HEARING: WHEN YOU SHOULD AND SHOULDN’T LISTEN TO GOOGLE TO GET BETTER PPC RESULTS

Lance Loveday, CEO Closed Loop Marketing

Google has recommended settings and features in AdWords that claim to have the advertisers best interest at heart, but sometimes those settings are not really the best route for advertisers.

The ease of set up is attractive to those running ads with Google but it’s extremely important that advertisers check their settings and test their assumptions.

Setting up your AdWords campaign

Pay attention when setting up AdWords campaigns

• Do you need Canada targeting if you are primarily focused in the US?
• Do you need display advertising?
• Do you need broad match?
• Do you need Google to bid for you?

These items could burn through your budget and are not in your best interest if you do not pay attention.

Mind your settings

The first thing you should always do is update your settings in AdWords where they best suit you.

• Don’t let Google customize your ads
• Manually set up your bids

• Do not set and forget

• Use mobile bid adjustments

• Remember: Bid Adjustments edits are the hyphens, click it to adjust
• Mobile ads can drain your budget, set a modifier and make sure your site mobile friendly

• Search partners can drain your budget
• Location based searches can be confusing, especially for locations that share names with businesses, schools, teams, and more

• Be mindful of variations and budgets

Pay attention to updates and features

Google will update their features and settings, often defaulting campaigns to the setting that benefits Google most. Pay attention to these new features and settings to save your budget and ensure you are reaching targeted audience.

General Guidelines

• BUY THE MOST VALUABLE TRAFFIC FIRST
• Turn off search partners
• Tighten location targeting

• Add IP/location exclusions

• Tighten up ad scheduling
• Apply mobile bid modifier
• If running mobile ads

• Create mobile targeted ads
• Enable call extension

• Use exact match & phrase keywords
• Test remarketing and similar audience targeting

Suggestions

• Search used to account for 92% of lead generation

• It’s now 57%
• Focus and be attentive to other channels as well

• Become a data scientist

• Roll your own reporting
• Build a better dashboard suited to your needs
• Get a healthy view of a campaign

• SEM cost + lead: leads, cost, CVR

• Experiment between text and image/video ads
• Use graphics to display reporting as opposed to spreadsheets

• Tell a coupling story with visuals

1:50 - 2:20 PM

HACKING CRO, PPC STYLE; 5 TIPS TO 3X YOUR CONVERSION RATES

Erin Sagin, Customer Success Manager, Wordstream 

The classic A/B test is a fairy tale

• Small and easy changes like formatting, font, and color changes doesn’t cut it
• The early leads disappears
• Gains don’t persist overtime
• You’re rearranging deck furniture on a sinking ship

Top 10% of landing pages have 3 - 5X % of average conversion rate

• Minor changes don’t see these results

Hack #1: Prime site visitors to convert early on

• Don’t bring wrong users to your site: even the best conversion process won’t if the audience isn’t right
• Give them information ahead of time (prequalify users)

Inspire users to take action early on

• Use ad customizers create urgency
• Use “the fear of missing out” to inspire action
• Rotate ad customizers to create a perpetual sale or show dwindling product supply

Hack #2: Experiment with different offers

• Don’t offer what everyone else is offering
• Try a free trial
• Give them what they want: Listen to what the users want and are asking
• Be bold!

Hack #3: Change your sign up flow

• Clear up the path to conversion
• Ask users to register AFTER downloading or purchasing
• Let users decide what is best for them

Hack #4: Use remarketing to convert users

• Allows you to appeal to users who abandoned
• Remind them to come back or if they left something in their cart
• Conversion rates increase with ad exposure
• Users are 2x more likely to convert after seeing ads 6 times

Remarketing Tips to Maximize Conversions

• Set membership duration to 3x average sale cycle
• Set impression caps to unlimited - be aggressive
• Run multiple ads per campaigns

Hack #5: Revitalize Your Mobile Landing Pages

• More engagement is happening on mobile experiences than ever before
• Make sure the mobile experience is simple and clean

BONUS HACKS

• Capture leads directly from the SERP
• Encourage searchers to call you
• Call-only campaigns in Adwords

99% of the time you should only have 1 call to action on the page. Or also add a phone call.

1:00 - 1:30 PM

CONTENT, CONVERSIONS AND LEAD GENERATION

Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder Orbit Media

Every marketer should know the funnel:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Action
• Lead / customer

Empathy

The best marketers use data driven empathy - help your audience make a buying decision. People buy from people that they know like & trust.

“The website is the mousetrap, your content is the cheese.”

Sources of content topics:

• Keywords
• Q+A sites
• Analytics

Keywords

Use tools like Keyword.io, Google Ad Planner, Search Engine Optimization in your Google Analytics to find what users are searching for by volume,

Q+A sites

Use Quora, your sales/customer services teams/client stories - your best source of topics is your outbox.

Think AS your audience, not ABOUT your audience. Again, use empathy.

Analytics

Utilize data to make informed content ideation, creation, and distribution

Use Search Engine Optimization data in Google Analytics to see what content is succeeding and how you are performing.

Indicate keyword & topical relevance

• Title tag on homepage should be key phrase first, brand last

• Find the phrases that which you almost rank high, then use phrase in title tag

• Use keyword in headlines (bonus for
• Use keywords in content copy

Email Lists

Grow your email list and don’t make users work hard to sign up. Less form fields create less barriers, which create more signups.

Find high traffic pages and high conversion pages

• Reverse goal path - where were they before they converted?
• Share through social
• Find internal linking opportunities
• Repurpose content in varied forms Are you missing any conversion opportunities? Understand how users come to, move through, and convert on your site.

Put these high traffic and conversion pages through social distribution and on homepage rotators. Link to it from other high conversion and traffic pages.

Use testimonials for supportive evidence

• “This is the claim” “That is the proof”
• Never make a claim without supporting it with evidence
• Don’t put testimonials on a sidebar
• Put testimonials on high traffic pages

Third party sites

• Don’t send users to other sites
• Keep them on the website

• Traffic means the possibility of more leads

Thank you pages

• The worst thank you page just says “Thank you”
• Place newsletter signups and other important content to help get more leads

What to include in pages on your site

• Blog post

• Images, share links, sign up, social links

• Service page

• Headline, social proof

• Contact page

• Remove distractions
• Get obstacles out of the way

• Thank you page

• Secondary lead forms

12:30 - 1:00 PM

WHAT NOW? WHEN CRO BEST PRACTICES FAIL TO CONVERT (AND HOW TO FIX THEM)

Alhan Keser, Director of Optimization Widerfunnel Marketing

Speaker could not make it.

11:55 - 12:30 PM

THE 12-STEP LANDING PAGE REHAB PROGRAM 

Oli Gardner, Co-Founder Unbounce

Step 1: Admit that you actually have a problem

• Never start a marketing campaign without a dedicated marketing page

Step 2: Give the gift of simplicity

• Never send traffic to the homepage as there is so much fighting for user’s attention
• Attention ratio should be 1:1 - less noise, more focus
• Landing pages should have one focus
• Multiple links are fine as long as there is one goal

Step 3: Understand the role design plays in your

• Use design principles, visual hierarchy, and emphasis
• Proximity, grouping, and encapsulation: use these to increase conversions

Step 4: Get your story right before you tell it

• Information architecture: copy informs design, not the other way around
• Check pages to see what you’re doing
• Organize your linear design

Step 5: What the f*ck are you talking about?

• Do you have a clarity problem?
• Use tools like UsabilityHub to ask users questions: What is this page about?
• Print your landing pages out and read the copy out loud: Does it make sense?

Step 6: Recovery starts with building a solid foundation

• Design your form as if it’s the only thing on the page
• Include: form headline, subhead, benefits bullets, a form, call to action, and a closer

Step 7: Create search intent pages for eCommerce

• Success is based on how much you deliver to what is promised
• Bid on your site’s features like same day delivery, local ingredients, etc.
• Use benefits in your headlines
• Move them further and push to purchase
• Bid on what makes you feel different

Step 8: Don’t bet your success on what others do

• Test and experiment with assumptions
• Don’t just copy other people or business
• Nothing is promised, you must test

Step 9: Fields are for farmers, not forms

• Lower number of form fields tend to convert better

Step 10: Design for your *ideal* customer

• Know who you want to attract
• Know what turns them on
• Design the ideal experience for them

Step 11: If they’re about to buy, be quiet

• Don’t be cute or use “stop” words
• Print out page and read content elements close to CTA
• Remove copy/content that creates barriers to conversions

Step 12: Make amends by being a delightful marketer

• Be simple, be accessible, no harsh copy
• Give them what they want and back it up
• Use less elements which creates less chaos and distractions