Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Conf Notes for Unbouce CTA in 2015
Citation preview
GRANVILLE
ISLAND
FERRY
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
#CTACONF2015 NOTES
Hi there!
Thanks for downloading the CTAConf notes. The Unbounce team was hard at work collecting all the insights from the conference so you could kick back and enjoy. And from the stress-free looks on people's faces at the after parties, I'd say it was a smashing success!
But I must admit, there was an ulterior motive besides getting everyone all loosey-goosey. The notes offered us an opportunity to show off a really cool use for Unbounce landing pages. Turns out, when you embed a Google Doc into an Unbounce page, you can provide a ton of value to conference goers in a fully branded environment!
Not only that, but we also used an Unbounce landing page for our CTAConf site and for the PPC ads we ran alongside our other conference marketing. And you know what? We built those pages without developers. Pretty cool, right? If ever you find yourself running a marketing campaign, we hope you'll do the right thing and…
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Tuesday, September 15th]
Don’t Do Anything on Your Landing Page You Wouldn’t Do on a First Date (Slides) How Can You Foster a Better Culture Around Optimization? Video for Conversion & Beyond Full Stack Panel: Actionable, Practical A/B Testing From Conversion to Manipulation: How Successful Marketing Practices Persuade How to Generate Those Leads All Day, Everyday How to Conduct Solid, Data-Driven Conversion Research Death to Fear and Laziness! How to Push Yourself to Write Sticky Landing Page Copy
[Monday, September 14th]
Brand & CRO: Trick or Treat, the Choice is Yours 3 Impossible-to-Please Copywriters Tear Down and Rewrite Your Headlines Live Pulling the Emotional Trigger: Psychological Tactics to Convert Your Leads into Customers Full Stack Panel: Send Emails That Actually Convert A Framework for Mobile Conversion (Slides) Persuasive & Perverse Psychology: How to Win Customers and Influence People (Slides) Brand-Infused PPC for Better Results (Slides) The Four Corners of Conversion: Understanding the Intersection of Copy, Design, Interaction & Psychology (Slides)
…...
[Tuesday, September 15th]
Don’t Do Anything on Your Landing Page You Wouldn’t Do on a First Date ( Slides ) Karl Gillis, @AGConsult
● Karl committed to the topic for his presentation until he realized he knowsnothing about dating. Karl has been married to his with for 27 years and has beenwith her for 10 years! So he Googled a bunch of articles about dating.
1. Don’t start with a French kiss
● Hitting someone with an overlay at first is a little like French kissing someoneafter meeting them.
● But using exit overlays based on behavior - such as exit intent - is a differentstory. An exit overlay has given Karl 3,657 new subscribers over 12 months
2. Be on time - Fast loading times are important
● 2.2 second faster = 15.5% more downloads● Shopzilla reduces download time from 6 - 12 second and also saw a conversion
increase● “Web design isn’t about adding stuff. It’s about - it’s about keeping only those
elements that add to the bottom line.“
3. Don’t tell your life story in the 1st minute
● You don’t need to fill every silence● Don’t squeeze too many elements onto your page● <> Airbnb’s website - plenty of whitespace room to breathe. Only one USP.● “Limit the number of elements and your message will be more clear.”● Use bullets to make your message easier to digest.● “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I’ve written a long one.”● Long pages: Scroll heat maps/click maps show you that not everyone will scroll.
In some cases, Karl has seen that only 52% of people scrolled below the fold. Hecreated a variation where the UVP was clearer up top - and people were morelikely to scroll. People WILL scroll. You just have to give them a reason to.
4. Don’t shout for attention. Give attention.
● “Offline marketing is about getting attention. Online marketing is about paying attention.” - Gerry McGovern
● Pay attention to your users. ● Sliders suck. Always.
5. Make sure you get the attention you deserve.
● This is all about focus. Conversion Rate vs. Number of Links on the Page. It’s not an absolutely number but most of the time you’ll see that fewer links = higher conversion rate.
● When navigation becomes distraction, cut it. ● For every element on a web page, there should be a clear justification for why it’s
there. 6. Show interest in your date. Don’t make it all about you.
● Deloitte example “Largest professional services practice worldwide.” << No one cares. No one will be visiting your site in 10 years wondering if they’re still the largest!
● Don’t talk about your business. Talk about your user and what you can do for them.
● Stop asking what the goal of your website is. Find out the goals and needs of your visitors >> user research.
● Ask your visitors and potential clients the right questions. Do interviews. Talk to your call centre.
Some of Karl’s fav questions to ask: On website ● What is the purpose of your visit to our website today? ● What are the most important things when buying …? ● What convinced you the most to decide to ask a quote? ● Was there something that made you hesitate? If so, what?
Existing clients ● What would you miss the most when your X broke down / when we took away ● What do you like the most about X ● What's the most important thing X helped you to achieve?
7. The fun factor: Make your date laugh and you'll win their heart.
● Be playful in your copy, 404 pages. ● Delight, delight, delight!
8. Be yourself on your first date
● Be different. Be authentic. Find your own voice.
9. Your first date isn’t a police interrogation ● You’ve plenty of time in the future to really learn to know them. ● There is no such thing as the ideal number of links, form fields. You don’t want to
ask too much but there are some cases where several form fields are acceptable. ● The only absolute truth is that there are no absolutes. “It depends.” Find what
works for your business. ● If you have fields that you think people might hesitate on or be confused about,
add some explanation.
10. Once again: Be patient
● Don’t let your copy come across as over eager or bossy. “Book now!” CTA copy <> “Choose your room.”
● Be subtle. Don’t force your visitor. Your time will come. 11. Initiate a next step (Handshake, kiss…)
● Of course your page needs a call to action! Part 2: Don’t take my advice for granted Please remember - don’t believe what I said. A lot of my tips and best practices do work on most pages. But sometimes they will fail. Because your website, your product, your audience, your design … is unique. So please: start testing instead of copying.
How Can You Foster a Better Culture Around Optimization? Joanna Lord, @JoannaLord
● Over the last two days we’ve learned so much about optimization, but when we
get back there may be resistance to new ideas, so Joanna is going to help us to learn to foster a better culture around optimization where you work
● Let’s be clear about growth and what it is and means. We (marketers) are growth
catalysts. We are champions of growth. We push companies to try new things and challenge the status quo.
● What is growth? Growth is creating an unnatural curve
● What do we mean by testing? There are a lot of different types that all take place
on our landing pages/websites/events/ as well as in hiring and in the office. Testing is, or should be, everywhere in a company. When everyone is completely empowered to test, that’s when you get real success.
● Be the champion of testing in YOUR company
● When you get company-wide buy-in to testing, that’s when the magic happens ● Who owns testing? A lot of people pass it off to someone else. Not one person
can own it. It’s not a job -- it’s in the culture. It’s the CEO’s job, all the way down to everyone who’s on retainer
● “A testing culture is a business advantage.” Start to see it as a way to grow faster
than your competitors ● 61% of companies carry out fewer than five tests every month ● How do you get there? First a few reframes for you. It involves paradigm shifts.
Joanna says she’s about to get REAL ● Reframe: You can be wrong.
Do you feel like your company allows people to be wrong… without getting fired. You have to make failure a conversation and you have to celebrate the learnings that come out of it. Joanna’s company talks about failure a lot. Teams that fail, but provide insights are really valuable.
● Reframe: This is an infrastructure investment. “Like, I mean, real money,” Joanna says. It should be an actual on-the-budget list. What if your competitor has that? If you have to keep fighting for it, it’s time lost while they’re winning. There should be an expectation that your teams can access testing.
● Reframe: You either have it or you don’t. Simple: “If you asked yourself if you do, then you probably don’t.” There are three ways your testing culture exists today
1. We think testing is a really good idea 2. We do it just enough to cover ourselves 3. Testing is the gateway to our future. << This is the only way to a testing culture. The others are just not quite there
● “Show me the goods.” This might be a good way for your company to realize you’re not where you want to be. ○ Principle #1: Success looks different for everyone.
■ Facebook’s motto: Move fast. Break things ■ LinkedIn: Take risks ■ Zappos: Growth. Always learning ■ Coca Cola: Agile & Lean. Fast, Effective
Everyone should have the ability to recommend a “big swing.”
○ Principle #2: Empowerment demands freedom. You need to be able to give your team the tools they need to get the job done and then get out of the way. You give them a testing budget. If you run a test, you’re expected to report on it. Give your team a framework and let them feel like they're championing something. Give them the freedom
to fail. “In experimentation cultures, more ideas see daylight instead of being killed off on whiteboards. You stop speaking the the abstract and switch to speaking in next steps.” Wyatt Jenkins, Shutterstock Are you getting good ideas from a meeting? Stop the meeting, put it on the whiteboard, and start talking about the next steps.
○ Principle #3: You need to see it to believe it. You have to report. Here’s how: ■ Weekly tests roundup. Open every update with test insights. Open
every meeting with test insights. Leading with insights changes the conversation. The worst thing as a marketer is learning something really great and not having other teams adopt it!
○ Principle #4: Humble trumps HIPPOS. You can have a great opinion, but you won’t know if it works until you test it. You can’t be the only person in the room who doesn’t believe in curiosity. “We embrace the empirical focus because it keeps us humble. We don’t know up-front what customers want.” - Neil Hunt, Netflix Get everyone on board. This is about the customer, not some individual’s feelings.
○ Principle 5: Every fire needs fuel. You might get these things started, but you have to find a way to keep the momentum going. Ask what you’re doing every month to solidify your testing culture.
● Porch does a lot of interesting things to foster a testing culture. For example, whoever breaks the site at Porch the worst gets a toy pink horse called Mr. Sparkles for a week-- it’s seen as a badge of honor. And is kind of hilarious
● They have meetings that call out failures and wins -- no matter if it’s a fail or a win, everyone claps. Very supportive of *everyone*
● “LTI” You should be hearing “Let’s test it” all day from everywhere.
● Remember, it’s a flywheel, but you have to start somewhere.
● “As long as you have a team open to the idea, it’s always possible to start testing.” -Lou Kosak, AirBnB
● We got into marketing to test and be bold and build things that have impact. Why spend your days fighting with people who don’t believe in testing? Final words from Joanna, and some really important ones at that:
Go work at a place where you can have an impact.
Video for Conversion & Beyond Phil Nottingham, @philnottingham
Does video help increase conversions?
● Yes, if the video is delightful. Example of a delightful video - good video helps
create trust. It also helps you explain complex things quickly and simple, and helps to convey and emotional message.
Copy and image, all at once. Where can video help increase conversions?
● On landing pages (it helps to have the handsome Ryan Engley in your video to
help increase conversions) ● On product pages ● Even in email!
Video = form, it’s a media type. What kind of videos are we making for what context and why?
Explainer videos, live action tutorials, webinars. How can we use video to drive more leads and increase conversions? Landing page videos
● Typically very specific in their type of context. You’re only going to see them when you’re on that landing page - they’re made with that context in mind.
● Demand-driven ● Active
Social videos - contextually broad
● Broad context: you might be scrolling thru facebook, Youtube - much more broad in their application/the behavior of the user.
● Recommendation driven The best videos are always goal-driven When you see video marketing that doesn’t perform well, it’s typically because it’s created with an unclear goal in mind. What sort of goal should we be creating video for, then?
If you always try to create content that is there to be closing, it comes across as salesy and you fail to create videos that resonate. MVC: Minimal Viable Conversion: What’s the next minimum action that someone could take after consuming this piece of content that would be valuable to you in your overall conversion funnel. When someone watches the video, what do you want them to do next? In reality, whenever you’re watching a video, it’s not usually conversion-focused. You’re not thinking, “I need to go and buy something!” More realistically, you’re introspective/thinking - which is where Actioning comes in: expressing a goal as a transitive verb. Use this as a framework for a brief for a video: “The purpose of this video is to ACTON
[compel/excite/amuse] the audience into completing the MVC.
What kind of MVCs are suitable for video? Landing page video: ● Keep reading ● Watch another video ● Visit another page ● Ask a question ● Provide email address
Social videos: ● Watch another video ● visit website
● Share ● Comment ● Subscribe
You’ve got your goal - the next step is optimization. Three things you should optimize for:
1. Click/Play, AKA increasing play rate: a. Customize your video player. At Wistia, lots of data around the way people
are using videos. They’re going to share them with you :) i. Branded player colour =19% increase in play rate ii. Custom thumbnail = 35% increase in playrate (Moz example) (Think
of thumbnails like movie posters - it doesn’t necessarily have to be a frame from the video.)
1. Hack: Go into photoshop and add an overlay which explains the value proposition of the video itself
2. Wistia video example, paid photographer to take photos of the shoot. Allowed them to integrate the story throughout the landing page, blog page and supporting media. Show an element of the parade without giving the story away completely, encouraging them to watch the video. And possibly makes for a great thumbnail!
3. B-roll footage: “announcement and video coming soon” - tiny snippet used on FB and Instagram. Building demand for the content before they even released it.
4. Optimize social video for clicks, not keywords. Optimizing videos for Youtube ● “Clicky” title
○ If you have compelling copy that’s very clicky, you’ll see a much better return: “This Stick of Butter is Left Out at Room Temperature; You Won’t Believe What Happens Next” - genuinely just a 3 hour video of butter melting, but the title is so compelling that it has millions of views.
● <55 characters ● Explicit value proposition ● Thumbnail matches title
Optimizing videos for Facebook
● FB videos now autoplay in the feed - you can see stuff going on in the background as you scroll, no need for value prop in copy. The copy instead needs to compel people to keep watching by showing the reason for doing so. Offer a hint of a reward - something strange happens and you’ll want to see it. ○ Provide counterpoint or context ○ Indicate reward for viewing with sound ○ Can be nuanced and suggestive
2. Watch video
● Nose of video: the hook
○ Your job is to get them to continue watching the video. ○ The longer your video is, the more drop off you’ll have in the nose. ○ If you’re working on YouTube, “skip add” to contend with. Great analogy
for hooking people in the first couple of seconds. ○ Time you have hook your audience (don’t waste time with branding and
explaining what the video is going to be about. Show people you have a high quality video that will exceed their expectations): ■ LP: 7 seconds ■ Youtube: 5 seconds ■ Facebook: 2 seconds
● Body of video
○ The middle 96% of the video ○ You need to make the videos as short as possible, but no shorter than
that. If you look at attn graphs and people are skipping out at certain points, remove that part of the video or improve it!
○ If you’re getting consistent drop off, people probably just don’t like your video.
● Tail of video:
○ The last 2% of the video. For really long videos, people tend to watch the end.
● Evaluating engagement (based on Wistia data)
○ >>30% Drop off in the nose - There isn’t a clear hook ○ >50% Drop off in the body = the overall idea and execution is weak ○ >30% Drop off in the tail = the cta or conclusion isn’t compelling enough
3. Completing the MVC (call to action) a. Annotations (links on video)
i. Align annotations to existing points where people are rewatching the video - go to your engagement graph in wista and see where people are rewinding to watch again - that part of the video is interesting to them. Ask why it’s interesting and then create an annotation that aligns.
ii. Consider annotations in post-production - in YouTube, that roll at the end of the video that is super branded. They design that in After Effects and then add links in YouTube. Think about including them in the post-production stage - designing them.
b. Full-screen CTAs i. ie Whiteboard Fridays - Getting people in the funnel to watch more
content, consume more of it and eventually become a lead. ii. In YouTube, “cards” allows you to do a similar thing.
c. Turnstyle i. CTAs or keys that are overlaid to collect leads or unlock further
content. ii. Data:
1. 25% put turnstiles at the start = 16% conversion rate 2. 25% put turnstiles in the middle = 24% conversion rate 3. 49% at the end = 3.4% conversion rate
[graph “Turnstile Conversion Rate by Location”] 5-10 seconds into the video seems to be the sweet spot. What about seeding and distribution?
● The problem is most companies optimize for the wrong thing - loads of views - but in video advertising, it’s easy to get bots to watch stuff. You need meaningful people to watch your video. Don’t optimize for Impressions, Views.
● Instead, optimize for:
○ Click-through rates ○ View-through conversions
To make sure you’re doing this properly, run lean tests before investing.
● Eg: At Wistia, we wanted to do YouTube advertising, realizing fully that Wistia is kinda a competitor to YouTube. We needed to be disruptive. ○ They created two very different videos to test against each other
■ Weird fart noise - More views ■ “Don’t let bad advertising ruin your videos” - higher CTR - more likely
to generate revenue in the long-term. ○ Now they’re creating a much more advanced version of the second video.
<Caveat>: Good video helps increase conversions.
● Explainer/animation videos don’t cost much, but ● Video isn’t a content type - there’s such a broad range of executions so it doesn’t
work to think of it as its own content type. The parade video was a huge investment ($5-6K US) ○ Think about it in terms of time to return on investment
■ Instead of saying, can we have $5K to make a video, say, “If we can increase conversion rate by 2%, then we’re likely going to see a return on this.”
Only 0.25% of landing pages have video - if Lenny the dog can do it, then you can too!
Full Stack Panel: Actionable, Practical A/B Testing
Michael Aagaard, @ContentVerve Peep Laja, @peeplaja Ton Wesseling, @tonw Ryan Engley is moderating and will be asking the panel questions.
Q: Should all the attendees be A/B testing?
The panel all say no. Ton asks the audience to stand. Less than 100 conversions per month, he says sit down. Not very many people sit. Less than 500 conversions per month now. Still about 60% standing. Less than 1,000 conversions per month still about half. Now he asks that those who are running A/B tests stay standing and most do. And now we’re down to fewer than 10,000 conversions. Here’s why: If you have fewer than 1,000 conversions per month, there’s no point in
A/B testing.
Peep: Math is not magic. There is no magic number for how many conversions you need. Michael: You might need softer conversion rates. Peep: A/B testing is not optimizing. Ryan: Some people think A/B testing is THE way to optimize. They should still be optimizing, but what is it? Michael: If you don’t have enough traffic, A/B testing is not helpful, but one thing that always is helpful is doing your research on your customer. Ton: It takes a lot of effort to get an increase in conversions of 15%. That’s huge. But you have to take risks.
Michael: You have to realize what facilitates change. You need a hypothesis to understand what is driving change. Peep: You have to remember we are not in the business of science. We are in the business of making money. Change things, it works, who cares what it is, as long as it works. Michael: If your research says there are 10 things wrong with your landing page, then change everything instead of trying three or four changes. Ryan: If someone is getting started with A/B testing, what kind of research should they
be doing?
Ton: Most small things make a small impact. You have to take bigger risks to get bigger rewards. Michael: To answer the original question: Basic stuff is a step problem analysis. Where is your website leaking money? It really helps to find out where the biggest leak is. Then figure out what device people are using, what browser, a lot of technical bugs you may have that you can find out and change. You see with ecommerce that checkout funnels are often flawed, and that’s something to optimize. Peep: If you’re asking what should I test next, then you’re doing it wrong. A/B test is a solution to identify a problem. You need a testing roadmap. Never ask, you have to know and you learn that through research. Ton: If you can’t do A/B testing because not enough traffic, try out heat maps. they’ll tell you a lot about interaction. Also, talk to your customers. They’ll give you great answers on what they’re looking for that can help you a lot. Michael: Talked earlier today about how important it is to do homework. If you don’t have enough traffic for A/B testing, it’s even more important to do that research. Peep: You need to be able to measure how good your testing program is. There are three metrics to pay attention to: 1. The number of tests you run. 2. Percentage of winning tests. 3. The impact of the testing. Ton: You want to learn about your user. You don’t want to just change the color of the button. Testing for the sake of testing is not real testing. Peep: Testing tools make it so easy to do testing that anyone can do it… and they do. Ryan: What should someone do to get started with research that they have when
they’ve identified a problem area?
Michael: One of the things we saw at Unbounce with the signup process was that they needed four pieces of information and then after they click the CTA button all of a
sudden they get a bunch more fields plus credit card and many abandoned it. User testing can really help you optimize your website. Peep: If you don’t know what people are doing on the page, you’re in the dark. You need to record what’s happening on your page in order to identify connections between certain behaviors and conversion rate. Ton: Check to see what elements of the page people are using. Sometimes he eliminates one element of the page just to see what happens and then he can discover what matters. Peep: If you don’t know what matters to your customers, you have to figure it out, or you can’t optimize. Michael: Been surprised many times to learn that what customer service says and what’s on the page are often two very different things. And it’s always easier if you have just one product as opposed to many. Ryan: We’ve found something to optimize and then set up a test. What’s next?
Ton: The data research is very important up front. Peep: You need to calculate your sample size up front. You don’t stop at 95% confidence, you stop when you have enough traffic. You can use tools to accomplish this. Ton: That’s why we say a limit of 1,000 conversions per month at least. You have to test for six or seven weeks to get enough traffic to really understand what happens. In that time, people delete cookies. So you have sample pollution. Within 2 weeks you can get a 10% dropout of people deleting cookies and that can really affect your sample. Peep : When do I end A/B test. 1. Enough sample size. 2. Test duration, or how long a test should run. You need a representative sample, not a convenient sample.... Ton: You have to calculate up front and don’t stop until you get the results you’re after. Peep: Statistical significance only makes sense once you have sample duration. Before that it’s a meaningless number. Ryan: What happens if cookies are expiring, but you haven’t reached significance?
Ton: Ton runs A/A tests (completely the same page) against each other. 77% of the test throw out a winner after one day or four days or seven days. Those are false positives. That’s why you have to calculate up front. Michael: If you know how long to test, then a false positive is something you expect to see. Ryan: How do you document all the tests you run to make sure you’re constantly
learning?
Michael: There are so many ways to do it, but the main thing is that you actually share it. A big part of this is documentation. One thing Michael uses is Evernote and he puts all his screen dumps in there to keep track. If you get too complicated you don’t do it because it’s too hard. Ton: When we started we would just use PowerPoint presentations, but then there were so many that they wouldn’t be able to find it. Then they switched to Excel, but they found it difficult to share with the rest of the company. Now they use Trello to keep track and the DB is searchable, so it’s out there for them to use. Ryan: What kind of a staff do you need to optimize?
Peep: An optimizer is someone who needs to know a lot about a lot. Now Questions from the audience: Q: My question is f you were looking at outsourcing, how would you select a marketing
firm?
Michael : I would ask them about the process. Ask them what their testing process is. Ton: If they have no data and no process, then don't’ bother. Q: I just doubled my signup rate which I thought was awesome. But boss said that
those ones aren’t spending any money.
Ton: You have to get the right KPI. What can I learn about the lifetime value? Once they’ve signed up, now a whole new CRO stage starts. Michael: Don’t forget to integrate test data with analytics. Don’t just look at averages. If you’re only looking at two different creatives, you’re just getting averages and it’s not enough to understand. Ton: I never use the analytics part of the A/B testing tool because they want you to be successful and keep using it. I do my own math and I use my own GA data. Q: As marketers we get in the onslaught of CRO, SEO, etc, so we don’t always know
where to spend resources. As CRO experts, can you tell then that the product just isn’t
good and there’s a new plan needed?
Peep: We have discovered through research that sometimes people just don’t like the product.
Michael: That goes back to the research. Sometimes marketing has the burden of promoting a product that just isn’t good. Ton: A/B testing is not to optimize conversion, but to grow your business. Do whatever works to grow your business. A/B testing is not a solution, it’s a way of thinking. Final thoughts:
Michael: Split testing is not an excuse to skip homework. Peep : If you don’t know what to test you’re doing it wrong. Ton : Use testing to learn from your user.
From Conversion to Manipulation: How Successful Marketing Practices Persuade Nathalie Nahai, @NathalieNahai
● We’ve all used tactics that we weren’t always entirely comfortable with, and come away thinking, “Is this really the best use of my ability?” We’ve taken to spamming CTAs across pages, pop-ups all over the place, and making crazy promises … all to get an email address. And people are getting fed up, taking control of their online experience.
● Ghostery is a service that allows users to block themselves from having their info
sent to third parties. AdBlock Plus is used by half the people in the auditorium. And they’re marketers!
● The problem is , manipulative practices have made their way into the
mainstream.
● Richard Thaler review, Sunday times reviewed his book, but he ran into a paywall when trying to read the review. He clicks on the subscribe link, scrolls down and looks at the plans, but there’s no information.
○ They’re hiding information, which leads to a broken journey that leads away from main navigation (which most people won’t do).
● Dark pattern: A user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into
doing a thing.
○ It can be very effective for short term gain s. We’ve all been in situations where we had to meet target, and it’s easy to justify dipping your toes into that water.
○ But it begins to undermine trust, creates negative brand associations … and then people talk about those poor brand experiences.
○ It’s not a robust long-term solution. ○ Name & Shame: We’re getting wise to these practices and people are
starting to hold companies accountable, seeking better alternatives.
● DarkPatterns.org , a site that documents and solicits submissions of dark patterns.
● Lack of trust is one of the biggest impediments to being successful in
ecommerce
● A study by Forbes found that 81% of millennials expect that companies act as
good corporate citizens. That means no dark patterns. ○ EY Consumer Rights Directive has banned many dark patterns, the main
intention is to prevent additional items and services being added to a basket by default.
● Natalie is telling us that we can be better than this. That we can lead the way. But can Millennials really do anything other than destroy the economy and all semblance of morality?
● Good Nudge/Bad Nudge
○ Win-wins are assisting customers to achieve their goals. Do this. ○ Win-lose is when you undermine your customers’ goals for your own
benefit. And then we all make fun of you at CTAConf.
● A nudge is an aspect of choice that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable
way. But it never forbids options nor change their economic incentives. You’re providing options.
● A good nudge is easy and cheap to avoid.
○ Dynamic pricing is when items are priced at a level determined by a customer’s perceived ability to pay. There’s a difference between “fair” or socially acceptable pricing and those perceived as unfair.
○ Meaning 2015 dynamic pricing: early bird specials, referral prices, etc
● Bad Nudge: ○ The infamous Uber price surge during the siege in Sydney. It’s not socially
acceptable to increases prices during a crisis. ○ booking.com tells you that a hotel is selling out fast, and you need to
secure your registration today. But two days later, prices fell. Their advice was intentionally misleading.
● Cognitive load: the mental effort being used in your working memory . This is a finite resource, and it becomes more difficult to think and make decisions as a day goes on.
○ But dark patterns take advantage of this by making a page intentionally confusing in order to exhaust the cognitive load and make a decision that may not be best for them.
○ The worst offender across so many companies: email unsubscribe pages. These are so often intentionally designed to make the user bounce because they can’t understand how to unsubscribe.
○ Another example: contact options that don’t work, or just completely suck. Natalie shared an example from O2, but I think the most prominent example might be that Comcast fiasco.
● Individuals disproportionately stick with the status quo. This means that default
options tend to be the ones selected by users.
○ Good defaults: Photoshop tools that default to the most common settings or controls. Remembering information you previously input.
○ Bad nudge: British Airways. Natalie is explicitly looking for low-cost flights only, but British Airways presented the top option as one of the most expensive ones.
● Obfuscation: Default selections can also hide the choices you want to make.
○ “Ryanair” placed “Don’t Insure Me” between Denmark and Finland in a flight insurance dropdown menu. (At least it’s in the right place alphabetically.)
○ Even though the insurance is optional, you are forced to state that you don’t want it.
● We are all the user. Yes! YEssssSSS
○ Dark patterns start with us. And then we’re at the receiving end of it once those patterns end up in products and services we use.
○ Persuasion is a continuum between facilitation/persuasion and coercion/manipulation. The difference between those things is the intent.
Ask three questions:
● Are you enabling your users to achieve their goals? ● Are you coercing them into doing something else? ● Are you designing experiences for mutual benefit?
● Designers, marketers, and CROs are the architects and the users of the future of
tech. What kind of world do we want to build? ● (From all the hands raised? I guess we all want a world that looks a lot more like
the one of AdBlock Plus.) ● Q&A! ● What’s your favourite website and why? ● Psyblog, a really digestible read about psychology. Nice CTAs and sign-up boxes. ● How do you handle dynamic pricing in international markets with different
standards of living? How do you make it fair for customers that are paying more while still giving an equivalent experience to lower income users?
● You have to move the pricing brackets down to match that market. But before lowering the prices, research your target audience, what they are willing to spend, and offer incentives, such as pre-orders that are filled beyond a certain threshold.
● Follow-up: how to communicate that to users paying more? Should it be transparent?
● Make sure your value proposition for all users is sound, and communicating the difference in value that
● How do you manage the conversation of saying “no” when you’re asked to do something manipulative?
● What’s the reason they’re asking to do it? (As Wil said, ask why!) Provide alternatives, along with showing others who have been caught exploiting dark patterns. But if you can’t rebuff them, try it — with the caveat that you get to try your alternative 30 days later.
● What are the most unscientific practices you’ve seen from “data-driven” companies?
● The bigger issue is companies implementing principles like Urgency without due diligence, e.g. a site that sells deadstock as framing their items as scarce and about to disappear forever (true, if a polite reframing) versus sites that have every item at a fake reduced price, which are overwhelming to users. Same principle, drastically different implementations.
How to Generate Those Leads All Day, Everyday Mike King, @iPullRank
● Mike says he goes really fast. So here’s his deck . ● Unbounce tore apart one of Mike’s landing pages once. Mike was actually
grateful, and he made it better.
● We’ve gone back and changed the original post to reflect that
● Hahahaha! Mike points out we have no meta description or page title. Ha! Well
done, Mike.
Popups
● Ethan Zuckerman apologized for inventing the popup ad. ● But from the Forbes list of most valuable brands, Mike points out that all of them
are using pop-ups/exit overlays.
● “It’s not about how marketers feel about it. It’s about how our audience reacts to it.”
● Look at s tandard lead gen model .
○ Fulfill > Capture > Qualify > Nurture > Close ● We generally do basically the minimum of all these things. And often we don’t
qualify customers
○ You might even get good leads and you never follow up with them ○ You might not even nurture clients
● “We do a lot of one night stands in lead generation and not enough long term
relationships.” ● Mike suggests this:
○ Understand > Prepare > Fulfill > Qualify > Capture > Nurture > Close
● The design collaborative Superfiendd.ly aggressively looks to disqualify people by not having a form at all. They’re hyper-qualifying anyone who ends up contacting them
● “As with anything else, your lead gen tactics must be dictated by your business
objective”
Data-driven personas
● We can track different personas in GA. Different personas convert at different rates. Understanding what pockets of those audiences convert best is really valuable
● The world’s fastest way to generate personas:
○ Get your mailing list. ○ Run it through FullContact and get info on them. Now you have a bit sheet
on your users and you can segment them. ○ Then you can use DemographicsPro to get even more information on
them and then you have a twitter list. Upload that to Facebook audience insights. Facebook is going to show you what your audience is interested in. You can segment in FB based on different axioms.
● Now you can check this data against your Google Analytics data. ● Now you build your personas/user stories. You get measurable characteristics
about these people. ● Personas dictate your acquisition mix
○ It comes down to the hook ○ Whether or not you build personas, the effectiveness of any lead
generation campaign comes down to your “hook.” Personas help you tailor that hook and measure segmented performance
● From personas to readability - the demographics on your personas will tell you
where you need to be as far as the readability of your content. You identify them based on their reading level
● Mike looks at reading difficulty vs. page value. Mike does a pivot chart to identify
opportunities to improve the clarity of your copy^^ ○ If you’re speaking to doctors, you don’t dumb it down
● Now do a content audit and conversion workflow. Determine audit size, pass it to
URL Profile, (URLProfile will pull both the Page Value metric and the readability scores for your site http://www.urlprofiler.com) import into excel, color code your quant sheet, and perform a qual analysis
● Once you’ve identified opps to improve readability score, you can actually use MS
Word
● Mike has seen ~15% improvement in conversions from updating copy on
client’s websites
Qualifying leads
Personas should dictate qualification ● Get more demographic qualification: When you capture a lead, run it through
FullContact via Webhooks to qualify based on demographic data. http:// www.fullcontact.com http://intelligence.towerdata.com
● When you capture a lead, run it through FullContact Company API via Webhooks to get firmographic data and qualify
● You’ll also want to have call tracking set up. CallRail offers an easy to use
solution for call tracking with simple API http://www.callrail.com ○ The CallRail API lends itself easily to create a dashboard for your call
center or salespeople to determine call quality. This way you can get a complete picture of whether or not your leads are good.
● Then you want to think about lead scoring models. Try to make the scoring
model very simple
● Mostly we score up to 100 and under 40 means low engagement. The scoring
models are based on what they do on your site as well as who they are i.e. VP might be more powerful. Then you use this data to close the feedback loop
● SiteSpy allows WP users to set up simple scoring models
https://wordpress.org/plugins/site-watch/ ● If you have a bigger site, you can use Mintigo and Infer Higher End platforms for
lead scoring and predictive modeling are Infer http://www.infer.com and Mintigo http://www.mintigo.com
Nurturing leads is about not being a “one night stand”
● Mike recommends content upgrades. Launch ebooks as pages rather than PDFs,
then relaunch them as PDFs with lead capture forms ● Build relationships with customers. Nurture your marketing qualified leads with
continued content and offers to keep yourself top of mind until they become hand raisers.
● Don’t rely on hand raisers or sales qualified leads. Focusing nurturing your marketing qualified leads. “Hand Raisers” or SQLs that are immediately ready to convert when they visit are rare. Focus on nurturing your MQLs to buying temperature.
Low effort vs. High effort lead gen
NATURAL DEMAND VS. ARTIFICIAL DEMAND: Mike wanted to determine what works better, a campaign where we just throw up a landing page and capture existing demand or where we do in-depth research and create lots of assets.
● For low effort lead gen, Mike got the Ashley Madison data -
● and then made a landing page for reputation management with the hook being
the data leak. ● He ran ads on Twitter and Facebook based on the leaked email addresses
● He used SearchMetrics and found the sites that gained the most traffic in the
last week
● Eg 2: Searchmetrics publishes a weekly list of 100 sites that lost and gained the
most visibility in Organic Search.
● He grabbed that list and created retargeting ads that showed those people in the companies who they score for SEO and made ads that showed them how they can do better
For high-effort lead gen
● INC. 500 List We wanted to re-rank the Inc. 500 based on each site’s propensity to be banned in Google
● They performed detailed statistical analysis based on the Searchmetrics Winners and Losers and re-ranked the INC500 based on the model we’d developed. There’s also a whitepaper.
● They Built a Backend - We get alerted whenever people visit their custom report ● We retarget those contacts so their grade in our study can chase them around
the web.
● We make sure to nurture those people that have downloaded the ebook further
by letting them know about the rest of our campaign and to find out where they’d rank among the Inc. 500.
Here are tactics that usually work. ● Start with an ebook. Write something that is tangential to that ebook and link to
the ebook ● Give people the opp to either give their ebook or tweet to promote the ebook in
order to get it ● Pop ups. We hate them, but they work so well
○ Mike worked with a client that got hit by the Panda update. After a couple of months they were losing traffic. Mike implemented exit overlays and saw a 51.5% increase in conversions
○ We A/B tested the popup vs. not having the popup and we got 51.5% increase in improvement in lead capture. - Popups are a great opportunity to use personalization and behavioral targeting.
○ If you’re going to do popups, Mike likes Ninja Popups and Personyze
● Mike says behavioral based popups work really well ● Mike has a couple of technical hacks. They’re kind of intensive, so see his slides
from the presentation here (<link) ● Stop retargeting the wrong people. You’re wasting money. All platforms say they
account for the fact that someone already bought something but still get ads.
Mike recommends “fingerprinting” a computer. The instructions are also in his slides
● Final word from Kanye: “We’re not gonna control our kids with brands”
How to Conduct Solid, Data-Driven Conversion Research Michael Aagaard, @ContentVerve
Michael Aagaard, legendary optimizer and now our very own CRO! He was also the first person I ever interviewed for the blog. I made this lovely image of him:
● “If I had 1 hour to save the problem, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem” — Einstein
○ This is important for any kind of optimization.
● Michael had a client that was a lead generation site where event hosts could search for attractions and entertainment acts. Michael’s assignment? Get more leads.
○ First thing that stood out to Michael? The huge form, which asked for complete information about the upcoming event and its host. All anyone wants to do is contact an entertainer!
○ The client allowed to remove 3 form fields, creating a new form with less friction. 4 weeks, 512 conversions, 95% confidence … 14.23% drop in
leads.
○ “14% drop in conversion. Shiiiit.” << Imagine this whispered by a tall norse god.
○ So he actually did some research on the form. The form element with the highest interaction was “type of event” — which Michael removed.
○ Lowest interaction: event location, email, and phone # ○ The optional comment field was the biggest drop-off … but the form
doesn’t explicitly state that this field is optional.
○ A new, better treatment: moving the highest interaction element — type of event — to the top, and tweaked the label copy. Only enter the location if you booked it already, email says what it’s for, and comment field is optional
○ 4 weeks, 671 conversions, 96% confidence … 19.21% increase!
● Treatment A was based on “best-practices”, the assumption he knew what to do.
Treatment B was based on actual research, unique to that project’s context.
It’s very difficult to solve a problem you don’t understand. Research helps you
understand problems.
● Michael asked 100 marketers if there was anything holding them back from doing conversion research – time, client buy-in, budget, don’t know where to start?
● Split testing is not an excuse to skip your homework! 4 weeks per test per page,
12 test per year. Make them count! ○ Don’t think of split testing as a research tool, but a method of verifying
your research and your hypotheses.
● The landing page itself is not the only thing. It’s part of a much larger conversion
experience.:
Aagard has build a custom landing page optimization report for Google Analytics! Get it at bit.ly/1Mpg3lf << Aagaard’s report shows you the conversion rate and bounce rate by
device at a glance . This thing is killer.
● Be careful with sample sizes: less than 100 is unreliable, over 250 is good, and over 500 is great.
● Split by individual channels like paid search, display, direct, organic, and referrals. Will be much easier to see which channels are the most lucrative and which ones have further opportunities to be exploited.
● New Vs. Returning Visitor Conversions! Someone give me a website to analyze!
● Look at the traffic through the landing page and beyond. Where are users
dropping off and failing to convert?
(Running theme of the conference seems to be looking at CRO as a framework for business rather than a mere digital marketing optimization tactic.)
● Look at where your users are going if they’re leaving your landing page. You can tell what a user wants by discovering what information they went searching for on their own.
● Your customers have the accumulated knowledge to tell you and they are waiting to talk to you. They want to feel valued. So ask them! You can take the language they use and basically drop it into your landing page.
● Feedback modals can be pretty awful, but Michael implemented one here at
Unbounce that actually gives real answers and then asks them to elaborate once they’ve selected an answer.
○ 70% reported they had already looked at other competitors, and told us who. That’s invaluable.
○ See through the eyes of your users.
● “Marketing logic doesn’t always work.”
● DATA-DRIVEN EMPATHY — Andry Crestodina
● A case study of Unbounce’s landing page (below). There’s not a lot of information on it, even though it’s in an intensely competitive industry. Michael decided to focus on Desktop-only in order to score a quick win, while taking time to think about mobile.
● Michael discovered that the biggest drop-off point was the product sign-up
process. He started that ambitious project, but continued to look at how he could optimize the page itself while that simmered.
● Michael talked to our customer success team and discovered that there were a
ton of questions coming in. Like the infamous “What’s the difference between Unbounce and Optimizely?” (Pretty much everything btw!)
● Michael’s new page is way longer , designed explicitly to address questions and
doubts that we know that our users have.
○ Templates! Agencies! Customer success! And only after all that … a form.
● Get all the way to the bottom and still not sure why you need landing pages? Michael added a section to address that, too.
● Michael doesn’t want them to get to the CTA immediately — he wants them to
absorb the information and be enthusiastic about clicking it!
● Links at the top of the page link to content within the page, with an intentionally slower scroll speed so the user can perceive how much content is on the page. Super clever.
● 4 weeks, 577 conversions, 99% confidence … 157.67% increase in CTR, 52.23%
inc in signups — all with a CTA below the fold.
● “Thank you very much!” He left the stage. Everyone is clapping.
● Oh, he came back.
● This was his first project at Unbounce, and it was a huge success because he took his time to do his research.
● The doubts of the client can become benefits for your own product if you
address them properly!
● Time, buy-in, budget, or not knowing where to start? This presentation just addressed all of those doubts, too. :)
● Michael advised the audience not to be like “the young Michael Aagard. He was
an idiot…” (... I would settle for being any kind of Michael Aagaard).
Death to Fear and Laziness! How to Push Yourself to Write Sticky Landing Page Copy Joanna Wiebe, @copyhackers
● And day 2 has started! Joanna is kicking us off with a giant slide that says,
“You’re just being lazy.” ● Joanna teaches a lot of people about copywriting and finds that after she shows
them all the things she should be changing that it often just doesn’t get done ● There’s a point where you know a certain amount about a subject, and then you
just stop pushing yourself to go further ● “You already know the things you need to do for better results,” Joanna says ● Some people might argue “we’re doing our best.” Joanna wants to put that to the
test ● Joanna has an email example from Twitter. The headline reads “Drive more
website traffic.” The email is about how to use Twitter cards and the CTA says “Create a website card.” You’d expect to see the phrase “website card” on the landing page. Instead, they have directed people to a page that has nothing to do with Twitter cards and does not mention them. “They knew that, they just chose to do nothing about it.”
● “When marketing is wrong, it’s all about a willingness to just let it be.” ● “You are guilty of about a billion moments of copy laziness.” ● Maybe a billion is a bit extreme. Joanna will bring that down to three and explore
those
1. “You fill in the words.” Copy works best when copy leads design. If you’re squeezing copy into your design, you’re doing it wrong. ○ Joanna has an example of an email that went out that actually has Lorem
ipsum copy in the body of the email. Oops ○ “marketers LOVE to say that nobody reads online. If marketers could do
away with copy they would.” ○ But your prospects NEED for it to be there. You just need to modify the
message that your prospect needs to see
2. You default to easy wins. You might jump to incentives or discounts in order to get numbers up. Sometimes things like this work, but they don’t always work ○ Joanna’s examples of this are two AdWords ads. One has a promo offer,
one does not. ○ Joanna reminds us that it doesn’t always come down to price for everyone
3. You say what your competitors say. We say things that are very similar to what our competitors are saying. ○ The reason marketers exist is to get people to react positively to a
product. But what we end up doing is saying things that are very safe ○ “The huge opportunity is in saying things that our competitors wouldn’t
dare say.” ○ Marketers also aren’t making promises. You’ve got to put a little skin in the
game and start promising customers something ○ Also, add some personality to your presence online.
● Studies support using personal language to awaken the brain ● One of the things that marketers must do is break the force of inertia. ● Using words that are unfamiliar that are unexpected or unfamiliar wake up the
brain. Words that are about movement also do this. You’re getting people to wake up different parts of your mind.
● An example: Variation A: Cover Drops, Spills & Water Damage. Variation B: Covers Clumsiness & Stupidity. The second one resulted in 87% CTR increase and 14% lower CPC
● Joanna suggests taking the language that your prospects use and putting it in front of them
● Joanna did a test and Googled invoicing software hoping to be dazzled. Joanna has 7 examples that all say the same thing: “basically nothing.”
● “Good message matching, but we can do better than that.” ● Joanna calls this “word-shaped air.” Everyone saying exactly the same thing and
no one is saying anything ● There are academic studies to support trying to use some kind of personality in
your copy to get people to pay attention. ● There are forces at play that are keeping us from really trying hard ● The first is that the world wants us to be lazy ● It’s scary to be different. It’s scary to be the person who says the thing that no
one else will. You are setting yourself up for judgement ● We’re rewarded for not trying -- that reward it not being noticed. This is
counterintuitive to what marketers do. We’re supposed to get noticed
● Reacting to difference is normalized. Not only is it bad to be different, we are supposed to react to different. If you don’t react to different, you’re seen as abnormal
● Joanna cites that basketball refs give more fouls to players of another race -- we punish difference. Difference is very easy to punish.
● Other studies show you’re more likely to be believed if you have the same accent as those you’re speaking to
● “If you say things of consequence, there may be consequences” ● “Fear breeds laziness.” Being quiet is rewarded. Now you are supposed to go to
work and are asked to “shake it up.” Then they send the copy off to stakeholders who reject it.
● “Your boss wants you to be lazy.” ● None of the execs have ever written copy. ● “I’ve never studied copy. I can’t write to save my life. So obviously I should
critique your copy.” - Every copy reviewer ever ● How do we review copy? Are any of us actually good at reviewing copy ● Here’s an example from James Schwartz, copywriting legend. “I’ll make you a
mental wizard as easily as this-” We never know if something is going to do well until we do it.
● “Great copy is a fluke.” Or, at least, it feels that way. ● “Our products are innovative. Our copy is not.” Copy is not allowed to be
innovative. ● So we try to test copy. Let’s try it and see how it goes ● We rely very heavily on data. We’re relying on proving every point. And that makes
copy innovation very difficult. You can’t always support copy decisions with data. When we focus so much on data we hand people who don’t care about copy a tool to eliminate creativity.
● “You’ve tried nothing and you’re all out of ideas.” ● We’re creating an environment where we’re killing creativity with so much
constant testing. ● We say, “test it, but not like that.” ● If you’re trying to innovate and told you’re always doing everything wrong, you
end up not being able to be creative ● Be careful with testing. A text ad with a discount might not perform well, but a
display ad might perform very well. That’s why testing needs context ● The world likes lazy. Your boss likes lazy. DAta likes lazy ● But you have to push past that ● So what do we actually walk away and do. ● How to keep being lazy, yet write the most amazing copy?
● Here are Joanna’s four recommendations for staying lazy but get better results: 1. Use tools. Google Quality Score will help with message match. The Hemingway
app will help you make sure you’re being clear. Headline generators are also fantastic. Use them to drum up new ideas.
2. Use headline formulas. Example: [Product name] is [product category] that [what it does that people want.]
3. Be deadly. We’re often told to write emotionally. Her example is the headline “They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play!~ ○ Joanna actually uses the 7 deadly sins to help direct her copy. They help
to create emotional triggers 4. Swipe from customers. Let your customers write your copy, or, at least, help
inform your copy. They’re not sitting around a boardroom -- they’re using your product. Joanna wrote some copy for Crazy Egg that was entirely directed or informed by what customers had said and it performed very well.
● Get creative! Test your copy and see how it performs.
…...
[Monday, September 14th]
Brand & CRO: Trick or Treat, the Choice is Yours Wil Reynolds, @wilreynolds
Wil has spent the last 11 years figuring out how to get more traffic or analyzing that traffic’s impact on business. Brand and its role in CRO
Wil was always a direct marketer, who became a reluctant “brand guy.” But bringing a talented designer in, who started tweaking the brand, made him feel more proud about the company – it’s like how you feel when you look in the mirror.
● Brand: The promise of an experience based on a mental representation of a product or service. It’s my — that is, an individual — perspective.
● An awesome video from fallen.io, a narrated infographic. It encourages people to
pay the suggested price — $2.50 — for it after watching . ○ Have you ever paid for a piece of free content after you were done
consuming it? Maybe not. But Wil Did for fallen.io, and he felt “like a cheap prick” if he couldn’t give this guy two dollars and fifty cents. Why did this happen?
○ He “converted” because of the subtle suggestion of a suggested ticket
price . That nudge lead to a conversion. ○ The content was “ 10x ” content — of exponential quality, making Wil feel
cheap if he didn’t pay for it. Who is the best CRO? Wil knows some great ones, but … ● “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
What the heck does that have to do with CRO? ● The best CRO in the world: Jeff Bezos, the devil. Amazon Prime has a 74%
conversion rate. ● If you’re a prime member, and you’re in the session putting stuff in your cart, you
are less than 1% likely to visit a competing site like Walmart or Target. ● That’s why is Amazon giving away Prime membership to college students.
● Amazon says Prime Day sold more than Black Friday. ● TL;DR? The Kindle is an amazing implementation of CRO. The device reduces the
friction of buying and consuming a book to near-zero. That’s 10x CRO.
● Run out of laundry soap? Amazon’s ridiculous Dash Buttons reduce the purchasing friction to near-zero, again. You can respond to the need for an item by purchasing it immediately with a physical button dedicated solely to that.
CRO understands friction and removes it. That is a business function, not a web function. ● “I wish there was a CRO at the table when Microsoft designed products.” <>
Hilarious video of Microsoft designing the iPod packaging. Check it ou t - couldn’t any of us have prevented this? (I really hope so.)
Winning with why
● When people ask you to do things, always ask why . ● How many of you have clients that ask you for more leads, and you say yes? ● Often, last thing they need is more leads. Why? Because they treated the last
thousand like garbage. ● We’re being asked to fix the wrong problem and you won’t know unless you ask
why . ● Asking why gives you an opportunity to innovate, to examine new ways of doing
things, different from the competition
○ Wil’s attempt at defying convention? His lead form. It is the worst in the world. It takes forever to fill out. (OMG, this is the longest form I’ve ever seen.)
○ “I’m willing to lose the battle to win the war. I’m not in this business for leads. I’m in it for clients.” Guessing that this insanely long form brings in way higher quality leads at a way lower conversion rate.
● The sales team was telling him they need a new hire. “Why?” We’re getting all
these leads in.
○ “What would happen if we had more time with the leads that are worth a
damn, instead of feeling bad about not getting back to every single
person?”
○ So make a form that takes forever to fill out. How hard are they willing to work to work with us?
○ Lots of people bail. But it asks the questions worth asking, and helps find
solutions.
○ People leave comments in the form that they hate it. Well, at least they still filled it out.
○ If you have a good brand, you can overcome friction — If Apple product goes out of stock, people will wait until it returns. They stay for the brand.
Ask for permission to win the war. ● “Do I have your permission to show you another way to grow your business that
isn’t what you asked me to do?” ● “No, I want links.” Next! You don’t pay your bills in links. ● Asking why clarifies the root of the problem.
Inserting an CRO at a non CRO table
● eg 1: Lighting client. “We want links!” But Wil started optimizing Pinterest for them. That went better, and he was asked to focus on that. No more links.
● eg 2: IVR client: more leads. “Slow down. How about we call your service so we can see how great it is?” Turns out the customer service was awful. They didn’t help solve the problems. The marketing and tech teams weren’t the issue. It was the customer service. See what the experience is like after the lead enters the funnel.
● eg 3: SaaS Client. “More leads! Your leads suck!” When you hear that from a big SaaS company, do this. He filled out lead forms for multiple companies, and his client had the second-to-last response time. By that point, Will was no longer interested in explaining his needs to more sales people.
The impact of external factors ● “I need you to improve my product/customer service/brand.” These factors have
nothing to do with landing pages, but do influence who one is willing to give their money to.
● Look through your business through a different lens. Don’t just shove customers in — help clients get those customers, and then focus on the business backend
to keep those customers.
● Wil’s company lost 600,000 in revenue in non-renewed clients.
○ Wil doesn’t want more leads. He wants to renew more clients and keep them happy. And he thinks every CRO in the room could help him do it. But how involved are any of us?
○ How involved are you in the CRO of client happiness? Retention? Profitability?
● CROs are the “we don’t let you make shit up on gut” people. Great way of looking
at it. ○ New lens: we de-risk marketing decisions. Where are we being tasked with
winning battles versus wars? ○ Clients expect grunt work from CROs, and brand work from brand people.
Be careful to not be perceived as a grunt. You could be the leader. ● Wil spent 16 years learning how Google works. 0 on how people buy stuff.
Hearing that for Will was like a punch in the gut. (It is.) ● A study showed that maids lost an average of 8 pounds when told that their day
to day is exercise equivalent to running a 2K daily, when compared to a control group who were only told that exercise is good. ○ The only intervention? Someone told them what they were doing was
bigger than it really was. That’s the power of the mind. ● Where is the risk in your business?
○ A/B test it, whether it’s on a website or not. ○ One of the worst parts of running events? You can only A/B test once a
year. (lol) ● We underestimate the power of brand, but the impact is not linear.
○ You don't see a direct connection between changes and impacts. ○ When negative impacts happen in a business, it's easy to see the
connection to bad branding or publicity. But how often are positive
impacts attributed to the brand?
● Companies in NYC spend 4 million a year to have their name on the side of their buildings. (Mostly banks, because it's reassuring that there’s a physical location where you can “get your money.”)
● Voss water comes in a nice, heavy, glass and metal bottle. It’s just tap water, but people pay it because of the brand. Moving to a cheap plastic bottle would eliminate the brand value.
○ What’s your value proposition? “Our water weighs a lot.” They got an 18 million investment.
● Classic wine example! They gave people wine and stuck them in an MRI, and then told them that wine was $90 or $10. It was the same wine, but the MRI measured a way more positive response in those who thought they were drinking $90 wine.
● Pop-up hate! Yes!
○ Will searched for beginners SEO and 5 of 8 pages had a popup before. But who would definitely NOT have one? “Moz.” from the audience. Who’s number one ranked for SEO? “Moz.”
● Wil no longer clicks on links from sites that inundate with him popups. That is the invisible impact of searching only for short-term conversion gains.
● Slate blocked content from him, and he’ll never go back again. The experience is too bad to be worth dealing with.
● Imagine if Oli jumped up while Will was talking to sell us stuff? (We could try it, I guess. Have to test!)
● Harvard Business Review does it smart by providing enough value to make you consider actually signing up. Their funnel is slowly guides the user towards becoming a customer while still enjoying content encumbered.
● Great SEO, like great CRO, can be bad long term for the customer. ● Client success amnesia. Awesome CROs create lazy marketers, and that’s a
problem, because marketers come to rely on optimization tricks for revenue. But they don’t think about optimizing that further on their end , in their marketing and customer service.
● None of us are here because of the exit popup on the CTA Conf page. We’re all here because we love it. (I’m here because I have to be, but this is pretty great.)
● Good CRO creates an expectation that hard work and big gains are easily won , and removes focus from long-term.
● Imagine if Apple and Comcast made pacemakers. Who would you let cut you open? (I’ll wait for the second generation iPacer, personally.)
● The brands that decide to focus on people’s frustrations and end them and delight their customers will affect whether or not your stock goes up or down.
3 Impossible-to-Please Copywriters Tear Down and Rewrite Your Headlines Live
Joanna Wiebe, @copyhackers Demian Farnworth, @demianfarnworth Amy Harrison, @harrisonamy
● All around me people are talking about how much they’ve been looking forward to this one. These are some of the best writers in the biz (#forreal) and everyone is excited to see some real-time copy teardowns (peppered with some advice to how it can be better, of course!)
● Here’s Joanna. “We’re going to talk through problems that we see with copy on landing pages in particular.”
● A few brave souls have submitted landing pages for this three-person panel ● Demian starts out by talking about our DJ Rumba copywriting contest. Quick
correction for Demian: The DJ Rumba was actually from Parks & Recreation. #funfact
● “We find an audience, we find a need, and then we try to solve that need.” - Demian on landing pages
● Demian says great copywriters are like great jockeys. Jockeys find great horses. Copywriters find great products. If you find your audience, the copy becomes very natural
● Here’s Amy: People often start with the solution first. The problem is internal expert knowledge. If you start with the solution, your customer might end up thinking “there’s nothing wrong with me.”
● So, start with the symptoms that the audience might have. What problem do thy have? Symptoms let customers know what YOU do? Ask questions. Here’s what causes your problem, and here’s how you can solve it. We try to get people nodding along first.
● Amy worked with a client to understand what their customer’s symptoms were. Not problems, that’s too generic.
● Do you recognize this? (symptom) This is what’s causing it (Problem). This is what you need (cure) This is what is possible with the cure (results)
● So here’s Joanna on Calls to Action ● When you’re optimizing your call to action, think about these two things.
1. Buttons and headlines work really well together. You can repeat the headline in your cta.
2. Think of your button not just as a cta, but more as a call to value. “I want to __________.” That can become your button copy.
● Now we’re going to get into the landing page critiques. the first landing page is about mattress toppers. “Unbounce is the home of Page Fights. It’s not going to be that gentle.” - Joanna
● So here’s our first landing page by Slumber Cloud. Headline: The only mattress topper to use NASA-approved technology to keep you cool.
● Demian takes this one. What’s the problem? “If you’re cold, just take the covers off.”
● There’s a bit on the landing page “Does your partner sleep too hot?” That’s copy that you can use. You’re punching right at the emotional conflict issue with that copy. A lot of time what happens is that you often find the better copy down at the bottom.
● Amy’s turn. She’s looking at the top bullet points. Take a few steps back. What are the symptoms? What can you identify with? she thinks that the proposition of getting a good night’s sleep could be a great addition here. “Restless nights and groggy mornings.” We can relate to that. We’re tying it to the problem.
● “Even if you fight with your partner for the covers, you don’t have to sleep separately to get a great night’s sleep.” Amy suggests
● Amy loves how the page talks about technology and the fact that there’s no need to plug anything in. She would like them to add something about how it automatically adjusts the temperature. She’d love to see more about the symptoms/problem early on.
● Amy has a lot of suggestions for copy changes that the person who submitted the page will be able to draw on. One of the suggestions is don’t using too technical terms. Silky, smooth, etc. Use words that sound luxurious.
● Joanna is going to talk about the buttons on the page. The button up top is a distraction. She thinks the main CTA button copy is decent. There are many buttons on the page all with different copy, and they all lead to the same place. She recommends pulling most of the buttons and just having an above the fold CTA button, and maybe another one at the bottom of the page.
● Now they’re changing the headline live using Unbounce. They’ve changed the headline to “Finally! Get a full night’s sleep on the only mattress topper that keeps you cool.
● Any’s first bullet point: Restless nights and groggy mornings from being too hot or cold in bed? Next bullet: “Even if you fight your partner for the covers, you don’t have to sleep separately to get a great night’s sleep.” Last bullet point: Our mattress covers automatically find the perfect temperature for you -- with no need to plug anything in.
● Props to Joanna. She can work in Unbounce! ● She’s changing the CTA to Get a full night’s sleep -- browse mattress toppers
now ● Okie dokie. Now they’re going to do a, um, breast augmentation surgery landing
page. ● The headline reads: Skilled Breast Augmentation Surgeons with years of
Experience. Demian hates it. Likes the picture. Hates the headline. He thinks that it’s a perfect example of when an expert writes the copy but it doesn’t evoke an emotion
● Amy has taken over. On the page it says, “Helping you get the look you want.” Amy thinks that this page should talk about aspirations of confidence and feeling different, transformed.
● There are testimonials on the page. Amy thinks that the testimonials should talk more about how they feel. Give them another reason to trust you.
● You’ve got to be sensitive, and you’ve also got to put the prospect at ease. ● Joanna mentions the “Get Your Free Consultation” She points out that this copy
might be different if it were for a consultation in Reno than it would be for a consultation in the midwest. Maybe watch the video when we release it to find out what she says because I can’t write it. :P
● She makes a good point. Is that the right offer? And Demian wraps it up. This is a big deal. Maybe don’t offer a consultation, but offer more information. It’s too big a step to take. You need to speak to someone where they are now, not where you’d like them to be in the process
● Joanna also points out that there is nothing on this page that differentiates these people from the competition.
● Aaaaaaand that’s it! Never a dull moment at CTA Conf!
Pulling the Emotional Trigger: Psychological Tactics to Convert Your Leads into Customers Talia Wolf, @TaliaGw
● Talia Wolf, CEO of Conversioner, using psychological concepts in conversion optimization.
● Former cheerleader, loves Taylor Swift, and loves Harry Potter! ● Emotional to convert more customers using emotional targeting. Why do people
buy products? What emotional needs will they meet? ● Contrast with behavioural targeting, which is based on device, location, etc. ● We all think we’re rational people. We weigh the pros and cons and consider the
consequences, and make the right decision. ● Problem? We’re actually completely irrational people. ● Talia’s biggest fear in life is planes. She hates flying, despite the fact that she has
jumped out of an airplane like some kind of lunatic ● Oh, she did it for a man. (He’s married to someone else now.) She wanted him to
think she was a an adrenaline-loving adventurous woman. ● Emotion doesn’t just make us buy things — it keeps us buying them. Talia has
now taken over 600 jumps and skydives competitively! ● “Skydiving brings something out from within me. It’s turned me into the person I
want to be.” ● Advertisers and marketers have known the power of emotional targeting for
decades. Just one example: a Coca Cola ad that looks like a spread from a Dolce and Gabbana campaign. (My observation. :)
● Drinking Coca-Cola makes you an awesome person is the message. ● Old LEGO ads are not about the product, but the feeling of happiness and pride
that comes with building something on their own. ● Nike, after using athletes in their marketing for years, ran the legendary Find Your
Greatness campaign. It’s not about the shoes. It’s about making yourself into a better self.
● This is the essence of marketing. It’s not about the product — the shoes — but it’s actually about how you feel when wearing those shoes.
● “People don’t remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou
● Companies are talking about their product, but not about how the product will improve your life.
● How do you make your customers feel? And perhaps more important — how do they want to feel while using your product?
● Making it about the customer ● Show it, don’t say it ● Test concepts, not elements
● Making it about the customer
● You’re not Luke Skywalker, you’re Yoda. You’re not the hero — the customer is.
And it’s not about changing their life, but about empowering them to change theirs.
● “#1 visual bookmarking tool.” Even if this is true, it tells the customer nothing about how it will help them.
● Piktochart, an infographic creator for marketers who can’t design the images themselves.
● “They have a nice landing page — also their homepage —“ eek! ● Marketers who don’t have experience in designing is fear that they won’t be able
to use the product. Conversioner wanted to make people feel like that they can both do this and shine at it.
● A new landing page — “Make Impressive Infographics” empowers the user immediately, and making it look as easy as magic. 74% increase in revenue.
● Show it, don’t tell it ● Humans have an attention span of under six seconds.” — Microsoft ● That’s three seconds less than a goldfish, BTW. Thanks, billions of years of
evolution! ● People don’t have time to read all your content. Don’t tell them to get smart about
online dating. Don’t tell them you’re #1 at it. Show me! ● Conversioner client, a Dropbox competitor. They were doing a good job with
triggering urgency. Instead, “Your memories are precious. Store a copy of your files in a safe place.” Immediately communicates the benefit to the user in an emotional way, and lead to a 97% increase in revenue.
● Testing concepts, not elements ● Majority of companies duplicate a page, test, and change a single element when
they do A/B testing. Tests like this don’t tell you why something worked and what to do next.
● Conversion optimization is not about increasing a single KPI but learning about your customers, and translating that knowledge into better business.
● When you test a concept or hypothesis, you understand the result. Why it worked and why it didn’t, at some level. Now that you’ve validated the concept, you can begin iterating and tweaking to increase the conversion rate further.
● SLOTOMANIA page redo reframes the benefit from playing slots to are you the next winner? The benefit comes from the excitement of winning. 23% increase in revenues.
● But Talia’s team realized it wasn’t about winning or money, but escapism. A new version looking completely like candy and showing none of the game atmosphere got a 78% revenue increase
● Emotional Targeting Framework ● After profiling customers, building personas, ask these questions: ● How are the customers feeling? Lonely? Exhausted? Before they find the solution,
what do they feel? ● Where are they feeling this? Indoors, outdoors? At the gym, at work? What is the
context of the emotion? ● If someone is feeling lonely, what kind of words can you use to trigger that
emotion ● What colors and visuals are associated with that feeling? ● Then do the same but for the desired feeling. ● Talia is bringing someone live on stage. Waiting for the box and swords to come
out. ● Talia just unsheathed a very large scimitar and cut this man asunder. ● Actually they’re just figuring out the mic situation. His name is Lucas. Godspeed,
Lucas! ● Lucas’ customer challenge: continual achievement, motivation, achievement, and
focus. His product is Optimind, a pill with a ton of caffeine and some other stuff I didn’t hear.
● Moving on … ● ^ Test all of this BTW. Seriously! ● Concluding with two case studies: ● A personalized birthday card printing company. What customers want from this
business is to stand out , and for it to be easy. (Which the product wasn’t, evidently!)
● Three triggers to work on: confidence, superiority, and inspiration.
● The new concept — creating free invitations for great parties, and a single call-to-action for the first, somewhat onerous step: Download. But by laying out the instructions and making this first step clear, it seems easier.
● WallMonkeys: Decals for your wall. Talia’s team wanted to bring the focus to searching for items they’d like. Framing them around famous art is off-message, because it’s a wall sticker and you’re the kind of normal-income person whos ticks things to your wall, not buying a Van Gogh original.
● I missed the triggers :( ● New version: the product is featured prominently in the background, with a huge
search field and everything else demoted visually. The focus is clear. The orange lends fun and energy, and the blue is trustworthy. (Also, those colors are great together!)
● This lead to a 550% incr in revenue. But the most interesting takeaway? By promoting the search engine, the client learned that their search engine sucked. He learned from the test.
● “Marketing isn't a battle of products it’s a battle of perceptions” Not what you’re selling, but the dream you’re selling.
● Ask again: How do you make your customers feel?
Full Stack Panel: Send Emails That Actually Convert Colin Nederkoorn, @alphacolin Justine Jordan, @meladorri
● Colin on email vs other mediums: ○ With other mediums you have history -- you can find something that
happened in the past. ○ A great property of email is that it doesn’t interrupt (unless you’ve got your
notifications on). ○ One of the key features of email is that you know where to find all the new
stuff. it doesn’t work as well with blogs. Feed readers are not the same. SMS and push might alert you, but they’re interruptive.
● Email, like a blog post, supports long-form copy.
● Emails are designed for sharing . Like the forwards you get from your grandma. ● If anything is going to kill email, it’ll have to satisfy all the above requirements --
available, not interruptive.
● Compare email to Twitter: Over 6% of people will click on tweets if you have a small list. But as your list of followers grows, that number decreases significantly. With 5,000 email subscribers vs that many Twitter followers, you’ll get 140 clicks on your email and 27.5 on Twitter
● Colin has data from Gumroad that suggests that email is the highest-performing medium. Dollar for dollar, an email subscriber will click more, convert more and be worth more than all the other channels
● Social media has relatively light engagement, but has the chance to go viral.
Email, though helps to *retain* the interest you’ve generated Strategies
● Strategy 1: Email 101: Build a list ○ If you’re already writing a blog and you don’t have an email collection form
on your blog, stop what you’re doing and go make one right now
○ Another way to collect email subscribers is to create… wait for it… a
dedicated landing page!
○ Go ahead and use some social proof on those landing pages. Help Scout lists how many subscribers they have. Boom! Social proof.
○ Ecommerce business often trade a coupon for an email address. ○ Set expectations for what people are going to receive. Make sure you
email people at least three times a month. Collect email addresses and don’t email for six months? They’ve likely forgotten about you and they’re going to unsubscribe
○ Make sure you talk to your audience to understand their pains . Research and write about them. Colin recommends picturing who you’re writing for.
● Strategy 2: Exchange something for an email address.
○ Like an ebook for example! ○ If you’re buying Google Ads you can add snippets that allow you to direct
people to different landing pages. ○ Offering courses is another way to give something in exchange for an
● Strategy 3: Send lifecycle emails
○ For example, if someone signs up for your product, but you see that they haven’t actually installed it, send them an instructional message
○ One of the things that Colin does is send an email two days after a signup to give them more information about their product. It has greatly increased sales.
Justine picked up right where Colin left off, talking about an email lifecycle campaign that she uses at Litmus. Lifecycle Campaign Emails
● They send a series of emails when someone uses the free subscription services. They try to be helpful , and remind people when their subscription is about to expire (if they didn’t convert to paid customers).
● Now, because we use email, Justine suggests personalization . That doesn’t mean that it’s about their name -- it’s about making sure that you’re speaking to the customer in the context of the interaction with that brand by utilizing past data points -- use something from their past behavior.
● Great example from What to Wear : they send a daily email with the weather and suggest what you might wear given what it’s like outside
● Email doesn’t have to be triggered by behavior -- it can be triggered by lack of
behavior
● Make sure to thank people via email for signing up /subscribing -- you can send them a link to templates/content, whatever you’ve got
● City-specific emails are fun. A little added layer of personalization. City-specific emails do way better than general emails -- of course you have to have a reason to use them
The Six Stages to Subscriber Experience
1. From name.
a. You could use a person’s name, brand name, combination of the both -- test and find out what works best.
b. Respond to [email protected] ? No. That sucks. Don’t do it
2. Subject line. a. There is not about what you think is the perfect subject line! b. It’s about what’s best for your audience. c. “Free” is okay. Shorter is better. Be relevant. Be specific.
3. Preview text.
a. It’s the text that shows up in your inbox after the subject line. Optimize the crap out of that text. It can improve open rates significantly.
b. Make sure it doesn’t say “Email not displaying correctly.”
4. Open. a. 43% of emails are going to be viewed without images. Optimize for that. b. Optimize your images!
5. Click.
a. “I like big buttons and I cannot lie.” Make it easy to click. Especially on mobile. Remember iOS is trying to help you do things like map to your address, etc.
b. Bigger is better. Big copy, headlines. Make everything tappable. c. Don’t forget to test your CTA copy! Low commitment CTAs work well on
6. Page/Site.
a. Don’t forget that you have to send someone to a… landing page! If you’re sending an email that doesn’t direct anyone to a landing page, you’ve wasted their time and yours.
● Last thought: TRACK BEYOND THE OBVIOUS. Litmus sends emails to people who haven’t logged in for several months. Sometimes the click rate is not immediately high, but people often come back to the email.
● So, test, love email, and go forth and #makeemailbetter
A Framework for Mobile Conversion (Slides) Tim Ash, @timash
● Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners (strategic CRO agency based in San Francisco) is here! He asks everyone to give it up for the Unbouncers. He thinks we’re great. It’s true. He just dropped five f-bombs. Precisely.
The big picture of mobile conversion ● Mobile crossed desktop in in total traffic and time spent in 2014
● Smartphones are used by a typical user 130 times per day. (...They also are
loaded with bacteria.)
● 91% of millennial admit to using their phones while seated in the bathroom. Tim Ash thinks it’s sick. That’s true. (But I think people also used to read the newspaper in there!)
● Mobile email is the killer app. The barrier to creating an app is high, and both the iTunes Store and Google Play are “walled gardens.”
● 70% of all emails are first opened on mobile. 50% are only ever opened on a phone.
● Should your landing pages be optimized for mobile conversion? The audience says yes! Good answer!
The Unique Contexts of Mobile Use:
The mobile visitor is...
○ Often in motion ○ Multi-tasking ○ Using with one hand ○ Using outside ○ Impatient and interrupted
It’s an uncontrolled, unpredictable environment. ● Time sensitive: Actions need to be completed as quickly as possible ● Short burst: Actions are executed all at once, immediately, before moving onto a
different action ● Location-specific
● A common knee-jerk response:
○ Your boss comes to you and asks for a mobile landing page. So you make a responsive website, condensing multiple columns worth of content into a single, long page.
○ The zebra-stripe: responsive mobile pages alternate between delineated rows of text and imagery, and god-forbid — parallax video backgrounds.
○ Why this is a problem: ■ Breaks the hypertext paradigm — nothing to optimize except order ■ Ignores visitor content, usage patterns, multi-screen use ■ Distorts spatial relationship between elements and undermines
usability by trying to be a “jack of all trades” design ■ Requires massive increase in QA costs due to reviewing the pages
on multiple devices
The Mobile Conversion Framework:
● A member of the Cabinet congratulated President Woodrow Wilson on
introducing the vogue of short speeches and asked him about the time it took him to prepare his speeches. He said:
“It depends. If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”
● “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is
nothing left to take away. ” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
● Chase’s desktop site has a visible and direct login, prominent mortgage rate
offer and “open checking account” option.
● Chase mobile site optimized for primary use:
○ Login is not direct type-in but a link. ○ New tasks for mobile visitors:
■ Contact Us, ■ Find ATM/Branch.
○ Open checking account option is removed, since that’s an insane thing to do from your phone.
● Use progressive enhancement — at each breakpoint, offer more content with
adjusted layout.
● NPR desktop site exposes all main navigation, search field, support us CTA, co-branding, and a full navigation menu. But as the screen size decreases, extraneous information depending on the context is removed. Aim for the minimal amount of content appropriate to each
context.
● Location awareness: Starbucks lets you immediately use your current location, or
you can enter it manually. But why would you? Or anyone? ● Use proper proportions: Huge promo ads look terrible on mobile, and take up too
much space. They’re there to accomplish a task. ● Navigation should cede to content, only becoming available when the user
directly engages with it. ● Use large-target clickable areas. ● Perceived site speed is critical. Low speed kills conversions. The reason that
Google is on a mission to speed up the internet is because they discovered a half-second delay results in a 20% conversion drop.
● You can tell a lot about what context someone is in depending on whether
they’re connected to wifi or cellular networks. Cellular networks tend to indicate on-the-go contexts.
● Use local content delivery networks.
● Get rid of images on mobile sites to drastically increase load-time, and use blue links that are obvious to the user. ○ Double image dimensions, set quality zero, and export as JPG to create
high-resolution images that downsample to acceptable quality and load even faster.
● Communicate delays to the user.
○ 2-4 seconds: show a general progress indicator/spinner ○ 4-8 seconds: display indicator that shows progress in discrete terms - in
terms of distance ○ Longer response times: Show discrete progress indicator along with
distractions, like an offer or feature introduction ■ During a 30 second lookup for internet service quote, SiteTuners
asked users how they intended to use the internet. They didn’t do anything with this data, but the distraction increased conversions.
Make Phone Contact Easy
● Phone numbers being visible in mobile are crucial — they are equipped with a device on which speaking is easy but typing is cumbersome. And make sure that clicking it actually dials the number for the user.
● Google Ads with direct CTAs to call — there is no landing page. Time to optimize your call response.
● The best mobile landing page may be your call center. ● People who are ready to call are the most valuable leads.
Persuasive & Perverse Psychology: How to Win Customers and Influence People ( Slides ) Bart Schutz, @BartS
● Bart Schutz has taken the stage. He and his wife are psychologists. As are many
of his family members. Bart’s a little different, though. He helps businesses use psychology to convince customers to conver.
● Bart is going to tell us about how our brains evolved and how they operate now.
○ He’s gone a bit further back than expected. 13.8 billions years ago. Brains did not yet exist, as it turns out.
○ 1.2 billions years ago we had gender. Brains have only existed for 0.6 billion years. Zombies did not exist before then as there was nothing for them to subsist on, I assume.
○ 200 million years ago our neocortex came into existence. ○ 2.4 million years ago humans appear on earth with their little brains and
they start to wander about the planet. Of all the many kinds of humans that have existed over the years, only homo sapiens remains. Congratulations.
○ Bart knows how much the total amount of brains on the planet weighs. I missed it. It’s many kilos.
● Here’s where we get to the important stuff.
○ 70,000 years ago we got cognitive thought. We started to reason and
recognize patterns. ○ With the appearance of imaginary thought, we get religion, art, abnormal
things. But the important thing is the we get IMAGINATION. This is also a great graphic. I bet he likes Pink Floyd.
○ Let’s talk about the marshmallow test. Give a kid one marshmallow. Tell them you’ll leave the room and come back. If you tell them when you come back you’re going to give them more marshmallows if they don’t eat one,
but they can eat it if they want, you’ll find out a little something about control.
○ Ah, the good ole agricultural revolution. This happened 10,000 years ago. We were able to boost our numbers a great deal. We got better at looking to the future, and this is a huge and very important aspect of how we operate today. This is why some of us don’t overspend and go into debt. The brain shrank during this period. We died earlier, and we got sick more often. But our population exploded.
○ 500 years ago we had the scientific revolution. This is where the REAL population explodes. We’ve been trying to understand how nature works for that period. We know A LOT about the physical world, but still very little about our brains.
● We have a dual processing brain. Bart calls it System 2.
○ It’s slow and LAZY. ○ Rational and logical. ○ Requires attention. ○ Looks to the future and gives us control.
● System 1 is fully automated and it handles things that we do that we don’t really
think about. ○ Even something as simple as responding to “what is 2+2?” ○ Okay, now try to do 17x24. It takes some effort, right? That’s system 2.
● Bart and his company map out days of the week by hour and show conversion
rates. Some products are system 1 products and others are system 2. For a system 1 product, you will see slow sales at the beginning of the week, and then
more sales towards the end of the week as we begin to lose control.
● System 2 has only existed for 70,000 years. So, how do we persuade using both
of those systems of the brain?
Four categories in the SQUARE OF CONVERRRRRSION
1. Wake up ration
a. When you need a ratio, but it’s asleep. So how do you wake it up? b. Start by doing something that is completely unexpected. Go against
habits. Those popups at the bottom of the screen are interrupting your rational system (1).
c. We remember and like things more when we thought of it ourselves
2. Keep ration awake a. Now to the Keep Ration awake principle. This is the proof that your
product is best. b. “Pure rationality does not exist.” c. Ration needs emotions to add value to the argument.” - Descartes Error
3. Deplete ratio:
a. When you need emotions, get rid of rationality. b. You might actually want to add a little friction c. You might give them more choices. Instead of ordering now, they could
just add to wishlist. No one does. They buy or they don’t: this is the rational brain.
d. Bart has thoughts on ethics. He wants everyone to A/B test. He wants you to make sure that you’re doing it without sacrificing your own set of ethics.
4. Keep ratio asleep. a. When you need emotions, make sure rationality does not wake up. b. We believe we buy because we thought about it. The reality is in the online
world, we’re being convinced. c. Our brains feel uncomfortable for not having reasons for making a
decision. ● If you don’t know our sample rate pollution, stop testing. Multi device can pollute
a test. Cookie detection rate can also pollute a test. ● Make sure you get the right statistics. ● Know your test capacity ● Track your ROI
● Grow your scientific knowledge
Brand-Infused PPC for Better Results ( Slides ) Dana DiTomaso, @danaditomaso
● Her mission is to take abstract marketing BS and make it way more actionable. ● How to optimize your brand from a conversion standpoint and how you can
improve the ways in which you talk about your organization in PPC ads ● Example: Googled Ford Dealerships while in oklahoma — fav search phrase for
bad ads. All of the ads look exactly the same. ● Ads that have IDENTICAL copy — this is the consequence of applying only the
most basic conversion knowledge, due to laziness or lack of time. If you have to set up hundreds of ad groups, it can be easy to fall into that routine.
● Car insurance companies spend millions in offline advertising every year, and yet all of their PPC ads are boring and indistinct. There’s no flow or personality.
● The Geico ad does a better job of standing out, and it includes personality — Inconceivable! IT makes it stand out in a crowded vertical.
● When you’re writing your ads, consider: “Why should someone click it?” What is the reason?
● If you’re in a crowded vertical, you don’t deserve traffic. You need to bring your brand into your paid search campaigns so that you can stand out. It turns people who weren’t aware of you into brand loyalists.
● It’s about your brand. It infuses your copy and makes it easier to write great copy that’s better than all the same crap everyone else is writing.
● AdWords is tough and has tight character constraints. It’s one of the ultimate tests of a copywriter to condense a brand voice into 70 characters, to make an immediate strong first impression.
● 70 characters? Get there faster. ● What is your brand? ● Your brand is not just your logo or your business cards or your fan website, it’s all
these things. Speeches; I am representing Kickpoint at this very moment. Your newsletters and invoices. Vehicles. Public relations. How are all of those elements coming together to create the brand?
● Think about all these different elements. Even if it’s not your responsibility, the consistency is important. Marketing needs to feel right.
● You want to interrupt and get that attention and that click. But humans like consistency — we like it when things are nice and matchy matchy.
● When a touchpoint is missed — like the lame joke at the end of a WestJet flight — the brand is disturbed. The inconsistency leaves a bad feeling with a customer.
● Look up the WestJet Christmas videos! ● We don’t want interruptive experiences with a brand. You can get our attention,
but once we’re in, we don’t want surprises. We don’t want ot think twice. We want to give our money and have something happen.
● When people get to think about it, they make irrational decisions — like not going with your awesome product. :)
● Making an article link read “article here” increased conversion rates. The user doesn’t want to have to think about it, they need to be guided to the next step.
● Brand voice made of character/persona, tone, language, and purpose. These 4 things brought together develops your brand voice. Make a brand voice document if you haven’t, even if it’s just a Google Doc that you dump your thoughts into. What does your brand say? And what would it never say?
● Finding Your Brand’s Voice Distilled ● Go further than voice and tone. You can’t have a good without the bad. If a brand
voice is honest, what tradeoffs does that require? What potential problems could it introduce?
● “Our brand has a persona, Lady KP — we have a certain way of doing things. We are super honest, no client has ever accused us of bullshitting them. Some clients turn us down because they want bullshit. That’s OK.”
● You can’t be perfect all the time, so predict potential problems and address solutions
● Character: How do you want to be described? (readwritethink character traits pdf) ● If I’m a pragmatic person, how does that change how I interact? If we’re sarcastic
or witty, which words can we use? ● Write Like this — Not Like This — And Why? Give practical examples. ● When you do have brand voice documents and are communicating the voice to
the company, keep it short. (3 pages is enough!) ● How to Create a Style Guide — buffer ● How would you describe your product? Your company? Would your brand say the
word “awesome”? These are the sorts of practical examples that will make it easy for people to comprehend the brand voice.
● What elements of your brand drive sales? Think beyond the call to action and the clickthrough rate.
● One of the difficulties you can get trapped into is reporting just on data. “Look how great the CTR is!” but it may not be a reflection of their brand, and clients
aren’t the right fit because you’re trying to convert as many people as possible instead of finding the right kinds of customers
● Consider your personas: How your brand voice will interface with each of those personas?
● persona tool: crystal. it will let you look up real email address es and find information on how to communicate with them. It will tell you what phrases they respond well to and what their style of communication is like. You can convert this information into a persona — how would you write to a group of people like this one? A great tool when the client is extremely different from you.
● Write ads to personas! ● How you setup AdWords matters too. ● High CTR is not always the goal. Better to see a low CTR if the conversion rate on
the LP is higher, and/or if the sales team is converting them, and their general happiness and the way they talk publicly about your brand
● If your sales team is saying “I got the best lead today” every day, you’re doing it right.
● Campaign extensions are brand extensions! GEC — get a quote, discounts, tons
of ways to save ,you aren’t alone. The final two are totally clickable extensions of Geico’s brand, but not the first two. How can they be made interesting?
● Step outside the box of boilerplate like “download my free guide.” Look for ways to apply your brand to your CTA.
● The intent changes on the platform (desktop vs mobile). ● Device + Keyword + Persona + Brand = Converting Copy ● Had a beautiful website with crappy leads. We redid the website and rewrote all
of our copy, and we get higher quality leads because we focused our branding on capturing the right kinds of leads. “I want a brand strategy!” “I want to do
something totally different!” The right kind of leads.
● How do you answer the phone? Consider the experience beyond the web interactions. Is it just the name of the company? Can you connect the phone number to the ad? Can you target the phone call based on the user’s persona? Why not extend the brand voice?
● WhisperMessage ● We were working with a homebuilder that would communicate the persona
aspects to the person receiving the call. ● Off-brand touchpoints in the customer journey? Build a customer journey map,
look at every single touchpoint and see where the experience is off-brand. A great PPC that captures the best leads is worthless if people end up having a horrible experience and hating the brand — and the company.
● reporting: compare branded vs. “generic” ads. This should be your first A/B test — test new, branded ads versus your current campaigns!
● Look at close rates. Don’t just report on your CTR and page conversion rates — these aren’t the complete picture, or even the most important part of the picture. Make sure that you have the pathways to connect the sales to the ads.
● Number of walk-ins and number of transactions at a B&M store. Is it going up after PPC ads? Look at customer sat/NetPromoter, was it affected by PPC campaign? How are people talking about your service? Are they angry? launch campaign on x date, track customer sat and conversions
● Remember why we’re doing this. It is not actually about those numbers. We’re not selling to robots — we’re selling to human beings. You can’t quantify feelings (yet — Facebook is certainly working on it.) You have to find other ways.
● Speak to the right audience. maybe you’re not a westjet. maybe you’re an air canada.
● Hotels do this — they do a great job of understanding who stays at what kind of hote.
● Remove barriers. Eschew jargon, speak more honestly. The companies that are hesitant to adapt brand voice have significant issues — in service, manufacturing, etc — and use jargon to raise barriers and hide the truth. Resolve the issues and tear down the barriers.
● Stand out! In the begin of internet with 6 companies trying to rank. The Canadian market is less competitive than the American one — you can do basic things on the Canadian market and see huge gains.
● If you’re marketing in America , you need to stand out to succeeed. Everyone knows how to write an AdWords ad. How will you stand out? Brand voice is the answer. Be unique. But also be exactly what the customer was looking for.
●
The Four Corners of Conversion: Understanding the Intersection of Copy, Design, Interaction & Psychology ( Slides ) Oli Gardner, @oligardner
Oli has taken the stage, resplendent in a pair of orange shoes, reminiscent of the beautiful petals of the tiger lily, otherwise known as the Hermmerocallis fulva (#fact). Oli hates bad marketing. A LOT. He provided an example of bad marketing : Google search for “Vancouver whale watching tours.” Search results (and corresponding landing pages) include pictures of bears, restaurants.
This is a poor experience. Marketers should make their visitors feel like they’re “Walking on Sunshine!” How is this done? The Four Corners of Marketing:
● COPY
○ Elements of copy include headlines, privacy statements, value props… ○ The secret to clarity is in the organization of your copy ○ Ask yourself what your headline and sub-header says about what you do. ○ Interestingly, flipping a headline and a sub-header can actually help make
your landing pages more clear. Oli has tested this on a lot of different landing pages, and flipping the two has often resulted in people actually having a better understanding of your product. Test it!
○ To overcome clarity problems ask your customers to write your headline for you.”
● DESIGN
○ Get people to pay attention with the 23 principles of attention-driven design . Understanding them makes design more impactful… and FUN
○ Distraction on your landing pages is a problem. REMEMBER: your homepage is NOT your landing page
○ Never start a marketing campaign without a dedicated landing page!!!!! #NSAMCWADLP
● DATA
○ Let’s talk about Data. But not Big Data. Let’s talk about “decently sized data,” because what the hell is big data anyway?
○ Fewer links on your page means more conversions. But four links seems to be the median. There are 7923 companies in Oli’s data that could increase their conversion rates by 50% by removing distractions from the page.
○ Oli is quickly breaking down the elements of attention-driven design. You
can learn more about this by downloading Oli’s ebook. Get it here: bitly.com/attention-driven-design
● There’s also a contest! You can tweak a landing page template to promote Oli’s
ebook and win a ticket to next year's CTAConf!. Check out the contest here!
○ Protect your CTA!!! Anything placed in proximity to your CTA can distract people from the intention -- clicking the CTA button!
○ A little on interaction models i.e. Carousels. If you have to have a carousel, you should have descriptions of what the slides are.
○ Every year there are new design trends. Smooth scroll is one, but Oli hates it. We all do. You should too.
○ Trend carefully! Theme designers are breaking the internet. Don’t believe the hype, it’s a conversion killer. If it doesn’t make the experience for the user better, just don’t use it. Don’t. Don’t do it.
● PSYCHOLOGY
○ The most persuasive word in the English languages, according to Professor Oli, is “because.”
○ Use the word “because” more times, according to Oli’s data, increases conversions. Maybe. Test it. Find out.
○ There’s influence, there’s persuasion, and there’s manipulation. Don’t use manipulation. People hate it. It’s not delightful. (See Natalie Nahai’s talk)
Video
● Captions are very important for getting people to watch your video.
● Position of the video on your landing page is important, too. Videos at the top of the page get played most.
● 300 to 400 pixels seems to be the sweet spot for size. ● Autoplay or not? Usually obnoxious, but you would use autoplay when you have
directed people to the page from an ad that has an image with a play button on it. ● So, who should be in your video? Not the government. Academics and technical
experts are the highest picked and most well-liked group. ● Design for ideal. Don’t design to get any old customer. Design to get your ideal
customer. Forms ● Changing a form’s requirements from “email address” to “work email address”
and “business email address” accounts for significant lifts in business email addresses. Those might be better given that someone will receive the email at work.
● So, how about that Submit button. Let’s test Submit vs ANYTHING ELSE. ○ As it turns out, anything else converts +2.4% higher than Submit. ○ Free on your CTA vs no mention of free: no mention converts higher. By
16.8% ● Another example. My vs Your: Your accounts for -45% drop in conversions. ● How about Action words? Click vs no mention of click? No mention of click is a
serious drop in… clicks. ○ Click vs Click Here? Click Here wins by +12%
● Now to urgency on those CTA buttons. ○ Download vs Download now. Download now wins by +13%
● There are other examples. Adding now accounts for click increases. ● Inline form field labels are generally not good to use. Click in the field, and the
instruction disappears. And you forget. ○ It’s hard to check that you’ve submitted the right info before you submit.
You cannot validate you’ve done it right.
● How many form fields? Conversion rate goes down with more form fields… until you get to seven of them. Then conversions start to climb with more fields, up to 10 of them. f you’re going to have them, use seven. You’ll get more info and more conversions.
● Don’t use the word spam on your landing page . it reduces conversions. Putting a trust seal next to your CTA can make people think about their security, and it generally causes conversion rates to drop.
