One of my favorite promotional techniques is the use of webinars. I find that actually showing people what they can learn and do works significantly better than telling them in many cases. It’s always nice to hear from the attendees of the webinars about the successes they had while using the tips they implemented.
When online marketer Geoff Hoff and I ran into each other at the last NAMS conference, he pulled me to the side to tell me he was on a recent webinar of mine. He went on to say that he’d seen good improvements using one particular strategy I taught. I asked him if he’d be willing to create an article of his experiences to share with you and he was glad to do it.
I’ll turn it over to Geoff to give you the gist of what worked on his site to more than double his profits. Take it away Geoff…
I hear stories online all the time about how making one or two little tweaks brought about a huge change in the performance of a web page. Personally, I’ve always been a bit skeptical about such tales… that is, until I put some of Karon Thackston’s suggestions to the test.
On December 21st, I received an email from my friend and mentor Connie Ragen Green about a replay of a webinar she had done with Karon. The webinar was about the 3 most common mistakes people make with their website conversions.
I had – just that week – put up a site for a new eCourse. There were two options on the sales page. The first was a basic level that just included the course book and bonuses which went for $17. The second was a gold level that included all that and eight videos reviewing some of the technical things talked about in the book in more detail. The gold level was priced at $37.
On my launch day, and for a few days after that, I had slightly over a 3% conversion. Nothing too very exciting, especially with friendly traffic. (I had only let the people on my email list know about it and they like me, so my sales pages don’t usually have to be great for them to buy what I have to sell.)
Late on the 21st, I decided to take Connie up on her advice to watch Karon’s webinar replay. During the webinar, she used a case study detailing the changes she made with one of her client’s home pages and the dramatic increase that made in sales. One of the things they had changed was how they presented the offer, which also had two levels. Karon set them up in two columns so it was clear what the options were and how they compared to each other. When it was that clear, she said, most people actually went for the higher priced option.
Immediately after the recording ended, I went to my site and looked at it as if I’d never seen it before. It was really, really confusing. Then I looked at it as if I were me and it was still very confusing. Besides that it wasn’t clear in the actual copy that there were two levels and why, there was a single order area with two order buttons, one for each level. The less expensive one above the more expensive one. If I’d wanted to make a choice between the two, even I’d choose the basic one. Either that or I’d leave in frustration. That wasn’t good at all.
So I restructured how I made the offer. Just under the guarantee, I put the sentence, “Just choose which option you prefer.”
Under that, I created two columns, each with a small headline, “Basic Level” and “Gold Training Level”. Under each of those was a short paragraph of what the level included, then the order area. Of course, what was listed in the order area under the basic level was shorter than what was listed under the gold level, and it was clear what each level had in it.
The next morning, I sent out another email about it. Over the next few days I also sent other traffic to the page. My conversion rate went up to just under 4%, which isn’t a huge jump, but the traffic I was sending wasn’t quite so friendly. The most dramatic thing, though, was that, with only one exception, everyone who has purchased since I made that one change has bought the gold level, which means I made more than twice as much money on each sale as I would otherwise have. I like that a lot.
Since that initial tweak, I’ve also done some of the other things Karon suggested in that webinar, but the magic of that one change was pleasantly mind-blowing.
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