Ask Us ANYTHING! 🛠️ FIX Your Landing Pages in 5 Minutes | Ep. 470

0:01Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out.

0:16Jay Schwedelson:We are back for Ask Us Anything from the Do This Not That podcast. All week long, we get in questions. And if you want to submit a question, you can go to jschwedelson.com. There's a button that says podcast, another one that says Ask Us Anything, and we get the wildest questions. We get in work questions. We get in ridiculous questions. We love getting them, so please submit them. But we're going to tackle one work question and one ridiculous question right now. So let's do the work one first. We got a question from Gabrielle from Charleston, South Carolina. You know, I've been to Charleston.

0:51I love Charleston, but I only get so much from people that are from there. I feel like there's like one really good street in Charleston. And then there's like a couple of these side streets that are okay and whatever. But there's like this one really good street. And then I'm like, what else do I do around here?

1:07Jay Schwedelson:I don't know. So if you're from Charleston, tell me I'm wrong. Maybe I just missed it or something. Who cares? What am I talking about? Gabrielle, what is your question? Jay, our abandon rate on our landing page forms is crazy high. Any tips to improve conversions that are easy to do? Yeah, you know, this is really a common thing because I don't know why we think that it's okay when someone clicks through on a social media post or ad or a search ad, or they click through from an email and they go to an offer page, a landing page, whatever you want to call it, that on average, 95 % of the people don't convert, that you're happy if you get 5 % of people doing the thing, right?

1:53You send out an email saying, hey, register for this webinar. You take all the clicks and then you get a thousand clicks and then 95 % of them don't convert. You're like, that's not bad. That's horrendous. Or you're selling a pair of socks. Somebody clicks on the socks. And then the 95 % don't convert. That's horrendous. All right. These people took that action. They were interested in that thing. What is it on your landing pages that you are doing or not doing that's actually causing people to not want to actually do the final step in the thing that they just said that they were interested in?

2:26And there are these little things that are so easy.

2:29Jay Schwedelson:Number one, this one's so wild that no one realizes this. So let's say you're sending out an email campaign. Okay. And in that email campaign, it doesn't matter if you're a business consumer, nonprofit marketer, it doesn't matter. In that email campaign, you have a hero image. Let's say it's a picture of me. Hello. It's me waving a big picture of me waving. Okay. When someone clicks on that email and they go to the destination page for maybe it's a webinar for me. Okay. Something like that. If you have the same primary image that is in your email or that is on your social post, the same primary image, if you have it in the social media post or email, and then it reappears on that landing page, okay?

3:13Believe it or not, your conversion rates will go up by over 10 % on that landing page. And it's in the subconscious. We get a little bit more comfortable because we say, oh, I just saw this picture in the email. I was interested in it. I clicked through and here's the same picture, I'm in the right place. Just that simple action of having the same primary image, whether you're a business or a consumer marketer, it doesn't matter. It helps to actually calm people's nerves and it converts really well.

3:44Jay Schwedelson:Okay, now they're on the page and now you have all these fields. The problem is we ask people for a lot of information. Every additional must fill field, required field that you have on your landing page, you'll actually lose about 8 % of people that might actually submit on that form. So you really need to think if everything that you're asking for is actually required. Because if you don't need to require it, then don't require it. Now, in general, the number of fields that you have on that form can be a big turnoff. When someone gets to a page and there's 9, 10 fields, forget about it. It looks like work.

4:21Jay Schwedelson:You know it does. You know you don't want to engage with that. Immediately, it's garbage. anything more than eight fields, I tend to think six fields, but the data shows anything more than eight fields, you need to go to a multi-step form, you know, step one, step two, step three. And when you go to a multi-step form and you have more than eight fields, your conversion rates go up by over 30 % than if you don't, right? So you have to think about, is it visually boring when you have all of those fields? Now, the other few things you have to think about is that right near the button, right near that submission button, okay, where you're closing the deal, you know, buy the thing, subscribe for the thing, download the thing, register for the thing.

5:02Right near that button, you want to do two things.

5:03Jay Schwedelson:Number one, you want to have some kind of testimonial. Literally, you just need one testimonial for your business. It doesn't matter what it is. Right near the button on the left of it or right below it, it's going to say the most comfortable socks ever, exclamation mark. You put it in quotes. or this software saved our team 50 % in our time, whatever. You need a closing argument. When you have that testimonial right near that submission button, it will actually also lift your conversion rates by over 15 % because it gets the person that last piece of validation that they need. The other things that you always want to have on that destination page are logos.

5:43Jay Schwedelson:Whatever cool logos of companies you've worked with, companies you partner with, put them on that page. It makes it look like, oh yeah, I want to buy from them. I want to work with them. Look at all these other companies they've interacted with. It is a form of social proof by putting these logos on there and people need that last step, that last validation piece. The last one is awards. I don't care if it's an award when you won a bowling trophy when you were nine years old. It actually doesn't matter what awards your company has won. But whatever the award is, stick it on that destination page.

6:22Jay Schwedelson:People need to know that you are legit, that other people think that you're legit, and nobody actually pays attention to what the award is. It could be a local award for people with the best toenails. It doesn't matter. You want it on that page. And then the final thing is if you have a navigation bar on your landing page, that's ridiculous. This is table stakes. No landing page can have a navigation bar where it takes you all over the place. Stop letting people click through elsewhere. Take your social sharing links off of your landing page. Are you trying to get people to follow your Instagram page or LinkedIn page?

6:57Or do you want them to buy the thing, subscribe to the thing, download the thing?

7:00Jay Schwedelson:Oh, I get worked up. Always. All right. Those are kind of like the ways I would be thinking about improving your landing page. Let's get into the ridiculous question. So we got a question from Logan from Huntsville, Alabama. Now, Logan, I don't know if you're a man or a woman, but Logan, I love that name. My daughter's name is Logan. And I like it because nobody asked, but like there's very few female Logans that are out there. So that's why her name is really cool. Also, Wolverine, side note, I didn't name my daughter after Wolverine, the Marvel X-Men hero. but Wolverine's real name is Logan.

7:42Jay Schwedelson:Who knew? Me, because I'm a loser. Anyway, okay, Logan, what is your question? Jay, I would love to know your daily routine. Oh, all right. That sounds like a weird question, but sure. I actually do have an odd routine a little bit because I really, okay, so I'll tell you exactly what I do. Not that you care, but I'm going to overshare. Here I go. I try in the morning really to get my day off on the right foot because if not, I spiral and I think all these negative things when I wake up. So first off, I wake up really early. It's really sad. I cannot sleep in. I want to. I can't. I set an alarm, but my alarm never goes off.

8:25Jay Schwedelson:I wake up generally about 545 in the morning. I I know how gross that sounds. I wish I could sleep later. I just can't. And then I get up and believe it or not, I know this is very woo-woo. And you're like, really? I don't look at my phone or whatever. Okay, I go into my bathroom. So I don't wake my wife. And I have these headphones in my bathroom. And then I do a meditation. I do every morning, believe it or not. I start my day out with a 10-minute meditation. I use the Peloton. app. There's a lot of YouTube meditations or whatever. And I do these different meditations and I don't look at my phone.

9:06Jay Schwedelson:I just hit plan the meditation. I try to just kind of get going. This sounds so ridiculous. I'm going to get shredded for this because it's so like, really? You're so whatever, woo woo. Then there's a window in my bathroom and I look outside, although usually the sun is not up yet, but I look outside for like a minute or two, try to take that all in, try to be like, okay, the day's getting going. Okay. Then I go ahead and I put on gym clothes and there is a gym about a little, about a half a mile from my, from where my house is. And I walk to the gym. I don't like going to the gym. I go to the gym.

9:43Jay Schwedelson:Okay. I do my thing there about a half an hour in the gym and the whole walk is about a half an hour total. And then I come home and then I head off to work. And that is how I start my day. Because if I don't start my day like that, then what happens is I get out of bed. I look at my phone. I see all these slacks and emails. Everybody wants to beat me up. All this bad stuff is happening. All this stuff's happening around the world. And I really get into a negative zone and everything is bad. So I have been very intentional about trying to start my day off this way. It's worked really well for me.

10:23Jay Schwedelson:And so that's what I do. That's my routine. And I don't know. What did I just talk about? I don't know. Hey, listen, I got a book coming out. Stupider People Have Done It. It's coming out in April. All net proceeds are going to V Foundation for Cancer Research. If you want to get the book, just go on Amazon or whatever and look for stupider people have done it by me and you can order it and then you're going to help kick cancer's butt. Also, go to jschwedelson.com. I am taking on a handful of new consulting clients. It's going to be fun. We could work together. Just go there, drop me a note on the form that you find there.

10:59Jay Schwedelson:And yeah, keep it real. Wait, the party is not over. Go to jayschwedelson.com because I want to do stuff with you. I want to partner with you. When you click on the button, partner with Jay, you let me know what you got going on. Work with my agency. Work with me directly. Get access to all of my free resources at jayschwedelson.com. And I got a book coming out this April. It's called Stupider People Have Done It. And all of the net proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Go on Amazon, buy Stupider People Have Done It. that way you can help kick cancer's butt with me. And if this podcast wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, it might've been, leave it a review, follow the show.

11:46You are awesome. Go out there and crush it.