How to Increase Your Website Conversion Rate (3 Free Fixes Anyone Can Make)

25:05Sahil Patel:What is the portfolio of tests they ran? And what things tend to win and what things tend to lose? And then bet on that portfolio. okay okay not unlike if you were um if you were a poker player and you followed someone who's really good world series of poker type of player okay any one of her hands or his hands can win or lose and if you only watch them play one hand and you say oh i'm gonna copy that hand i don't think that's super predictive right But if you watch them play 100 hands, you're going to detect some patterns. And if you watch five players play 100 hands, you're really going to watch 100 players play 100 hands.

25:51Sahil Patel:Now, there's some clear patterns of when they hold, when they fold. When to hold them, when to fold them. When to hold them, when to fold them. That's what predictive CROs. It predicts not what one test will do. It predicts a portfolio of tests that you should run based on what's worked for similar companies. And similar doesn't have to be just they look just like you. It could be someone that has a similar call to action on a paid landing page by the paid traffic tends to behave differently than organic traffic. And is it on a homepage? Is it on a sign up page? You want to look at all of those and then say, okay, which ones are similar?

26:27Sahil Patel:Let's predict the portfolio of tests you should run. Run the whole portfolio because across that portfolio, you'll find the winners. Let's talk. I know you have so much basics here. And I want to talk when I'm at basics, I'm going to say, sorry, data. You have so much data. And I think for my listeners, I'm just thinking about the smaller businesses that may not be able to bring in yet a data scientist or, you know, have a full CRO team working for them. but they can maybe understand different things that we know through data that work. Like for instance, for things that I know, and I could be wrong, but I've heard is like, you want someone to say yes and move, you know, hit a button.

27:19The button shouldn't be red because red is a sign of stopping, right? Maybe. See, that's when I've heard that. I've seen red buttons. That's where it gets interesting. And that's where I heard other people have said, no, you're actually wrong. red actually does work. So are there, is there any thing that for sure that are basics, like these are the musts, like these are the musts that you have to have or that we know.

27:41Sahil Patel:That's a great question. Here are three things that our listeners today can use right away. And they don't have to spend money, buy fancy software, hire an expensive agency to do. Let's start number one. and by the way, what we're going to talk about are like home pages and landing pages. I'm starting there because that's where most people's traffic goes. Okay. If you have some niche page or some tech, like a page that describes the technical attributes of your product, those are necessary elements of the user journey. Okay. I'm putting those aside for now. Okay. Because typically those are so specific to you and your product or your service.

28:25you should just those are people searching also for you and they're already in the funnel if they're looking at the technical page they're they're they're already sold they're they're just trying to find a way to buy okay first thing show the product show the product show the product

28:41Sahil Patel:okay we have a phrase happy people kill conversions what does that mean happy people hurt conversions. So many websites have stock photos that they got on, you know, in their Adobe account of two people in a conference room looking at a tablet going, wow, first of all, who's having this much fun in a conference room? I want to go there. My conference room is not that much fun. No one... Let's talk about this. Can you think of the last car ad you saw? Okay. Do you remember what car it was for or what brand? I'm thinking... I don't know why it's sticking out for me, but I was thinking about the Audi one.

29:29There was one that was an Audi one. Okay. Cool. Audi.

29:32Sahil Patel:Audi makes really nice cars. Yeah. Can you picture what was that? Was it a TV ad, YouTube ad, magazine ad? It was an awesome TV ad. It was a luxury TV ad. I only remember it because it was around where I live. And it was, it was, you know, a ball and ad with a new car and cool rolling into a$40 million home on the bank of the ocean. And, you know, with the beautiful life, Jack's, you know, husband gets out, smiles, throw the keys to her. She gets in, they drive off and then the Audi comes in quattro. Right. Awesome. So there's a component of lifestyle. There's a component of aspiration, but there's also kind of showing the car.

30:10Sahil Patel:Imagine the same ad. Okay. Picture it right now. And just imagine you had a magic eraser and you just erase the car from that ad. Yeah, totally. What would be left? Lifestyle? Lifestyle, yeah. Lifestyles of the rich and famous and good looking. Okay. Would anyone then say, I think I'm going to go to my Audi dealer and check out a car? No. No, you'd be like, what the hell is this? This is actually really important. I hope people are, if they're here listening, we're starting to get something very important here. aka remove the stock photos now if you have if your product company show the product if your service company show the people who deliver the service explain that okay so we worked with a company that does home air conditioning repair okay imagine now i live in georgia if my ac breaks that is like the top of the list i might fix the ac before i fix the toilet okay it's like 110 10 degrees in August.

31:11Sahil Patel:You just cannot live without air conditioning. Okay. I can go to the backyard to go to the bathroom. I can't live without air conditioning. And we ran an AB test. Their homepage had stock photo of mom with two kids. Everyone looks happy. And it kind of looked like, I don't know, Mother's Day, like the kids were giving her tulips. It was a happy person. I think it was supposed to convey that, hey, if you need your AC fixed, you're going to be happy when it's fixed. And the A-B test we ran against it, we just, we replaced the photo with an image of three uniformed people in front of their van with the brand name of the van.

31:51Sahil Patel:And that was the image on the homepage. Didn't change the copy, didn't change the offer, didn't change anything else, didn't change the social proof. And there was a double digit improvement in people either filling in the form or clicking... They had two call to action. It's a local thing. So it's click to call or fill out the form. Keep in mind, these people are already very high intent. When you need your air conditioning, you would think, what could you do to actually stop someone from calling? Well, it turns out, yeah, double-digit change just by people saying, oh, this is who I'm going to get.

32:26Sahil Patel:I get a professional person coming to my home in a nice van, and they're going to fix my AC right away.

32:39Sahil Patel:We worked with a company that does home warranty. And the homepage showed images of that. Again, stock photos of happy people. Presumably, it resonates. It's like, oh, they're happy. I'll be happy. great they have yeah they have uh home insurance or whatever warranty i have it yeah yeah and what we what we tested against it is images of things getting fixed okay an ac unit getting fixed a uh it was like a uh like a faucet like a bathroom faucet getting fixed yeah water and then water hot water tank something yeah and then like an electrical like you know the what is it called where they put that thing in your outlet to see if it's producing electrical charge.

33:28Yeah, yeah, yeah.

33:29Sahil Patel:These are all intuitive things, okay? The kind of thing is also just the average DIYer probably doesn't do themselves. They want to call it professional. So it's clear, like, you will get these things fixed. Someone's going to come to your home and fix them. These are from double-digit lift. Wow. And show the product, show the product. So, like, for a SaaS company, you would just show, like, the product. Screenshot of the app. The screenshot of the app, yeah. Yeah. Okay. There's lots of different ways to do it, to style it. If you're concerned that the picture of your app is proprietary and that's a source of competitive advantage.

34:04Sahil Patel:First, let me say your competitors almost certainly already know what your app looks like. Okay. They've downloaded it. They probably signed up with a different email and they're using it. Everyone does that. So just let me... Yeah. No, I'm going to go. I hear that rejection a lot. But even if you think that's true, you could do a stylized version of your user interface. What you're trying to get the person to do is just think of that Audi ad. You got to put the car in the Audi ad to get the person to go to the dealership. Yeah. Put a picture of your product. So it's number one. Everyone can do that right now.

34:35Sahil Patel:Just go to your website. Just ask yourself, do I have happy people? Because I'm probably hurting conversions. Okay. Number two. This is a good one. Take your homepage. right you just in a browser okay right click in chrome and one of the things will be google translate pick a language that the people around you don't speak okay so maybe pick arabic pick hindi i'm picking languages and speak it at home growing up okay and then take your home page show it to five people who don't know that it's your company know you want just ask them what do you think this company does? Okay. And by the way, they're not going to come up with something specific like this is a point of sale entry system for multi-location retailers, but they might say something like, oh, this looks like business software or something.

35:28Sahil Patel:Okay. If they can't even come close to the category, you have a problem. And the translation technique, what it's doing is it's removing the copywriting from the equation. And it's forcing the person to use the imagery to draw an instantaneous conclusion about, am I in the right place? And by the way, that is what your audience does when they reach your homepage or landing page, because the brain processes images faster than words. So imagery is very important then. Super important. Super important. And so if your copywriting is doing all the heavy lifting, you have a problem because you've created this high cognitive load homepage or landing page.

36:15Sahil Patel:The copywriting is absolutely important, but the instantaneous react decision that almost everyone knows when they get to a page was, am I even in the right place? Just like when you walk into a restaurant, if you're on date night, you're looking for certain things. some ambiance. You haven't tasted anything. Okay. You're looking for ambiance. Is there a smile? Am I the maitre d'? What's on the tablecloth? Okay. Is this like white tablecloth? Is this checkered, more casual, Italian, like little Italy kind of thing? Or am I going to Chipotle? I love Chipotle. There's certain things I expect by going to Chipotle.

36:52Sahil Patel:Okay. And if I don't see them, my brain's making kind of real quick decisions. you know if i go into chipotle i expect to kind of smell a certain way it's kind of that grilled chicken that you know that's what i expect if i go to kind of date night at a nice place there's a different kind of just all these little things and my brain's making instantaneous subconscious level decisions about am i in the right place i you can yeah you could do this don't spend money on fancy software don't hire an agency i want to be very clear because i i didn't get it and then I got it and I was like, oh my God.

37:26So I want to make sure it's very clear for people here. Step one, remove the stock image. Just get rid of any happy go lucky stock image. And replace it with

37:35Sahil Patel:your product or service. And replace it. If you're a product-based business, replace it with your product. If you're a service-based business, replace it with the service people or the type of service. Or the outcome. Or the outcome that people are going to get. So for example, we worked with a higher education company. Show the diploma. Yeah. Show them getting graduate Show them graduating. Show them throwing the hat up or whatever it is. Number two, this was very interesting. Take your website, put into a different language. Take the homepage. You only need to use for the homepage. Take your homepage, put into a different language, send it to somebody and just say, hey, what does this company do?

38:20What does this company do? And if they can't tell you within a range, obviously within a range, it's a business service. Oh, it's a it's this type of service or this type of product that tells your imagery is off. And people look at the imagery versus the copy, which is very interesting to me because I come from direct response copy market like writing where it's all copy. Like the copy is like the most important thing. And you just said imagery and copy are both almost equal.

38:51Sahil Patel:Well, let's talk about that a little bit. There's two jobs. What the imagery does is it helps establish for the website visitor that they are in the right place. It is the equivalent of you walk into a restaurant and you go, hey, am I in the right type of restaurant, fast food or fine dining? okay what the copywriting does think of that as i'm reading the menu okay and if i see some things and they're described in a way that's enticing that speaks to me to what i'm looking to get out of the experience and i'm going to order okay and by the way at mcdonald's like what they write those value meals in a certain way that's copywriting yeah okay and it works and if you go to a nice restaurant and if you and if you go to a nice restaurant on date night the the way they write the menu is written in a certain way to make you feel like oh the chef is just is i'm getting something so special this meal is just it's going to be when they talk about where is the food source from and whatever foam they use to decorate the plane all these things right and you would never see that on mcdonald's value meal and vice versa.

40:04So the copywriting instrument, but they serve two, they, and for our conversation

40:10Sahil Patel:we're having today, they really kind of have two different jobs. Yeah. Okay. Now let's talk about the copy. Right. Is this number three or is this number three? Number three. Let's do number three. So we talked about first, just tactically get rid of stock photos. Number two, make sure whatever images you use are low cognitive load. Yeah. Low cognitive load. Okay. Low cognitive load. Okay. I see this all the time in B2B websites. They have like a schematic of how their software fits into the ecosystem and the tech stack and how it integrates with 17 different things and it's animated and things are flowing and

40:52Sahil Patel:that's the wrong place to put it. That's a high cognitive, put that on your technical page, put it on your solutions page, put it on your, you know, how the whole thing works. Okay. This is the equivalent of you walk into a restaurant and the maitre d' before they ask you, hi, how many people today? Or do you have a reservation? Or do you want to sit at the bar, the dining room? Explaining to you like the 17 steps the chef does to prepare the vegetables today. You're like, whoa, hang on. I just, like, could I just see the menu? Or like, I just want to tell you, table for two. You don't lead with, let me tell you where we source the chicken and that kind of...

41:34Sahil Patel:So imagery is important. Homepages should start with low cognitive load and then move the user to higher cognitive load as they move through the journey. You got a restaurant, you start with, can I get you a drink? Let me bring you the menu. Have you thought about an appetizer today? Okay, let's pick your meal. McDonald's has it down to, or Wendy's, pick your food. They say, number one. Number one, just start there. You don't have to say two words. Give me a one, three words. Low cognitive load. Low consciousness. Then you go to a higher cognitive load. Don't do some complicated schematic. Number three, I was talking about the copywriting.

42:22Sahil Patel:make it skimmable. The more it offends your 12th grade English teacher, the better. You're not writing for the AP English exam. You're not taking the SAT. This is not the entrance exam. This is not your personal statement to get into graduate school. No one cares about what your belief system is, your aspirations or what you think you're about. They came there because they have a problem they're trying to solve. So,

43:02well,

43:02Sahil Patel:you've, you've done direct response copy, right? You can make it easy. What is this? It's, it's interesting because the, it's interesting. I, yeah, man, And you're going to open up a whole can of worms here for me because I have seen little copy convert. Right. But then where we're talking about. So I'm talking to B2C at this point. Right. Business consumer. And there's people that I see writing copy that are like essays. Like, I mean, essays, but they're converting. It's like long form. I'm sure you heard of like a long form sales letter. But it can work. Long form can absolutely work. Long form copy, long form video, long form anything can work in the right place.

43:53Like I come from the world where it's pre-headline, headline, sub-headline.

43:59Sahil Patel:That's great. And what do you put in the headline? Well, that's the hook. Yeah. The hook. Start with the hook. Yeah. That is either the pain or the solution, right? Yeah. Pain or solution. Start with the hook. Pre is who it's for, right? Yep. Those things are all called skimmability. Yeah, okay. And if you write a long paragraph, now how can you find the hook? Yeah. Lead with the hook. And then your subheading needs to support the original claim before you make new claims. Yeah. We see this all the time. There's a bold claim, and then there's three new claims. hang on a sec I just like I still haven't I haven't bought into your first claim why are you telling me about the next claim like if your hook is safe car we just bought a Volvo right so we just my oldest is is about to get her license yeah so she's going to not tomorrow but after some practice she's going to inherit our 2017 Subaru great safe car so we went out and found a nice uh pre-owned car for my wife we bought a volvo like beautiful car safe the hook great safe car well i was just gonna say right like everyone knows volvo safe right you think volvo's known and they and they do a great job not they've also moved up market by the way right the old boxy cars that we all grew up the gray box volvo that we know it's like an indestructible cage.

45:36Sahil Patel:They look nice too. But they first get you to buy into that it's safe before they start telling you about all the other things. Everything is, hey, we're safe. That's the hook. Why is it safe? We've got these great cameras. We've created this motion detection. By the way, I didn't know this until we went shopping. Do you know a Volvo weighs more than a Suburban? I would assume so, yeah. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't, it's the steel. It's like some kind of special steel they're made out of. Yeah. They're safety. They're heavy cars. They're heavy. Yeah. Super heavy cars. You're driving basically a modern tank.

46:14Yeah.

46:16Sahil Patel:Anyway. So they, they support the first claim. Then they go in and tell you about, okay, now let's talk about some other things. Let's say about what, this is a fun car and let's talk about how we made it nice. And same thing on your website, good copywriting. You start with a hook, make the hook believable before you start introducing new claims. These are three things that everyone can do on the website today. I'm just going to say it again, right? Get rid of the stock of images or the happy images. Show your product or show your service or the outcome of the service. Low cognitive load on the pictures.

46:56So again, translate it to some language nobody can understand. And send it to somebody and say, do you know what this company does? The answer is if they can't say it quickly, you know the problem. And then third is skimmable copy. I mean, this is huge. This is big stuff. Any business owner, open up your website right now and just look at it right now. If you're wondering, how do I make my website better? It's like we just gave you the three answers. Very simple. Open the website. I want to do it right now with you so we can go through it. I'm not going to. That's how I'm feeling. And then the bonus.

47:32What's the bonus?

47:35Sahil Patel:Here's the bonus. We're going to just, we gave you three. So kind of one, two, three. This is like 3A. Okay. Take whatever hook you have on your headline today, or if you're thinking of writing a new one. Okay, write the new one. Take your three closest competitors. Take their homepage. Put them next to yours. like one, two, three, four. And then see if you can tell the difference. And if you can take your headline and put it on your competitors, it means you don't have a good hook. Because it doesn't stand out. And you're simulating what your audience is doing. They may not do being explicitly, they may be doing it implicitly, but you should always assume that your audience has your competitors.

48:27Sahil Patel:They either come from your competitor's website, or they're going there next or they have them up side by side. Yeah. And it's a great test of the hook. And what it tends to do is it strips, it tends to force you to strip out jargon and fluff and not even worry about, am I better? Just start with, am I different? Still saying the clear message though. Yeah, yeah, it's gotta be clear. And I'm saying do it on a homepage and not on like a technical page or a solutions page because that's just a different ball game. Okay, there. The homepage, you got to keep it simple and you just got to strip out the jargon.

49:11Would you say, well, you're saying it less is more. Would you say on a homepage, because I'm seeing this more and more, like homepages have very little copy almost now. Especially in the hero. Yeah.

49:23Sahil Patel:The top, we call it the hero section, the top section. Yeah, the hero section.

49:29Sahil Patel:I think there's a happy medium. I think you should not be afraid of putting copy on your homepage. It does a lot of the heavy work, but it works better if you make it easy to skim and you have a good hook. Yeah. I love it. If people, what type of businesses do you work with? So we mainly work with B2B SaaS companies. what we call the mid-market. So about 100 people to about 3 ,000 people and about 50 million in revenue to about a billion, billion and a half in revenue. The companies that are smaller than that, they usually are trying to solve other problems that we don't help them with. And the companies that are bigger than that, especially a lot bigger, they don't need our help.

50:18Sahil Patel:They have their own internal army of data scientists. And that's great. That's great for them. But for that part of the market, we can give them a lot of help. $50 million plus SaaS companies is who you really focus on. That's right. And I love it. You said this, I remember you said this to me before and I was like, wow. And you said anyone before$50 million, they don't have a conversion problem. They got a marketing problem. Or I think you said they got a marketing sales problem. Yeah, there's other problems you need to solve first before you worry about optimization. You know, I think of it as if you're out of shape and you haven't done any exercise, you don't need to be trying to get your marathon time down.

51:03Sahil Patel:You probably should start with like walk three times a week. Yeah. Then maybe get to like, can you do 10 pushups? Yeah. You do that. Then you can start doing things like optimizing for diet and body composition. And maybe can I do not just 10 pushups, but 10 pull-ups. But if you go straight to that, probably not going to work. Yeah, I love it. Where can people find you if they are a... I mean, if you are a$50 million plus SaaS company and you want, obviously, the best and the best in the business right here, A-B testing, where can people find you? So they can go to spiralize.com if they would like to find out more.

51:46Sahil Patel:Also, if you want to hear more tips on the kind we just talked about, check me out on LinkedIn. I post four mornings a week at 7.30am Eastern. And it's always some combination of easy to digest 30 to 60 second things. I also have a game show where people come on. They try and beat me in finding different CRO crimes. That's actually the name of the show, CRO Crimes. Nice. It's a lot of fun. Seven lightning rounds. The winner gets$100 for the charity. I love it well we're going to make sure we have those in the show notes for you any last departing secrets words for the audience um I think we covered it great thank you for having me on thank you if anyone made it this far thank you for listening yeah I appreciate it thanks so much