CXL Conversion Rate Optimization Review | Week 1 of 12

Writing copy optimized for conversion — clicks, appointments, opt-ins, sign-ups, adds to cart, purchases etc — helps businesses get more subscribers, customers, and sales profitably.

And as a copywriter writing direct response and conversion-focused copy, it’s an edge to be able to optimize not just the copy, but the whole marketing and sales funnel for conversion.

You see, even if your ad does its job of getting the clicks but your landing page doesn’t have a clear, relevant messaging, responsive design, good flow etc, the traffic you’ll drive to it might get wasted… and you end up burning cash.

And if that’s the case, knowing what to tweak or improve on using the data you have (from the analytics, etc) can help turn the situation around.

That’s why for me, it’s great to know how to optimize conversion rate and I appreciate CXL Institute for awarding me a scholarship for its Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) mini-degree.

Here are the things I learned for this week:

Course 1.

Introduction to CRO by Brian?Massey

CRO describes a way to approach collecting data to understand how changes to your website are going to impact your visitors… and thus, how willing they become to take the action you want them to make.

And for me, it also applies to ads especially if you target different customer avatars (because certain angles appeal more to a specific avatar than the others).

Brian said that when we optimize, it’s not just about tests, it’s about ideas. And what you don’t test means success. Let me explain.

Say, you’re testing two landing pages in a limited time with limited traffic.

The only difference is the headline and you see the conversion rate increased, which means all elements in the landing pages you didn’t tweak (CTA button, CTA text, etc) are already a success.

Three Jobs of a Scientist

1. Ask good questions

2. Increase the Sample Size — getting more people to check on your decisions

3. Increase the Sample Quality — making sure these people are relevant (customers, target market, etc)

These three are also good reminders for copywriters like me when we do our market research before writing the first draft of the copy.

Managing Ideas Building and Ranking Your?List

As of this writing, I’m working with a 7-figure eCommerce company and every week, we set aside time to discuss our weekly learnings.

Learnings might come from books (Tested Advertising Methods, Breakthrough Advertising, Kickass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel, etc), training videos (Harmon Brothers, David Deutsch, John Carlton, etc), or AMA sessions (in case we’re currently in some sort of mentorship programs).

Because one of the company values is ‘Always Day 1.’ We won’t be mediocre, just good enough, nor limit our growth by thinking small.

And we have lots of ideas we think could help the business grow. So in this section of CRO, I love that Brian shared how to have a List of Ideas.

He said no idea is a bad idea, but most ideas won’t help. And here’s how to make the list.

1. Write a Hypothesis

Structure:

If I ___, I expect ______ to happen, as measured by: ________.

So if we discuss Great Leads by Masterson and Forde, we can have this hypothesis…

If we align our Facebook ads (winning angle) hooks or leads according to the proper market awareness level, we expect we’ll get more clicks to happen, as measured by CTR.

2. Ranking?Ideas

After compiling the ideas/hypothesis, you have to rank them and see which ones you can implement. Here are the criteria:

Ranking Criteria

? Impact

? Confidence or Proof

? Effort to Test

With so many ideas you can test, these criteria can help you choose the most impactful ones you can easily prioritize.

Sources of?Insight

1. Google

2. Existing Research

3. Analytics

4. User Testing

5. Online Focus Groups

6. User Intelligence — use of heatmaps, etc

Now that I see it, both copywriting and conversion optimization have a similar approach.

When I write copy, I research about the market, the product, and the competitors using amazon reviews, reddit, forums (there’s a chrome extension you can use to install google discussions so you can easily see forums), websites.

And I feel that’s a similar way to start conversion optimization — especially if you want to have ideas/insights on messaging, pain points, desires, objections, etc you can test.

For existing research, good companies call or email customers and ask them about their experience using the product they bought from them.

Here, you can identify what made them buy the product (price point? sleek design? functionality? etc) and what made them almost not buy.

A/B Testing?Basics

When you do A/B Tests, there are rules you need to follow. and even if the traffic is low, you can still do testing.

Course 2.

CRO Best Practices To Start With by Peep?Laja

In this course, Peep shared that when you do CRO, the best practices are your starting points.

There are a lot of best practices from this course but here are some things I find interesting:

1. Web?forms

• If there’s an optional form field, tell the visitors it’s optional.
• If you have a lot of form fields, consider multi-step forms so it won’t be overwhelming for visitors.
• Use a progress indicator on multi-step forms so visitors are aware of how much more they need to fill out (and they won’t feel it’s endless).
• Start your form with the easiest form fields first like first name, last name, email address.
• Use radio buttons when the options are less than 5.
• Use dropdowns when the options are more than 5.
• Pre-fill any form fields you can (auto-populate form fields)
• Test real-time inline form validation — once they finish filling out a form field, you can show a green mark to say it’s validated (and all good!)
• Use trust badges in your forms (Payment Info = Secure, SSL, etc)

2. Ecommerce Category?Pages

If you know Stefan Georgi, he released his Profit Fix Formula masterclass this year where he dissected Ecommerce landing pages (digital products and physical products) that are working right now.

And in this section, what Stefan shared rings a bell — we should not make our customers figure things out.?

Our landing pages should already be easy for our customers to make their purchases. No unnecessary guesswork needed.

• Use filters to avoid analysis paralysis — if you sell multiple products (like shirts, supplements, books, etc), use filters so visitors can easily select what they’re looking for (women shirts, skin supplements, marketing books, etc)
• Use product badges (e.g. “New!”, “Best-seller”, etc) to highlight certain products and help visitors decide which one they can purchase. But use them sparingly
• Use sorting tools (Price, Customer Ratings, etc)
• Use large, high-quality product and product category photos — lets you entice your visitors so they’ll buy
• Use breadcrumbs — ideal for easy navigation

These are actionable practices one can easily use on their website. I was particularly mindblown by the use product badges because it makes total sense and impactful addition to the website.

3. Buttons and Call to?Actions

Before, you might be using CTA button colors based on which ones are highly likely to convert. That’s what I did too.

But after working with multiple brands, I noticed that instead of using these colors, you should use any color that stands out.

Peep stated that the CTA should be highly noticeable and should contrast the colors on the rest of the page.

4. Fold and Page?Length

Put your most important content above the fold so visitors can complete the primary action on any page without having to scroll down.

5. Ecommerce Signups

There are Ecommerce websites that require visitors to create an account before they can purchase.

This hurt conversion so always offer guest checkout.

But you can still offer account creation after they checkout (so on the Thank You page). Simply incentivize them so they’re compelled to create an account.

And also, offer an option to register using social login (e.g. use Facebook, Gmail, etc). So it’s like 1–3 clicks away to register. Easy, fast and fun.

6. Incoming Phone Leads &?Tracking

Use a unique number on all channels for easy tracking.

There are call trackers you can use but if you can’t use any call trackers, create a ‘click to reveal’ phone number instead and tie it to a Google Analytics event so you can still track how many page visitors clicked on it.?

Though it’s not exactly the # of leads who call.

7. Principles of Persuasive Design

• The website design should not be visually complex (or at least minimize complexity) and use a design that customers are familiar with.
• Place the value proposition and CTA above the fold
• Use real photos of smiling people (if ever you use or need it), not stock photos
• Don’t use walls of texts. Should not be more than four lines of text.
• Maximize the size and quality of product images.

8. Typography &?Content

• For body copy, use at least 16px font size — I personally find 18–19px easy to read.
• Use traditional fonts
• Break up walls of text (use lists, images, subheadlines, paragraph breaks)
• Avoid headers that could make your visitors think they’re (ad) banners

9. Radical Redesign vs Evolutionary Design

Evolutionary design — optimize the existing?site

• Design until changes just aren’t having a big effect. Then, stop optimizing and return to other kinds of analysis to figure out the next steps.

Radical redesign — start all?over

• When a brand and identity of an existing site changes, it’s better to re-think the whole thing and start over.

10. Homepages

Should contain your value proposition and one clear call to action

11. Pricing and Pricing?Pages

Test prices with actual traffic to determine your optimal price point

12. Website Speed Optimization

Measure 100% of site speed data using GTM. The server response time should be under 200ms and no single page element should take over a second to load.

13. Visual Hierarchy

Imply important elements in your pages using size and color (e.g. use bigger fonts for the value proposition, use a color that stands out for your CTA button)

14. FAQs on?Websites

When I write copy, I answer common questions and objections on the copy itself organically.

So in a way, we don’t need an FAQ section. However, not all visitors read the copy so they check FAQs too.

And according to Peep, we should avoid FAQs that are sales copy in disguise.

15. Importance of Visual?Design

Use large, inspiring, high-quality photos and for the website, go for simple designs.

16. Internal?Search

Make the search box big, noticeable, and placed in a typical/usual location (location most people know. e.g. top right, top center).

17. Shopping Cart?Pages

• Checkout button should stand out. Place one above and one below the items added to cart.
• Make sure you offer alternative payment methods (Paypal, Visa, GooglePay, etc)
• Remind shoppers of your purchase-related perks (free shipping, trust badges, etc)
• Don’t show off the coupon code field

In this section, adding a checkout button on top also (not just on the bottom part of the cart page) is insightful. It sounds good to implement since it will make the page more user-friendly and compelling (shoppers easily see the action you need them to make).

18. Ecommerce Checkout?Pages

Use trust badges, security features. Shoppers should feel secure to entrust you with their sensitive information.

Course 3.

Introduction to Conversion Copywriting

Before CXL, I follow Joanna Wiebe (copyhackers), Todd Chambers, and Annie Maguire to learn about conversion copywriting. And for optimization, I use Adam Lucerne’s GAP? Optimization (I’ll explain below).

In a nutshell, GAP? Optimization aims to know what type of audience you’re attracting to your ads without you tweaking your targeting.

After that, you identify why your audiences don’t take the action you desire them to make and you bridge that gap on the next ads.

Anyway, here are the six steps of an effective copywriting process as Peep detailed:

1. Research: customer, product and competition.
2. Outline and guideposts.
3. Draft copy.
4. Conversion boost.
5. Revise, rearrange.
6. Test.

It’s almost the same as my process. Research ? Outline (I also swipe the structures of winning ads, landing pages, emails, so the starting point is good) ? First draft ? Proofreading (and adding more elements of persuasion or making the copy clearer, etc) ? Submit to client/boss/manager ? Revise if needed ? Test?

Value Proposition

It’s the main thing that determines whether visitors will read more about your product or hit the back button.

It’s also the main thing you need to test. And the less known your company is, the better value proposition you need.

In a nutshell, a value proposition is a clear statement that…

• explains how your product solves customers’ problems
• delivers specific benefits
• tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition?

How to critique?copy

Process: 2 rounds of editing

Round 1: “Would you read more?” test. Peer review.

Round 2: Value, clarity, credibility (VCC) test.

As a copywriter, feedback is important to me. But not all clients, managers, colleagues know much about good copy so for this instance, the market tells whether the copy is good or not (via testing).

But currently, the whole marketing team I’m in knows copy. So if several people in your team know good copy, then critiquing copy is a great step to improve it before you test it out.

Microcopy

If you’re familiar with copy like ‘Enter your email,’ ‘use lower case letters only,’ these are called microcopy.

These are clear and crisp instructions you use on your website. And these also help your audience to take actions you need them to make.

Using Video

Sometimes, it’s better to deliver your content as a video. But in the same way (as your written copy), it should be engaging and explicit.

For Ecommerce, videos you can use are: video ads, explainer videos, buzzfeed videos, founder’s videos, Harmon brothers’ type of videos.

Going Forward

I learned a lot in a week! My #1 favorite takeaway is building a list of ideas. This is very useful and an impactful thing to have in any organization or company.

I’m glad I did ‘market research’ (let’s not say it’s stalking lol) on reddit subs and found CXL.

And I’m so excited to learn more courses in this minidegree next week!

If you think you want to see it for yourself, CXL offers a 7-day trial for $1 only. Click here to check it out (*note: it’s not an affiliate link). There are several free courses in CXL too which you can see for yourself. You can also apply for a scholarship!