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Revised my introduction, doubled my conversions

Discussion in 'General Marketing' started by aboyd, Aug 11, 2005.

  1. #1
    I'm building upon this old post of mine:

    http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=260420#post260420

    In that post, I mentioned that I was rewriting a good portion of the introductory materials on my site. Since I made that post, I completed the revision, replaced the old pages with the new revisions, and then sat back to watch the numbers.

    Some of the old materials are still in Google's cache, so for those reading this right away, you can compare old:

    http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:w0gEcNe1JvEJ:www.publisherdatabase.com/concept.php+&hl=en
    http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:_rdxbk30LO8J:www.publisherdatabase.com/screenshots.php+&hl=en

    To new:

    http://www.publisherdatabase.com/overview/

    Let me tell you why this is important, and what I did in particular. First, look at my averages. The week before I revised my site introduction, Google sent me an average of 69 visitors/day, which became 9 new members/day. That's a conversion average of 13%. OK? Well, for the week following the revision, Google sent me an average of 70 visitors/day, which became 19 new members/day. That's a conversion average of 27%.

    I doubled my conversion rate!

    Here is what I did. First, I reorganized the home page and introductory materials to match what new visitors were expecting. I used to think that people were really interested in knowing what was free and what required a paid subscription. I used to think people needed to know the backstory to the site -- therefore, in the old overview, I had an explanation of free vs. paid, a "concept" page that explained the idea for the site, and I crammed a few small screencaps onto a single "screenshots" page. While this did introduce the site to new users, and increased registrations over what I had before (no overview at all), it wasn't very good.

    It was too wordy, too dense, veered away from the reader's interests into my own self-indulgence, and didn't provide enough visually.

    The revisions now focus on the 3 major areas of the site. People only care about the features, and the payoff. So each area is explained with 2 or 3 paragraphs, tops. I lead with a headline that I know (from what I've gathered over the past few months) is close to what new visitors are thinking. Then I cut to big thumbnails that lead to full-size, annotated screenshots. I show shots not only of the site in action, but of the payoff (such as getting a report showing all income, or getting a free critique of your writing, or whatever). I use more color than I did before.

    So my suggestion for anyone who has a site that requires membership or payments is as follows. First, any introductory materials are better than nothing. You have to let non-members know what they're getting into, or else most won't get in at all. But second, once you've been at it a while, you ought to be more aware of what the common complaints & curiosities are. Armed with that knowledge, you've got to build introductory materials that anticipate and answer a prospect's concerns. And you've got to be succinct -- go right to the point, but don't be so frugal with your text that it disappears entirely. After all, Google needs something to index.

    And lastly, be visual. People need walkthroughs. A picture is worth 1000 words, and I've learned that lesson good this past week.

    (I realize that some of this, such as "anticipate and answer a prospect's concerns" are old-hat. However, I'm really surprised at how well-received the screenshots/walkthroughs are. I don't believe that it's already common knowledge that Web sites need such things.)

    -Tony
     
    aboyd, Aug 11, 2005 IP
    myamar likes this.
  2. City2

    City2 Peon

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    #2
    It looks much much better! Very good revision there
     
    City2, Aug 11, 2005 IP
  3. rushy

    rushy Peon

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    #3
    Very well thought out and analytical change. Well done, you served to highlight and remind me of the some of the more important aspects of converting. It also serves to re-hash old ground that repeatedly says, 'relevance, relevance, relevance.'. In your example, people didnt want to know about you or your concepts at first...but wanted payoff, as you so rightly put, with their 3 second interest waning whilst you talked about your concept they got bored, flew off somewhere else.

    Your new changes highlight the importance of delivering to people what they want and your success rate is an actual example of how it does work.

    The internet is a direct-action-response-payoff medium, meaning that we want information, we go find it, we dont care about the bits in between. Youve done a great job here in doing that for your site. Well done! :)
     
    rushy, Aug 11, 2005 IP