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A 10% conversion rate is terrible.

But currently, we celebrate it.

And there is definitely a better way to convert traffic on your landing pages.

In this podcast episode, Jay Schwedelson discusses the importance of optimizing landing pages to improve conversion rates.

He provides actionable tips such as:

  • Removing distractions like your main site navigation
  • Using multi-step forms
  • Incorporating social proof

These tactics have generated improved conversion rates of over 50%! So, if you want your traffic to convert, listen in to this episode!

Follow Jay Schwedelson on LinkedIn

Check out Guru Events

Transcript
Jay Schwedelson:

Foreign welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

Here we are, another episode of do this, not that. Today we are talking about your landing page or your destination page. The page that you take people to after they click on something.

Could be something in social media, could be a search ad, could be email. Doesn't matter, you're taking them somewhere, right?

But there are little things that, that you are either doing okay to screw up your response rate, which we're going to talk about to make sure you don't do those, or little things you can be doing to significantly increase your conversion rate. I always think it's so funny. Let's say you send out an email and you get a hundred people that click and they go to the destination page.

Now think about what just happened. You send out an email, let's say you're selling accounting software. You're going to give a free trial of your accounting software.

I don't care what you're selling. And 100 people click on this thing, they're interested in the free trial of that software.

And then they go to the landing page where all you have to do is fill out the form and then you get the free trial. And then on average, the conversion rate from click to form submission is less than 10% for everybody.

It always blows my mind if you think about it this way. Imagine you said you were in one room and you said, who wants a free T shirt? And a hundred people raised their hands.

And then you say, okay, if you want the free T shirt, just go to the next room next door and I'm going to hand it out. And then out of the hundred people that raised their hand for the t shirt, only 10 of those people would go next door and get the shirt.

That's how silly it is that we think it's normal that when people click on your email, 100 people click and you get less than 10 of those people to fill out the form. It's a horrible conversion rate.

So what can we do to get that number to be higher, to actually just give the people what it is that they were interested to begin with? Okay, few things. Number one, when you take somebody to that destination page, you cannot have your standard site navigation on that page.

You can't have links to anywhere else. Because we are a very simple minded species.

If you give us the opportunity to do anything other than what it is that we're supposed to be doing, we will do it. The reason traffic exists is because we rubberneck. It's the most annoying thing in the world.

Somebody has a fender bender and you're on the highway and you're stuck in traffic of like 20 minutes and you finally get up there and they're on the side of the road, they're not even blocked.

And it's only because everybody is the worst and they're slowing down and they're turning it looking at the fender bender thing because we get distracted. That's what we are. That's who we are. So you need to remove your standard navigation bar.

You need to remove your social sharing links on your destination page. You need to remove any link that takes the person away from that page.

When you remove all other links and the only thing the person can do is stay on that page, it increases the conversion rate by over 50%. You're not doing anything special. You're just not giving the person the option to leave.

So tip number one is make sure they have to stay there and there's nowhere else for them to go. You don't need your Instagram logo and your LinkedIn logo on the bottom page.

Are you hoping that they abandon buying the product or service that you're selling and that they follow you on LinkedIn? Who cares? You have them right there. Okay, all right. I get very worked up. I don't know why.

Whenever I talk about anything marketing, I just get worked up. It's weird. It's very weird. Okay, next thing. Multi step forms.

You ever go to a landing page and you get there and there's like 12 fields to fill out and you instantly in your mind, this is terrible. This feels like homework. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be involved with this. And that is when you say, I'm out of here.

Like, Vladimir, get me out of here. Dude, this stinks. Right? So just looking at that form makes you nauseous and you leave.

So how do we overcome this nausea as it relates to your landing page? Easy. Multi step forms. We've all seen them.

It has three or four fields and it has step one, step two, step three, and the, the first step and it shows you where you are in the progress bar.

Step one, you put in your name, first name, last name, whatever, and Then you hit next, it takes you to step two and then finally step three, you hit submit.

When you have a multi step form versus just one long form that's trying to collect like 10 fields, your multi step form, you will lift your conversions by about 30% or so. Again, you're not doing anything. This doesn't cost you any money. What you're doing is making the experience better.

So multi step forms are super, super important now. What else should we be doing? Let's talk about social proofing on your landing page or your destination page. Social proof is everything on the planet.

It is everything. We cannot function without social proof in all aspects of our lives.

Last weekend, I'm with some buddies, we're ordering an Uber and I order the Uber and one of my friends says, what's the rating? I say, 4.1. The guy, my buddy goes, 0% chance I'm getting in that car because 4.1 for an Uber, that's scary. Like that person's going to kill us.

But it's this idea of everybody's collective thinking and us relying on each other because we're like, well, what do they think about? And that's the world that we live in. How does that relate to your landing page or destination page?

When somebody's going on your page, like, should I buy the thing, Should I subscribe to the thing? They're right there on the fence. They're on the fence.

What you want to do is right below the submission button, the button that they're going to click on to close the deal. The button right below it, right near it, on the side of it. You want to put a testimonial.

A testimonial says, these are the greatest socks of all time, said Bill. This is the best CRM system I've ever used, said Susie. I would be nowhere without this product, said Ronaldo.

You take one testimonial and you put it right next to that submission button when you do that. We've tested this. Whether it's there or not. There a B test, okay?

When you have that one testimonial, we see conversion rates go up by over 20% and people say, well, I don't have a thousand testimonials. Well, neither do I. Who cares? You need one.

Some of the greatest companies in this country have been built on literally one testimonial and one successful sale. You need one. Every company has one testimonial, one human being that has enjoyed the product or service that you're selling.

By the way, if you don't do something else. Go ahead and ask somebody. I need a testimonial. You take that one testimonial and you ride with that.

You go with that because that is the social proof that we need. So those are some quick win tips for your landing page.

Now this is the segment on this podcast called the podcast called do this, not that, but this segment's called since you didn't ask. Hey, new listeners. This comes from my newsletter, my scoop newsletter.

And I talk about things that are just going on in life, has nothing to do with landing pages or marketing or business or whatever. And I'll tell you what's on my mind here. I'll tell you a story. This is super embarrassing. I don't care.

I'm getting ready to go start to go a bunch of these conventions because now there's all these conventions are kicking into gear. And I'll tell you, I was thinking about this last night. The most embarrassing thing ever happened to me at a conference. Here's what happened.

I was at a massive conference, Huge, thousands of people. And I was staying in the conference hotel, the hotel where everybody in the conference was staying.

And I'm not like a big go out at night guy at these conferences. That's not my jam. So it was the nighttime and I decided, you know what? I'm going to order dinner to my room, room service to my room.

And I'm going to sit there, I'm going to watch tv, and this is going to be the greatest night of my life. Because just sitting there in my room watching TV and ordering room service is like amazing. So this is what I did. I ordered room service. Food comes.

And I was in relaxation mode. I'm sitting there on the chair and I was just in my boxers. That's it.

I was eating hamburger, totally disgusting in my boxers, watching tv, living the good life. It was fantastic. So I eat the whole thing because I'm disgusting.

And afterwards, there's still the places where you roll out the tray that they bring you. So I take the tray and I roll it out into the hallway, right? And in my boxers. And that's it. That's all I had on. And all of a sudden you hear this.

Oh, the door closes behind me. This happened. This was real. Now, first of all, I did the all time, dumbest thing any human being's ever done in the history of life and humanity.

I turned around and I knocked on the door. I went like an idiot. There's nobody in the room. I don't know why I knocked on the Door. But that's not where the horribleness ended.

So then I realized, oh, I'm in the hallway in my boxers. I don't have a key. I have nothing. I'm in trouble. And I'm in the conference hotel. So every human being in my industry was there. This is not good.

Not a good situation. So there was no, like, phone on the floor that I was staying on or anything like that. And I'm like, I got no option.

There was no person in the hallway that could let me in my room. There was nothing. I had no option. So I said, okay, we're going to suck it up. And we got to go to the front desk. This is what's happening.

So I go to the elevator. I get in the elevator. I remember there was nobody in the elevator, thank God. And then I get out, and it was just a sea of humanity.

And I get out and I remember, first guy walked up to me and he goes, jay, hey, that was great today. I saw you at your session or whatever. And I'm looking, I'm like, do you not see me? I got nothing on right now. Hello. What's wrong with you?

And then I started getting eyeballs from everybody. What is wrong with you? You are a weirdo. And they're right. I mean, it looked out of control. It was so embarrassing.

And then I finally get to the front desk and the woman find the front desk, goes to me, can I help you? I'm like, yeah, I'm just some naked dude that's just walking around. Can you help me? I'm locked out of my room. And then she says to me, you have id?

I was like, no, I don't have id. I have nothing. Help me. Anyway, they got me back to my room. Super embarrassing.

So now when I go to these conferences, I'm very aware of doors and locking and things. I don't know why I shared that. But now you have that story of me, and that's what I got. So, anyway, I hope this improved your landing pages.

Hope you feel embarrassment and shame for me. And thanks for checking out this episode of do this. Not that you did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time.

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