HIGH CONVERSION LAB 5 WAYS TO DOUBLE YOUR WEB SITE S SALES IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS By Ryan Berg Head Profit Scientist at HighConversionLab.com
The Struggle to Build a Thriving Online Business as the Internet Evolves at Breakneck Speeds Once you have an established online business that has already implemented many of the most common best practices, it becomes harder and harder to unlock the kind of big gains in response and revenue that you're looking for. Add to this the increasing sophistication of online buyers, as well as increasing competition pulling at market share - and the environment marketing directors and online business owners face becomes even more challenging and complex. Online buyers are becoming more demanding and discerning. They expect better customer experiences, have shorter attention spans, and are more resistant to being sold to. At the same time, your competition is becoming more sophisticated as they adopt constantly advancing marketing tools, tap into new marketing channels, and test new ways to engage and sell to visitors. So how do you stay ahead of the curve, and uncover the big gains hiding in your business on a consistent basis? How can you continue to grow your business at a rapid pace in the chaotic and constantly shifting environment of online marketing? In this report, we ll look at some answers to those questions. As well as zoom in on five potential ways you can double your revenue this year, even if you run an established online business that is already doing well. Welcome to the Era of Data Driven Marketing Decisions In order to not just keep pace with competitors, but rapidly excel past them and position yourself as the leader in your market you need to make better marketing decisions, and make them faster than your competition. One of the most powerful tools in your marketing tool-kit for making profitable decisions quickly is the ongoing monitoring, testing, and optimization of all your marketing processes. Instead of making assumptions about your marketing, you now have the ability to rapidly test new approaches to connecting with and selling to your audience. And assess in a clear, scientific way which approaches generate the greatest response and profits. This includes using optimization techniques such as A/B split testing, where two versions of an ad, web page, or email are compared against each other to see which one is most responsive and profitable. As
well as tapping into the knowledge from a variety of other analytics tools to find out what approaches are most effective at driving the decisions and actions you want your audience to make. Unfortunately, while many online businesses are beginning to take advantage of optimization techniques like A/B testing and are seeing modest gains as a result. Most are missing out on the big gains hiding in their business due to not following an effective testing methodology, being uncertain about how to interpret test results, and overlooking the places in their marketing where big gains are likely to be uncovered through testing. Other stumbling blocks that prevent online business owners and marketing directors from generating large gains through marketing optimization include: Not having the time to stay up to date with cutting edge marketing approaches and sales processes being used outside their market or industry, which leads to following their competition instead of leading with tests that can have a much bigger impact on response and revenues. Not having the time and manpower to consistently and rapidly test new marketing approaches, in order to quickly uncover the most responsive approaches and create rapid increases in profits. But More Than Anything, Most Online Businesses Are Leaving Millions of Dollars in Sales on The Table Simply By Not Optimizing Critical Areas of Their Marketing Funnel Many online business that are doing optimization such as A/B testing only focus on one or two areas of their marketing funnel, such as a few key landing pages and sales pages. Unfortunately, this leaves many other critical areas of their marketing funnel stagnant and potentially millions of dollars in untapped income sitting on the table waiting to be grabbed, likely by a competitor. In the rest of this report, you ll be walked through the 5 key areas of your marketing that you should be optimizing on an ongoing basis in order to maximize revenues from your online business. And while it may sound fantastical, optimizing just one of these 5 areas has the potential to double your sales. Keep reading to find out how:
Optimization Gold Mine #1: Traffic Generators If your marketing funnel is the engine of your business, traffic is the fuel. And yet, some online businesses spend little or no time optimizing the performance of the traffic generators that pump fuel into their business. Some common traffic sources that can be optimized with A/B split testing include: Pay per click traffic from Google, Facebook, and other sources. Continually A/B testing ads here allows you to increase traffic. And it may also lower your costs per click by increasing click through rate (since many advertising platforms will charge less for ads that have a higher CTR). Display ads Email marketing. This includes promotions to your in house list, as well as joint venture promotions and solo ads purchased from other list owners. What are your main traffic sources? Testing variations in ad copy, design, and offer positioning can lead to a dramatic increase in the traffic generated by your ads and promotions. It is not uncommon for one ad to perform twice as well as another (you may have even seen this in your casual observations of ads you ve ran in the past). Which is why systematically and consistently optimizing your ads can unlock huge gains in overall revenue. As long as traffic quality is maintained, more traffic = more revenue. It s that simple. Unfortunately, many businesses get infected with shiny object syndrome where they are constantly looking to set-up the next, new traffic generator instead of focusing on increasing the performance of already established sources of traffic. This causes them to miss the chance at tapping into the huge pool of visitors that are already seeing their ads and promotions, but for one reason or another aren t clicking through to their site. Optimization Gold Mine #2: Landing Pages This is often the first place most businesses begin implementing A/B split testing. And for good reason, as there is a lot of money to be unlocked by improving the response of your landing pages. However, many businesses leave a lot of money on the table by only focusing on one or two main landing pages. Or by having an inconsistent, unfocused testing strategy (i.e. testing random things here and there vs. systematically testing new things on an ongoing basis). Here are some questions you can ask yourself to determine if you are getting the biggest gains possible from your landing page testing strategy:
1. What other pages is traffic flowing into across your site? Many businesses focus testing on their home page or a free offer page, when a large percentage of traffic may be flowing into overlooked secondary pages that are equally important to creating first impressions with visitors and driving response. 2. Are you creating and testing landing pages custom tailored to fit different sources of traffic? Creating individualized doors into your marketing funnel can unlock large increases in response. Instead of sending all traffic to a generic landing page, try custom tailoring landing pages to fit the unique reasons people clicked the ad to your site in the first place (i.e. they searched for a particular keyword, the ad addressed a specific problem, etc.). This is an example of utilizing readily available data on where visitors are coming from to custom tailor a better user experience (and a more profitable one). Optimization Gold Mine #3: Email Marketing Sequences Once a visitor s contact information has been captured through some kind of free offer (free trial, downloadable, email newsletter, etc.), an automated email marketing sequence is usually triggered. This email sequence is a critical part of the dialogue you have with visitors to educate and persuade them to buy your products and services. However, most businesses completely overlook the opportunity to improve this dialogue and increase sales. Here are some examples of how an email sequence can be optimized: Testing different subject lines Testing different email copy Testing different offers at different points in the sequence Testing different email layouts and design elements In addition to optimizing front end email sequences, large increases in profits can also be found in optimizing back end sequences that lead people into your other products and services after they have made an initial purchase. Customer care/client retention sequences can also be hiding untapped revenue increases. Optimization Gold Mine #4: Sales Pages Any page that plays a key role in influencing the buying decision of a visitor should be seen as a rich source of optimization opportunities that could unlock big gains in response. This includes main sales pages, as well as secondary pages that expand on key features and benefits or answer common objections.
Considering that even individual elements on sales pages such as headline variations have been shown to double sales, all sales pages should be thoroughly and systematically optimized to unlock maximum revenues. Optimization Gold Mine #5: Mobile Web Pages With mobile devices like smart phones and tablets making up a larger and larger portion of overall web traffic, and conversion rates for tablets now equaling that of traditional desktop devices optimizing your marketing funnel for mobile users can be a large untapped source of increased revenues. And it will soon be essential for maintaining a competitive edge as mobile use continues to rise. According to reports by Monetate.com which analyzed more than 600 million online shopping experiences, in the 2 nd quarter of 2012 smart phones made up 7.89% of overall web traffic and tablets made up 7.31% of traffic. In the 2 nd quarter of 2013, this had grown to tablets comprising 12.44% of all web traffic and smart phones 9.69% of traffic. Nearly a quarter of all web traffic combined. The same report also shows that for the first time, tablet traffic is converting at the same level as traditional desktop devices. So, not only are 1 in 8 ecommerce visitors on tablets, they are also buying at the same rate as people on laptops and desktop computers. With numbers like these, the opportunity for optimizing your marketing funnel for mobile users is clear. And online businesses that continue to overlook the opportunity may get left behind, or be forced to play catch up as mobile use continues to grow. Fortunately, most split testing software offers the ability to target and run A/B tests specifically to mobile users. Making it possible to create and rapidly optimize a customized buying experience for mobile users that will generate the maximum response from visitors on those devices. The Power of Exponential Growth How Optimizing Multiple Points of Your Marketing Funnel Can Lead to 3X, 4X, even 10X Increases in Revenue Optimizing just one of the above 5 areas of your marketing funnel has the potential to double (or more) your revenues. There are 1,000 s of case studies where changes to a sales page, landing page, or ad have doubled response.
But optimization gets really exciting when you consider the exponential growth possible from improving the response of multiple points along your marketing funnel at the same time. For example, let s say you were able to double the number of leads a landing page was generating. And then simultaneously double the conversion rate of the sales page those leads were funneled into. You wouldn t just get double the revenue. You would quadruple your revenue. Double your traffic on top of it, and all of a sudden you ve increased revenue 800%. That s the incredible power of exponential gains. And each point along your marketing funnel has the potential to unlock this kind of exponential growth in your business. And that s why it s so critical to not just focus on one or two areas of your marketing funnel when implementing A/B testing, but to instead optimize all five of the areas outlined above. A 100% increase in sales from optimizing a sales page may be exciting. But it s nothing compared to the 800% increase you would get from also doubling the performance of your ads and landing pages at the same time. Of course, this is a rough example. And your marketing funnel will have a lot of nuances that will determine the exponential gains possible. But almost all marketing funnels have multiple steps that can be simultaneously optimized to reveal massive exponential boosts in profit. What would your business look like if you actually started optimizing all five areas of your marketing funnel? Do you want to find out? Click here