Happy Sunday!
If you’re reading this, I hope you’re sitting on a plush leather couch with your feet up, the AC on, and a beverage in your left hand. Today’s Sunday, so I have a fresh cup of Kolkata Chai’s masala chai in my hand.
Today’s newsletter is very, very tactical. If you’re a founder, you might want to forward this to your site/eCom person. We’re going to go through 40 tips from the last teardown session I did for 2 hours. 90,000 people have watched (or at least started) the teardown, and I encourage you to pick up on the frameworks, not the actual tips.
I’m going to do another full hour on August 25th. Sign up here to join and get the recording after! I promise you this isn’t a webinar or anything salesy… it’s just a bunch of us having a good time tearing down landing pages and cracking jokes. I have one simple goal: put the course gurus out of business and give you REAL advice that is FTC-friendly and will drive immediate results.
I’ve also gotten a handful of emails asking me to trim the newsletters. See, the problem with that is when I write something from my experience, I like to include the full context, so you, as the reader, can be put in my shoes at the time when I didn’t know something, to after when I learned WHY something worked the way it did. I don’t like to just give the final punchline, I want to share the full how around it. I hope that makes sense. I have thought about recording my newsletters as a 3 to 5 minute audio clip. Would that be interesting? Let me know.
Before we get into it… have you checked out the first two episodes of Limited Supply?! In Episode 1, we talked all about logistics, 3PLs, shipper boxes, and more. In Episode 2, Moiz and I talked deeply about BFCM strategy. Twitter loved episode 2. Just search “Limited Supply” on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and check it out. You can watch us on YouTube, too — Moiz and I are finally back together in person!
In episode 3, we cover current events, recent exits, AllBirds’ new retail strategy, and finally, in episode 4, we do an hour of Q&A with questions from our Slack community (join it here if you haven’t!). It’s so interesting to hear how Moiz thinks, especially from doing all this at Native.
Last update — HOOX is now running our Black Friday sale for brands — check it out here! But, more on that toward the end of the email!
Oh, and if you’re a retention marketer looking to make their next move, Sharma Brands is hiring a Retention Director!
Alright, let’s get into today’s email. This list of tactical ways to improve conversion is mainly for product pages and landing pages. But, I think most of this can also easily apply to homepages, about us pages, and also your ad creative. If you’re not sure how UX (user experience) design plays a role in creative, this is it!
If you have any that I missed, please reply with them. I see all the replies (and do love seeing them too)!
In no particular order, here are 40 tactical tips to help make your landing pages way better overnight.
- Leverage more social proof from real-world humans, not just models and paid creators.
- Don't be so chunky with your copy — get punchy, get savvy, and focus on benefits, not just the value props.
- Design for mobile first. 80% of your traffic will be from mobile devices.
- Write copy for mobile first, as well. At Sharma Brands and HOOX, we write all of our landing page and website copy for mobile first, then fit it for desktop after.
- Make your pricing, discounts, and offers more noticeable! Do anything that you can to make the pricing and discounts pop. Use a different color font, or make it bold, use highlights, a sticker, etc. Another tip: use colored CTAs as they outperform black and white CTAs.
- If you sell a consumable, include your price per use. i.e. $1/bottle when you buy a 24 pack of drinks, or “Less than $1/day for a greens powder,” for example.
- A picture is worth a thousand words. Use a lot more of them. Also include illustrations, icons, graphs, charts, etc. Explain visually.
- Make your pop-up email subscribe form simpler. Don’t ask for their first name, last name, email, birthday, and location. Just ask for their email address.
- Make your pop-up subscribe form a value-added experience. Offer a discount or enter them into a raffle for a chance to win free products in exchange for them entering their email.
- Make sure everything you do is ADA-compliant! In short, this just means that you e your site is accessible to anyone. Make sure that your fonts are the appropriate size and that you don’t have a white font on a light background, etc. For more info on ADA compliance, read this.
- Simplify your checkout experience. A customer should never have to make more than 2 clicks to check out.
- Put your very best offer at the top of the page. This could be a banner bar or just the first bundle that you show being your current best offer on the site.
- Always have a comparison chart! I have never seen a comparison chart on a site that didn’t make me feel more educated about my purchase after seeing it.
- Elevate your design. If your LP doesn’t look beautiful, you’re not building trust. Why spend money to drive traffic to a site that has poor design? These first impressions really matter.
- Always add shipping information and make it very clear. Answer the questions, if I buy today, does it ship today? When does the product arrive at my door?
- Tell customers what’s inside the box. Better yet, show them what’s inside the box with a photo or UGC unboxing video on your LP.
- Enable buy now, pay later on your site. More stores are using it than ever before. If you’re on Shopify, you can simply enable ShopPay Installments.
- Have a hierarchy in your text sizes. There’s a reason why H1, H2, and H3 text exist. Use variations in both font sizes and styles to create a visual hierarchy on your LP. It should be easy for someone’s eyes to follow where to look, and in which order.
- Add quotes that call out the benefits, not just the features. I.e a good quote about the features of a product like a Simple Modern water bottle would say “I love the teal color and that the bottles are machine washable.” A great quote would say something like “Upgrading to the 64oz tumblr changed my life. I drink more water today than I ever have before. I feel much healthier and have more energy and sleep better due to being properly hydrated from this bottle.” A great quote speaks to lifestyle change, not just the features.
- Don’t say “Buy Now” say “Add to Cart.”
- Use Microsoft Clarity! Study the heat maps to see where users are bouncing and falling off. Change or remove that section to boost CVR. Clarity also lets you watch user sessions on your site, so you can see where people scroll, what they read, where they mouse goes, etc.
- Study dead clicks and “rage clicks” i.e where users click multiple times on a site expecting to go somewhere but they aren’t redirected. Where are they trying to go? Why isn’t this section clickable? How can you fix it? This is also on Clarity.
- Organize your product page like you would organize your physical storefront. What items do you want customers to see first? What is the associated photo and sign? How would you merchandize this product in a physical store? You should be thinking the exact same way on your site.
- Whenever possible, reduce the amount of text. How can you say the same thing, with fewer words?
- Whenever possible, use real images, not icons or illustrations. People want to see the real product in use.
- When a customer leaves a review, tell me what product they bought. I.e “X person bought 3 teal tumblers from Simple Modern.” Next to their review, add their name, photo, and “Verified Purchaser” for more credibility.
- If it’s truly a limited time offer, highlight that! But don’t lie, that is against the FTC rules.
- Tell me how many customers have purchased this product. I.e 5000+ happy customers or “285 people love this product!” Again, lying here is against the FTC rules.
- Want to know what’s better than images? Videos! Showing your product in a UGC video can raise conversion rates by a ton.
- Optimize your text and visuals for your most visited screen size.
- If a third grader or your grandma can’t understand your product and offer and how to checkout and buy on your landing page, your site is too complicated! Go back to the drawing board and simplify it!
- Never forget an FAQ section. It’s one of the best ways to answer questions and ensure confidence right before a purchase. It’s typically the last section I check before I hit “Buy.”
- It sounds cool in a brand book but it doesn’t make sense to a consumer, cut it.
- Don’t hide the return information. If customers want to make a return or exchange, make that really easy and quick.
- If there’s a 15 or 30 or 60 day money back guarantee or return policy, highlight that!
- Describe your brand as a person. i.e to me, HOOX is like Johnny Bravo. He’s up at 7am, he’s working out, he’s going to a nice dinner, he’s fashionable. I use this persona to know how I should write copy and design my sales decks and LPs.
- Make your page load in under 1 second. I saw multiple pages in my LP teardown that took 2-3 seconds to load. This is not fast enough! Consumers will bounce.
- Test upsells and cross-sells. Test them both pre-purchase and post purchase.
- Add social proof directly to the checkout screen, i.e as someone is checking it, it should say “500 happy customers also bought this!” or have another quote there.
- Test variations! The single most important thing that you can do is to make duplicates of your page and split test copy, images, offers, etc on the same traffic source to see which converts better. The only way to dramatically boost CVR over time is to test and iterate at scale.
Okay, that’s it for now.
As many of you know, the goal of any landing page is to show a consumer the light at the end of the tunnel. No matter what you sell, you want to position your product as the solution to a specific problem.
You have to imagine that when a consumer clicks on your ad and they are visiting your LP for the first time, that they are basically lost. They are in a dark tunnel, looking for the light, and trying to understand your product and how it solves their specific problem for the very first time. They don’t know you, they don’t trust you (yet) and they don’t know what to expect or how to navigate the world you are presenting to them.
Your goal as a brand/company is to use your landing page as the metaphorical train tracks that lead them out of the tunnel and to the light (i.e directly to your product that can solve their problem and improve their lives). But when it comes to sales, you never want your consumer to take the scenic route. You want to get them on the express line to see the light as fast as possible!
With that in mind, each section of your landing page should actively be getting your consumer closer to the light to complete their journey (aka to purchase from you). If you apply this mental model, you’ll be creating better LPs in no time.
If you want the full 2 hour breakdown where you can see exactly where all of these ideas came from, you should watch my full video here. If you want to participate in the next teardown session, sign up on this form to get invited to the Zoom! It’ll be on August 25th from 12pm EST to 1pm EST.
Lastly, my team and I at HOOX have created over 500 high-converting landing pages that have helped brands like Feastables, Bearaby, Eight Sleep, Jones Road Beauty, Crocs, Cadence, Homecourt, and more achieve a 2-3x CVR, compared to their main website... At HOOX, we eat, sleep, and breathe LPs, and we’d love to create a few for your brand!
If you plan to have your biggest Black Friday yet, book a call with us to discuss our Black Friday offer for brands. This is our biggest discount, and we’re ready to level up your acquisition funnel.
Ok, on to some fun stuff…
Vendor of the Week:
Disco Network — The secret customer acquisition channel for brands like Caraway, Corkcicle, and Milk Bar.
Have you ever made a purchase for a brand you love on their Shopify store, and then on the Order Confirmation/Thank You page, you see a feed of products from other brands you love? That’s Disco Network’s DiscoFeed.
Disco is on the Order Confirmation page for the top 5% of eCommerce brands. With their cross-brand data sets, they can target customers with offers and products that have a high conversion rate. You might remember the name Co Op Commerce? That’s now Disco Network.
I personally hold the title in the investor update for most brands onboarded to Disco, and for good reason too:
- Reach high-intent shoppers
- You only pay for conversions, AND you set your own CPA goal
- It’s an always-on channel with decent scale
- They sit on the Order Confirmation page of Tier 1 brands
- Their analytics in the Disco app are amazing — you can see what brands you overlap with
Click here to book a call with Disco’s team. It’s really a no-brainer if you’re doing $10M in revenue to enable Disco!
LP of the Week:
This week’s landing page of the week comes from one of my favorite companies, Eight Sleep. Zuck and Elon both use it. Rumor has it if you use one, you might also be able to launch a social network.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE LANDING PAGE!
This landing page is awesome for a few reasons. Outside of being a landing page that checks the boxes of all our landing pages: clear, concise copywriting, illustrations, social proof, a proper angle to connect with the visitors, etc., this landing page ALSO includes:
- A custom email capture pop-up with a minimized floating widget
- A sticky floating CTA that is custom designed to the brand
- A fully custom designed & developed social proof carousel
- A 1 second load time
That’s the beauty of Advanced Pages with HOOX — we have NO limit when it comes to designing and developing for conversion. If we feel a specific module or opportunity on the page would drive higher conversion rates, then we will just build custom modules.
For Black Friday, we’re running a promotion on our Advanced Pages. You can purchase the pages now, and use them through the end of the year. Click here to see the pricing packages, which start at $5k in savings and go up to $30k. Every landing page with HOOX includes:
- A dedicated account manager
- Customer insights research
- Competitive research
- Deep dive into your organic media channels
- Strategy development sessions
- A 5-hour copywriting session
- QA checks throughout the process
- Mobile and desktop wireframes (with revisions)
- High fidelity design
- Development on the platform of your choice (Unbounce, Shopify, Replo, etc.)
If you’re on the fence and have a question, just reply with it to this email. Our Black Friday deal is limited to 400 landing pages total and expires at the end of September 2023.
That's all for this week
If I had to guess, I would imagine there are at least 10 things on the list of 40 that could be easy conversion drivers for your store. Earlier this week, after seeing this tweet by Shane Rostad about hismile’s potentially-illegal on-site practices to get people to buy faster. There are so many better, compliant ways to increase conversion.
Anyways, I hope today’s newsletter was a fun one for you to read and if you enjoyed it, sign up for the next roast session. It’s Sunday, so I hope you get those 9 hours of sleep tonight, break a sweat this week, cook something you’ve wanted to cook, and have an amazing upcoming week.
I’ll see you next Sunday!