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Optimizing Your Website

Lesson 44 from: Unlock the Power of Pinterest

Melanie Duncan

Optimizing Your Website

Lesson 44 from: Unlock the Power of Pinterest

Melanie Duncan

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Lesson Info

44. Optimizing Your Website

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Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Bonus Video with Purchase: Create/Convert to a Business Account

07:39
2

Bonus Video wtih Purchase: Business Resource Center

04:25
3

Bonus Video With Purchase: Your Profile

06:27
4

Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Create Boards

10:16
5

Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Edit Your Pins

03:17
6

Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Follow

02:01
7

Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Pin

07:46

Lesson Info

Optimizing Your Website

so back to strategies. So now we're gonna talk about strategies for optimizing your website. Finish strong, because we really this is our last time together. I'm a little upset. It's gonna be wonderful, though, and I really want to just bring it home. What you need to be doing, Teoh, optimize your website. So first, let's talk about this. Most people are actually strictly focused on getting traffic instead of getting sales. Now what do I mean by this? When I talk to business owners, people who started are starting a website and I asked them, What is your number one goal or really, what would it take to get your business? The next level and what they tell me? The majority of people will say I just need more traffic. If I just had more traffic, I could have more clients and customers, and this actually is totally false. In almost every case, it's not on Lee. A lack of traffic that can have you will be holding you back from getting more clients and customers. But actually, sometimes it's ...

a lot of stuff that you're doing wrong on your website. And it's not your fault. I mean Nobody teaches you this right. At least when I was in school. Nobody teaches you what you should and shouldn't have on your website. And it's obviously confusing because you go to hundreds, if not thousands, of websites all the time, and a lot of them are all very different, and you don't know what works. What doesn't what you should be using. It's common practice, so that's what we're going to talk about today. So to common mistakes that actually when you're using Pinterest that will lead Teoh. A lack of optimization and a lack of traffic is not having your pins link anywhere. Very simple. But I wouldn't bring it up if tons of people didn't do it. You've always got to make sure when you're uploading pins from your computer, or even if you're pinning from your site, making sure those pins length somewhere. The other very, very common mistake is that people on Lee link their pins to their home page. Now, does anyone have an idea why this might be a problem? We're going to kind of circle it back. You've had some time to talk about strategies, Adam. I guess it's not the most direct link to a sale, right? Purchase point? Yeah, it kind of drops them off. I'm probably the most confusing page on your website, right? Most device, we use our home pages in really interesting ways where we kind of just show. Let's talk about everything we do in everything we sell, and you want the first step to be the simplest step. You want to be able to land there, make a clear and coherent decision in less than 10 seconds. Otherwise they leave and they get overwhelmed. So a lot of times, actually dropping visitors off on a home page, unless it is superbly optimized, will lead to a bounce and balance Means they just won't go to any other pages on your site. They just go there. They get overwhelmed, they leave or they go there and they decide us. This is the one I'm interested in, and they leave. So let me ask you this. This is something really interesting to think about and try to drop all biases. But if you weren't you, but if you went to your site, would you buy something off of it? I think a lot of times since we know our products. We know our services, and we also kind of tend to make excuses for ourselves by the only person that does this. Oh, it's probably not that bad, right? I know it's a little confusing, but people can probably figure it out. If you weren't the business owner, would you buy something off your site? Is it easy to understand what you do or what you sell? Is it a brand that looks like a brand? You want to give your money to? That you want to be a part of? This is something very important to think about, even as you redesign you do. Different aspects, like Christine was showing us. Always try to keep as subjective as you can and think about what the average visitors experiences on your website. Now, the first thing that released circles back to what we've been talking about this entire three day period is to focus on design. And if you remember this from day 1 46.1% of people say that website design is the number one criterion for discerning credibility of the company, and we talked about don't be confused by this 46 these air. So almost half of people say that it's the number one criteria. But can you imagine how many people say that design is in the top three? It could be 80 90%. But what I'm saying is that almost half of people say it is the number one most important thing, not which you sell, not your price, but the actual design. It's huge. And Teoh, you know, do. Of course, the Steve Jobs quote is that design is how it works. You know, it's not just how something looks or feel. Design is actually the functionality. So when we talk about optimization and talk about design, I'm not just talking about what pictures you have, but I'm also talking about how many how many different choices air in your sidebar where your call to Action's what's above the fold? How often do people have to scroll? How confusing is it to add something to their shopping cart? This is all still considered design. So you've heard me talk about trust symbols, right? We talked about trust symbols in the about section. We've talked about trust symbols or actually talked about press trust. Symbols are press. That's kind of the same thing. You can use them interchangeably. It just means they're ABC. These other companies air kind of giving you their trust. They're saying we kind of endorsed this person. They've been featured here, We've published them. We've shown their products or services and trust symbols are a fantastic, fantastic way to actually increase your optimization because people are still a little hesitant about buying online, right? I mean, not as much as they used to be, but some people, particularly getting to certain generations, you know, little older generation is still they hear about things like credit card fraud or scams, and some people are still a little uneasy about purchasing online. So you do everything in your power to portray the professional value adding company that you are. So I suggest using trust symbols in various places. It's great to actually have them on the header of your website. If you go to Melanie Duncan dot com, you'll see that actually, in the header, we have our trust symbols, but we use our trust symbols on sales pages as well, and this depends on obviously, if you sell products, you could choose tohave trust symbols on your product pages, but particularly if you're selling a premium service or a premium download or something like that. It's very good to have trust symbols. Actually, on the sales pages, something we've tested has never heard of the three by three rule. So the three by three rules something that Zappos and a lot of other really optimization heavy websites dio. And what it simply means is that you should have no more than three options and three options at a time. So I'm not gonna say this is not what not to do, because three might not always be the perfect fit for your business. But how to illustrate This is so they would say Onley have pillows, bags in apparel and then, when apparel drops down on Lee, have T shirts, sweat pants, hat, something like that. So only three options than three more options and then when you would break it down further from there. So maybe it goes to T shirts and there are three options. So maybe it's short sleeve cap sleeve, long sleeves, something like that. But they Onley, they say, toe on Lee show no more than three options at a time. Why do you think this is? It makes it easier to kind of dissect where you're trying to get to versus if you came to this site and we saw a lot of different things on here. Can you? Some home pages literally show every single product someone sells. Some home pages actually will list every single thing that a service writer will offer. It can be very overwhelming. What's more common is and see home pages that talk of what they sell. They talk about their blawg, they talk about their social media. They have their latest Twitter feed up here. They have something. I mean, how we all seen these home pages. Maybe it's your home page you think home equates to we got show them everything under the hood, and that's actually backwards. You do not want your home page to be a that overwhelming. So we apply the three by three rule with our own understanding of the most shop herbal types of product on our site. So don't think that the three by three is an absolute half, too, but I want you to understand some of the most pops or e commerce sites are on Lee showing three by three option sets. So you're never overwhelming your customer more than three choices, and this relates to service sites as well. If you want them to go to your blog's, you want them to sign up for your email list and you want them to check out your portfolio or something like that. You want to try to think of condensing the options as much as possible. And this is something our website custom Greek Threads. You'll notice a lot. It's a grouped into a lot of categories to make browsing easier because none of us want to have to comb through products and products and products and products, right, you can equate it. Teoh. Have you ever been at a really great store? But they just have so much merchandise that you walk out because either it's just clumped in piles and you think I don't want to look through that or you go to get a pair of pants and see there's 15 different versions of black pants, and you think I thought I just wanted black pants, but now I have no idea what I want. That exact same thing happens online. So I want you to start thinking about condensing the options everywhere on your site, but particularly on your home page, into smaller sets of choices of what to dio. So don't think of your home page. Is this place where you just dump everything but think about really streamlining again? Remember you saw on the Melanie Duncan site. Our home page has one called the action. We have social media. It's below the fold. So think about again. What is above your fault we talked about the fold is what they see on your Web page before they scroll down. That is what is the first impression. That is what people have to understand quickly and concisely what it is you do. Why does it value to them and the next actionable steps? They should take that making sense. Everyone all right, C t A's and guarantees to get reports tt a czar calls to action calls action are very, very important on a website because they tell the customer they tell the client the visitor what you want them to dio. So whenever possible, you should always have a call to action on a page. Now it could be an add to cart. Give a blawg. It could even be comment. That is still a call to Action Button, but every area, every page of your site should have at least one strong called action, so the visitor knows exactly what they should be doing on that page. Now we tend to also use a lot of guarantees, and I'm throwing this in here. It's going to be different for everyone's business, but something that we have found for both our products and our services. In most cases, we provide a money back guarantee. Now let me walk you through this. So both are apparel, and our home two core businesses are 100% customizable, which means if you buy something, you put your monogram, you put your Greek letters on it and you decide you don't like the color or it's just you changed your mind. You no longer want it. If we re accept it, we can't restock it. It's a loss for our business, so we had to make an executive decision and decide what a return policy would be. But we didn't want to say absolutely. You can't return anything because you want your customers to feel comfortable spending money with you, particularly premium price products have to think What can we do to make our clients or customers feel comfortable like we've got their back? So what we do for custom Greek threads is we have a 100% um, quality guarantee, which means if there is ever any stitching that is not to quality anything, the thread coming out if you order the right size and we send you the wrong size, if for some reason we put spell your name wrong or put your letters down incorrectly. If something is crooked, we will remake it, no questions asked. That is what we will do. You just have to send in a picture. We will remake it. But what we won't dio is you get the T shirt. It's done correctly. It's perfectly made and you say, You know, I just It's just not really my thing anymore. I'm not into it as a business. We can't accept that and make our bottom line. So we've decided not to offer that, so guarantees don't necessarily mean you have to put your neck out so far that people abuse it right. I used to work at Nordstrom and nor should have this amazing return policy where literally, they would have us return stuff if a customer came in and wanted to return something and the customer hadn't even bought it, there could prove a body there. We still return. We took it back because it was an extension of the customer experience. But you can decide how and where this best relates for you for our digital products, which we create. And then we actually sell recordings of or we sell them online access to. We offer a 100%. It's I think it's a 30 or 60 day money back guarantee because we can afford to do that. And we know that we're going to get more people to try this product. We're gonna get more people to try this service. Then, if we said no, you can't even test it out. There's no way to even do it, so something to think about. It has to be the right fit for your business. But are you currently using guarantees or trials? Trials and guarantees are both very, very, very effective to give people a taste of working with you. And if you are confident in your services or the value provider, your products guarantees could actually be a phenomenal way to increase the amount of traffic that converts to buyers on your site. So something to think about again. It depends on what you sell and how you want to structure it. When I do high end coaching, it's not a money back guarantee, because it's my personal to personal time that I can't replicate. So don't feel like there has to be a guarantee for everything. But in a lot of cases, a short trial or some sort of guarantee based upon the quality that you can control will help customers feel more confident and comfortable buying for you, especially for the first time. So again, this is show you the example that Melanie dunk inside I was telling you about. This is where we actually have our trust symbols. So all of our press is featured right in the header and it stays in the header across the site Now, also, you can see we have are called to action. One clear directive. Call to action right above the fold. Right there. Now, I'm not saying This is what everyone's home page should look like. But what I do want you to see is the contrast between this versus what most people's home pages on the website look like. So I want to tell you about my Pinterest swipe file. I think I talked a little bit earlier. I'm always looking for inspiration, for design, for my website, not necessarily just logo's, but really layouts or cool features or cool product pages or imagery or merchandising. And so what I would encourage everyone to do if you're not already doing this, is to have one of your boards. It could be a secret board if you don't want to put it out there. It could also be one of your public boards to inspire your following Teoh create a swipe Fowler and Inspiration file. It doesn't have to be called a swipe file, but a file where you start thinking about your website and what you want it to look like, what you want it to function like, and the next time you do make some changes, it might not be right now, but the next time you make some changes or you decided to do a photo shoot or you decide to, you know, combined some new elements. You have some references, and some resource is to go back. Teoh. For me, this has been invaluable and constantly evolving it, taking the next steps in designing my website. And also, when I create new products, new programs, just new ventures to have a wealth information. So when the audience used, like a swipe filer inspiration file, yeah, absolutely somebody's toe have, like that corkboard. Maybe you still have that corkboard. Now Pinterest is kind of not taking the place of it, but it's given us an extension of a way to do this online. So start making a swipe file for your business, for your website, for the way you shoot your products for the way that you work with your customers, even email. Sometimes if I get a really great email, I love the tone of the conversation or the way that they featured a testimonial. I will also include this in this file so that I can always do working towards the areas that I want improve upon. All right. The next area is, of course, product pages. So we talked about your home page. We talked about overall design, but the rial action, at least for e commerce stores, occurs on the product page. So there is a certain formula we've identified. We do a lot of split testing, which means we will create different versions of our site and send traffic to it and see which one of the designs or which one of the futures converts the best. And what we've identified is that, of course, what is necessary is a high quality photo, high quality, meaning It just looks good. I don't know exactly you know what the size of the file is, but that it looks professional. If it's selling a product, Not only do we have the stock photo, but we're actually showing it in a context of how it is used and extra points for video again, talking across the board video is helping e commerce businesses more more. I think I even have a statistic about this coming up an imagery rich product description. Do you guys know what I mean by this? Product? Descriptions are one of the most underutilized areas on e commerce sites, so normally we say something like 100% cotton made in China. I don't know whatever we're gonna say about your product, but what you really want to do, and I'm gonna show you an example, that's just a moment. Is of oak that language that messaging that brand experience through your product Descriptions. Clear call to action is essential on a product page Justus, much as it is essential on your home page and reviews and testimonials. So if you've seen this because hardly anyone does it, some of the big big brands do this. But I never see small businesses to this as actually have reviews of the product or testimonials about the product or service actually on the page. Now, this is so cool because don't you want to know? I think of Amazon before you buy a book or something? Don't you kind of check out? Sometimes the reviews and what people thought of it, I think of rent the runway. There's no one to rent the runway where you can rent dresses, and they do this cool thing where they actually have customer photos that generates so you can see what the dresses looked like. The people have a little description. They talked about. We'll talk about how they liked it if it ran larger. Small what? They wore it. Teoh what size they ordered. It's so cool. You go through and go. OK, that comes like me, Okay? She worked for this. She said it was long. Okay, I'll get a little bit an extra length or something, but it gives you this ability to tap into their clients and decide. I mean, just even knowing if a shoe runs larger, small does not help you make a better decision. So here's what I want you to think about. Product images. Here is the basic stock product image, right? What most people have when they sell something, it's on a white background. It's really brightened. Well, let's so you can get a good sense of the product. But look at the difference from this to this little different right? Still great shadow for the photographers. I mean, you can really see the difference between going to a site and seeing products showcase like this versus going to a site and seeing products showcase like this. Which one? Which site would you want to buy from? Well, the good news is you can have both, and I recommend having both on product pages. If you go to most of our main selling products on luxury monograms, you'll see this that we actually have not on Lee the standard photo, but we have additional photos. We even use tons of client generated photos on product pages. And you do want to test this because you don't want to distract from it. And we do Onley add the photos, their high quality and that represent the products correctly. So I'm not saying just go crazy and have 35 photos of something on your page and not have them prioritised. You know, the main ones that we use are much larger, and then you can click and Seymour of the other ones. But it's a cool way to just not just stop on the regular product image, but go one step beyond. And this does, in most cases, tend to dramatically increase the conversion rate again. Any traffic you get to your site, you worked hard to get it there, right? You spent time on Pinterest. Maybe you've been paid for, you know, did paid advertising. You spent months on an S e o strategy. Once they're on your site, you want to do everything possible to really serve them and ultimately be able to turn them into buying clients and customers. So go beyond basic product shots and display your products in context of how they're used in real life now. Service providers. I got your back. Don't worry. You want to think about ways to showcase services visually as well. And we did talk about this. Talk about If you're a service provider, maybe it's a photo of you and your client working together, illustrating the value that's there for us for online things. A lot of times will actually show the website that's mocked up on a computer or IPad or an IPhone. I don't want you to cop out and tell yourself I don't tell a product, so there's nothing I can make photos of. It's not true. You may have to think outside the box, but there's a lot that can be done. And as we talked about, not on Lee do visuals next to text make it more believable. Research shows us that, but we also know that pages that have mawr images tend to be more highly engaged Mawr viewed, and people just enjoy the experience more when there are visuals. So service providers a big to do for you is if you're not currently using images on your site, start thinking about how you can and again you're gonna have the best ideas for your business. But think about even pictures of you and your clients. If it's things that you can generate, like something like this, how do I sell a membership site, Right? How would I even what would you take a picture of? It's an online membership site. We don't even or don't meet in a group, so we take a picture of the actual home page. We show images of the courses, so these are the different courses. They have access to its members. And so what we've done is hired a graphic artists and taken. We could just This could just be titles easily right. This could just be bullet points, but what we chose to do instead was used some fun. Fonts do a little bit of a colorful background. Now it feels a little more tangible, right? It's something that's online. It's something that you don't necessarily have a picture for, but you can make some sort of graphic illustration out of it, and this makes your site more engaging, and it makes people feel like they're getting more when they buy from you. I you know, it might sound silly, but it really does. We like to kind of see what we're going to purchase. And so this is a very effective strategy for search of service providers and start thinking about doing more. So we'll talk a little bit more about video that I mentioned for that perfect product page. So people are 144% mawr likely to add a product to their shopping cart after viewing a product video. They're also 85% more likely to actually purchase the product. Very interesting, right? Why do you think it says any ideas? Why would a video make you more likely to buy? So I have a few ideas I don't know. This was a fascinating study done by Internet retailer if you want to look it up further, but I think it's because it makes us feel like we have a better concept of the product. You know, sometimes I'm gonna buy a pair of shoes again, going back to zap a lot of conversion. Optimization like Zappos has kind of been an indice elite leader in the industry. But they were some of the first people to use video on their site because sometimes you look at a picture of the shoe and you can't really see it from every angle and you can't really see like, Is it really that shiny? Or is it just the way the light's hitting it so nice? When products were photographed, we can't really tell the true color of them. But on video, when you see something that's actually moving, you see the different angles. You can see how it relates to the person that's holding it. It tends to give us a much better sense of the product. And for service providers, as we've talked about throughout this entire three days, video helps connects you to your audience, be more riel and builds more trust. And any time you're increasing Trustor, also increasing the likelihood that someone is going to buy from you. So let's talk about these product descriptions and this again. It's not by far the perfect example, but I wanted to show you some of the efforts. We're making our business to do this. So this is, ah, Navy linen throw pillow. I could have very easily just said, This is a blue throw pillow. It's made out of Lenin and it's stuffed with cotton or something like that, right? It is very, very basic. And if you don't do this already, and I'm just gonna kind of pepper this out there because I know some people forget to do this, and it's a good reminder you should always list a good amount of information about your products, the size, the dimensions. I know some people, I said. In particularly noticed jewellery sellers forget to do this sometimes, actually listing. You know what the length is, how far it is, sometimes, even how heavy it is. Sometimes I noticed I'm buying earrings online. I'm wondering, Is this comfortable? Is that a clip on? Is it opposed just being as descriptive? You know, if you get emails, your customer service, you get emails about a product and you get the same question more than three times. You should be putting that information on the product page because it means people are wondering it. And if three people emailed you about it, 30 people probably came to this page wonder that didn't know and left. So you want to anticipate the questions your customers have and showcase them on product pages And this? This does translate also if you sell a service that people are purchasing online when they're not contacted over the phone. But they can actually check out on your website. So what we do in our product descriptions besides being, you know, as thorough as possible with some of the dimensions? Of course you could go crazy and Lismore, but I think you just want to cover the raw essentials and basics. We say This looks you is so hot right now. It pairs beautifully with brights, but also works perfectly with basic Hughes. Made from 100% linen, this pillow will add style in class to anything from a Nantucket Beach cottage to an Upper East Side penthouse. Nothing says style and sophistication, like plush, personalized pillows, are used to reading product descriptions like that. I'm not normally they're just boring. I mean, you almost kind of don't want to read the product description, right? What have I told you that the more information someone has about your product, the more like there to buy it. You want people to read your product description. This is a chance to help them understand why they need this. So use your product descriptions, make them fun, interesting and informative. And don't just stick to the bare bones. But think about how can use the language ing. We've talked a lot about language ing and messaging in your taglines. This should come through on your product pages in your product descriptions as well. These are the cash pages of your site, your product pages and these air when you really need to look at the small little tweaks you can be making. You know, sometimes we've talked about doing price juxtaposition, so maybe it's a $ pillow, but you want to, you know, we run a special and it was for, say, the $95 a price, and you want to say 100 and 50 and you cross that out. Now it's up to you. You might actually sell about 150 reduce it. But when you juxtapose prices, it increases conversions, so I'm not telling you to go out there and lie about your prices. But I'm trying to give you the information to tell you what you can do on these pages. People will perceive whatever value list this as and if it's too high. You know, if I said this is a $5000 pillow, I cross it out. But you can get it for 95. You're not gonna believe years that this person is crazy. They're lying. But, you know, say we did use the listens for 150. We've now decided it wasn't selling enough for for whatever reason, we want to get this fabric out the inventory and we choose to show the original price. I guarantee you this polo with sell better because people will think they're getting a deal. Our you can offer people a deal. And again, I don't want to come off as inauthentic or telling you, say that you sell things for a certain price and then don't do it. But I'm just telling you, having juxtaposition of price does increase conversions. Availability is good called actions. We do have a full list of customization since all of our stuff is very customizable. And so what we do instead of having it all appear, is we just have little areas continued out of page so that they can choose their thread color. They choose their monogram design. They choose the letters they want to put in. But they never feel kind of bombarded by too many options. And that's something we've had to work very, very hard on because when you are offering something personalized, it can. Besides just choosing the color of the size, you have to focus on the amount of information your present them at one time and making it simple to understand the next steps. That making sense, everyone. Testimonials Who talked about You wanna have testimonials on your product pages. Testimonies with images. Hopefully, you're seeing a lot of cross over by now, right? We're talking about higher using testimonies on Pinterest, using testimonials on you know, for email stuff. You're using testimonials also on your product pages. I want you to also understand now why it's really valuable to go after things like this because they could be so multi purposed. You know, it might take some time to reach out to your audience to get two or three testimonials to get their images to compile their words in a way that makes sense. But then those testimonials can be used for years and a lot of different ways, and really serve your business in terms of optimizing purse, prospective clients and customers. And I want to talk about again, not just getting testimonials from your customers, but also from peers in your industry. And that's something we use on our main website, something we reference and other materials. But reach out to other people in your industry, your peers, and get testimonials from them as well. So don't just feel like you're limited your clients and your customers. I think I should in this example of their day, another place to actually use a testimonial is on your opt in page anywhere you're asking. This could even be your papa. We talked about pop ups earlier where you can actually go, and it will pop up on a page with the email. You could also put a testimonial. They're these air, great places, great things, and hopefully a lot of this is starting to connect together. You know that common thread the last thing I wanted you all to do was to leave after three days and go. Wow, that was a ton of information. I'll say you know what do you remember? Where you gonna dio? I have no idea. It was so much information. Kind of Take a nap. You know, I want you to leave feeling like you're starting to understand the rhythm. And you're hearing these things over and over. Not too much, but enough that they're starting to kind of drive home and be easy to understand. So functionality. Does everything work on your site? You might say. Of course it works. Melanie, we've tried to place an order on your site. I mean, like, really place an order. Not just Oh, yeah. This is my product page. Have you added something to your shopping cart? Have you tried to use a coupon code and actually check out? I will tell you. Yeah, I've done this before at multiple stages. So our Greek company we've had from with six years now, about two months ago, I thought I should go check out that website like I've been to it. I watched the sales I, you know, work on four large scope things in that business now, and I noticed that we had an error message that came upon one of the products when you tried to add it to a cart. That's the type of stuff. You might not be getting sales because one of your pages doesn't work properly. So checking coupon codes, confirmation emails, maybe you're working to really actively build up your email list and you're thinking cash. I'm just not seeing results for this. Have you ever actually tried to sign up in your opt in form and see what it offends you? And sometimes what it sends you is different than what you programmed it to send you. You know, this is all text up, and there's no such thing as, you know, checking too much, I don't think particularly throughout, You know, when you first put up your website. Sure, you're gonna check everything and make sure it works, I hope. But sometimes three months, six months down the line, we forget to go back in and literally just see, how long does our site take toe load? What is the user experience on this and how fast to the pages load so I had developed something that I like to call. It's very technical. The mom test and the mom test is can your mom go to your site and figure out how to place an order right well over mom's or different ages? But because we're in our businesses and we know how everything works and we know what the offerings are, we're probably one of the worst people to really test how easier site is to navigate. And it's fascinating to watch someone watch a friend. I think the moms were the best because, you know, sometimes they're not tech savvy, and I just I've always found that it's really helpful to have the mom test out how to use your site and to watch them watch their mouths watch where it goes. And there's actually this great trying to think this resource called Click Tail it's actually called a click. And then I think it's t a l E. And it will. ITT's does heat map being so it'll show you where the most common areas are that people are dragging their mouths over your site. It actually can record is kind of crazy, but if you want it's ah, it's a paid service, but it will actually record visitors activity on your site so you can see what they're clicking on. A great example of this is actually on one of our product pages for custom brief threads. We noticed everyone was clicking on this. We had a Greek license medallion in the top. They didn't like anywhere. Just said that we were officially licensed to sell Greek clothing. We never thought anyone clicked on it, but it was one of the most clicked areas on our home page. So what does that mean? That means people want to know more about that. So we changed it. This is another split testing thing. We changed it so that when you clicked on it, I went down there. We had this great trust building line of cop where we say, you know, we're honored to serve over Greek members. We are license finally list everyone we listed like relationships, places we leave. We listed Maura about and talk more about that relationship and why we were endorsed by those companies and that increased our conversion rate. So there are things like that that you would never even realize there's activity on your site that you're probably entirely unaware of. And it could be holding you back. Or it could be a completely untapped opportunity to increase sales further. So the mom test is great just for overall navigation. See where they click? Where did they get hung up? You know, where can you tell? They kind of go? Uh, I don't know where to go next, because that is where probably a lot of your customers were getting getting hung up on. And again, If you want to go beyond the mom test, I do recommend services like Click Tail to actually track your traffic and see what people are doing on your site and what they're having a hard time with. And we talked about a lot earlier so he won't spend too much time talking about this. But actually optimizing your about page and this is the photo Devon and I have for all manage academy cause we both run that together, and I want you to see kind of the tone of this particular about again. There's more on it where we talk like the position we talked about earlier the U versus eyes. But when we actually talk about us, we tried to have a lot of brand bill and I won't read you the whole thing. But it basically talks about, you know, we've had our brands featured on top television shows like ABC s Good Morning America Trust Symbol pressed dozens of magazines around the world we talk about. We realized how important the education we receive online was and how incredibly difficult was to attain. And we talk about why we're now doing what we're doing. So again, this all piggybacks on what we really focused a lot on this morning, which was using your about section to really grab and captivates probably one of the areas you're getting the most traffic on your site. We talked about this to using you twice a smudges I really important remembers to focus on your about section isn't just about you, but it's about how you can help your clients or customers you're selling product. That can be really cool to talk about this story behind your brand in your business and why you're doing what you're doing. Email marketing We've covered as well during this three day workshop. We've talked about that. In order to increase your conversions, you need to use email. Now. Why do you think that, IHS? We've talked about that. You have to use it to pull people back to your site right when they're originally interested. But maybe the phone ring. They got distracted. They weren't ready to buy. But also, most people need to experience your brain They need to hear from you. 57 10. Everyone has a different opinion of how many times interact with you, but we know it's normally more than once. An email is the best way to be able to reach out to them, to engage with them and then use an enticing email offer to get them signed up to your lists. Recapping we've talked about a coupon code we've talked about giving them a taste, whether it's the first chapter of your e book or maybe some sort of free digital download of video setting up a free consultation. This is our pop up for email for luxury monograms, and it's just a general newsletter, it says. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter. This Onley pops up when people go to leave the site So this Onley pops up when we know people are gonna click out anyways, not when they first get there, not when they're browsing, but Onley when they're just about to leave. Which is kind of cool because you don't want to harass your customers by any means. But if they're gonna leave and you don't have a way to pull them back and to talk to them, or that's a really large missed opportunity to develop that that sale. So we have this newsletter, we do product giveaways, exclusive discounts and sail info, and we do entertain design features so very straightforward, but someone who is moderately interested in this brand now this could be enough to kind of push him over the edge, and we can take that lead and turn them into a customer. So a very, very vital part of optimizing your site is learning how to effectively use email to turn prospects into paying clients and customers. So let me ask you this. When do you think a prospect? You guys know what I mean by a prospect, right? Someone who's interested but not yet a customer. When do you think they're the most excited to hear from. You have got a couple of choices for you. A would be immediately after. Sign up for your list, be a week or so later and see is after a year, what in studio audience will start? Let's start from the left and move to the right. Adam. When you think I wouldn't say immediately after signing up for your product, But I was gonna say, even before those, like, maybe immediately after they buy something, you're like paying attention. But I guess they get a confirmation. Yeah, and worldwide audience. Feel free to chip chip in here as well. Go ahead. If you have a guess, whether it's a B or C type of that shot right now where you think Alicia, I think, be who's. I think it reminds them of what they originally were interested in. His beautiful click around on the Web so much. Yeah, it reminds them I like it. Rachel, if you're sending them really good value, our baby to be okay. And what do you think, Denise, I think Excuse me. I think B is well, but I like the idea of sending out something after they by not any sales thing. Toe check in right. Sorry, I love it. And, you know my psychology brain. It's wondering, Ah, lot of times in a group studies. After one answer is presented, it's more likely that other people will change their answers. I'm not saying interview did this, but very fascinating. So anyways, in most cases, and all of your answers can be right, you know they all can be right, depending on your customer. And what do you think online audience. When we have some A's A B, we have some all of the above, all of the above. That's a convenient answer. I use that one a lot. Theano sir. In most cases, not all but most cases is actually a immediately after sign it for the list. That is when their interest is the most heightened. And there's also a concept. I forget what it's called in psychology, that we like to reaffirm our actions, which means after we do something we like to rationalize, it was a smart decision, and so when people have given you right, if they've given you their name and email, they tend to be more open to hearing from you, and they tend to want to validate. They made the right decision, give you their name and email, and what most of us do with email is sent out one once a week. If we're good, I mean, that's really good. Most of us end went out. What's a month? Once every few months, it could be pretty lagging, right? Must most of us aren't very, very scheduled on how we do this. And this is probably one of the most common reasons that people have unresponsive audiences. And by audience, I mean your email list audience, because they sign up there intrigued, they're interested. And then they don't hear from you for a month, two months, three months, and that lead again. I'm using. I'm using industry jargon, but that lead has turned cold because when they were warm and they were hot and they were interested, you were, you know, on a photo shoot somewhere or you were, you know, working with a client of yours, or you were in your office shipping things. You weren't there with that person at that time when they were ready for you. So I am a big believer. We talked about a Weber a little bit earlier. I think that's a great place for a lot of people to start to set up an auto responder and all in auto responder is I know it sounds really technical and kind of confusing. Maybe to some of you and auto responder is simply something you set up in your email provider that right after someone signs up, they send them something. A welcome message. It's not the double often thing where it says, Oh, to confirm you join this list. Click here. That's not necessary What I mean by an auto responder by an auto responder. I mean, you send them something like an automatic discount code like thank you for sign it for our list. I told you about custom, great threads. We do this to encourage you, you know, for your first order, we're going to send you a 10% off coupon you can use for the next 24 hours. But this what's critical is this is sent to them within 10 minutes of signing up for the email list. I mean really fast. And this is something that works for some. Not all you might be saying. Oh, my God. The last thing in the world I would want after sign it to someone's email list is to be pressured to be sold something or to be prompted and pushed. Now, in most cases, this isn't true. In most cases, we actually don't sell enough to her audiences, even though we tend to be hypersensitive about. I don't want to sell too much in almost every business organization. You could be selling mawr and still providing a valuable customer experience. So I'm gonna air on the side of kind of encouraging you, and I know that you'll set your own limitations, but you want to know the value of your customer life cycle. There's some really aggressive strategies out there that will give 50% off, 75% off. They will pay you to place an order the first time, maybe not pay you, but they will make it so There's absolutely no profit on the first order because they know the percentage of people who will buy a second time. And this is something to know if you want to get into the metrics, the real meat of your site. This is a very important metric to know the customer life cycle because it lets you know how far you can extend yourself to turn someone into a buyer. If you know that your average customer is worth $300 in profit to you, you can spend a good amount of money to acquire that customer. And this transitions beautifully into a lot of strategies. Devon's gonna be talking about tomorrow and make your website work for you, because whenever you go after paid traffic or anything like that, you need to know how much money you can actually afford to spend on acquiring a customer so that you are flush in terms of what you're paying for and what you're actually profit in your business. Great content or training. And that's what most people opt to do right? Not necessarily discount code, not necessarily promotional sales by now email, but they send them a great message. A great welcoming surprise tends to work awesome in this area, giving people something they didn't expect. So maybe they sign up for your list because you promise that free report, but you also throw in some great video training or you sign up for a free report. But you also throw in a discount code or swap that they signed up for a discount code but additions the discount code. You also give them this great checklist using some sort of great content or training, and delivering it within that 24 hour hotbed window is proven to increase conversions and a special offer. A free trial. Again, It doesn't have to be a discount. Maybe it's something. In addition, they get that increases the value not just is a lesser price. It depends on how you do your marketing, whether you like to use discounts and promotions. Or you want to just increase the perceived value by adding something onto the regular order and free trial. If you do have something online that people can try out, we do a lot of $1 free trials we've tested very, very effective. I've seen things like four for 95 free trials, days, seven day free trials, something you see. A lot of the software world is free trials, but there are different ways, particularly you're selling digital products online to let people try something right off the bat right away again. This is all fitting under the framework of the auto responder. So this is all something they're being offered within, ideally, 24 hours of signing for your list Now, this could be a week, if you like a week better. A lot of people said be so you could absolutely get a week and you know, Adam said, After they buy something, you should one 150% send them something after they buy something. If you order from any major retailer online, what do you get? A confirmation email. It's very important. I've heard to actually show a picture of the product after they buy you sell services and someone buys a service on your site. Don't think it be great to have an email sent to them. This is again. This is an auto responder. Doesn't have to just be right after they sign up. Auto responders allow you to choose action sets so that you can actually decide when they're sent the message. And I really do recommend if you're not already doing this and you want to increase the retention and increase the customer life cycle to do things like send emails after your customer buying something for our custom stuff. You know it doesn't ship right away. They get an email confirming their order was placed. We have instructions for them for how long it's going to take. We're even looking into doing something where at Within. It takes us 10 days, normally 10 business days to produce their custom apparel or home decor. We're thinking about having an email that goes three days out, which is normally were in the like, the cutting. So phase where we're creating the garment or the pillow and send an email saying All right, your product is now off the first step of production. It is being, you know, masterly, pieced together by our artisans here and then on Day five, showing them where their product is out right now. But bringing them through that hole waiting period on one of them know the order went through what they can expect in saying thank you. You know, saying Hey, this is a message from the founder or the message from the owner just connecting with them after that process, making them feel like they made the right decision

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Post Design Elements.zip

bonus material with enrollment

MDBusinessPinterestH264.mov
How To Get Lots of Pinterest Followers Fast.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

What an incredible amount of GREAT information that Melanie gives in this course! I couldn't watch it all live, but I saw enough in about 30 minutes to know I had to have it and so I bought it and it is worth EVERY PENNY! I can't wait to start utilizing all the great info to make my Pinterest boards work for me and have more fun pinning! Thank you CreativeLive and Melanie!

Stamperdog
 

So glad I saw this and got it to keep. With just a few tweaks, I turned my non-active boards into active boards and quadrupled my followers in just a few days. This spilled over into site traffic AND major lead generation for my mailing list. Thanks for the inspiration, Melanie.

Michelle Smith
 

Awesome learnt so much thank u

Student Work

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