The Great Website Optimization Experiment 2: Electric Boogaloo

I know we're back. That's great. I love doing it. I know you love listening to it. If you do love listening to it, hit me up on Twitter at Uneasy or shoot me an email. matt@moneylab.co. I want to hear from you before we get into today's. To to today's episode. This episode is brought to you by money lab itself.

And I have a wonderful, wonderful cheat sheet that you can download for 100% free called the perfect blog post cheat sheet, and it will help you craft the perfect post that will rank and convert. And what do I mean by that? That's going to help you craft better posts so that you can gain more traffic on Google. You know, optimize that on page SEO, it's going to help you increase your affiliate link click-through rates so that you actually make more money.

And it'll show you some of the things, actually, a lot of what came, uh, from the lot. A lot of what's in the perfect blog. Post cheat sheet is a result of these three optimization experiments I've done since 2000 eighteens over the last four years. All compiled into one PDF and possibly more. And finally, uh, you know, if you've got a digital products to sell, I can help you increase the conversion rate on that. And that's kind of what we're going to talk about in this episode specifically.

Is. We're not really going to touch on affiliate marketing here. We're going to touch on selling digital products and how to increase the conversion rate of those. But. Here's the thing. Little spoiler alert. Didn't really work. Where it's a little, but, uh, there's a reason it didn't work is because the timing of this experiment, like I said, in the last episode, I run a seasonal business with swim university. So it really depends on when I'm doing these optimization tests.

Because in the last experiment. I did it in April, which was kind of like right before pool season. Right. May, June, July is kind of my Season July is even when you start to kind of take her off. August is kind of dead September picks back up with pool closings, but then after that, it's kind of done for them for the year. Um, so I think it was better than I did it in April. This time I did it in kind of the end of July. So it was kind of past, uh, the prime pool season. If you will.

So as far as the conversion rates are concerned, Uh, didn't really increase them. That said a lot of what I did in 2018. This was all done in. 2020. So I updated this, uh, August 18th, 2020. Wow. Did I really do this during the frigging? You know, you know, Yeah. I guess I did. I guess I did. Um, so. There are some really good things. There are actually some things that I did. In this experiment that I honestly think. Led to more sales in the future.

But I couldn't see that at the time, because it was just the, the, the buyer frenzy was incorrect. But I think the things that I did in the, in this year, Certainly paid off. Uh, you know, in 2021, Also there's, uh, something that I did not mention between 2018. And 2020 when we're, when this experiment took place. Uh, we're specifically going to talk about, and I just want to read you.

Again, Can I double my revenue on my website without adding any new products, doing it by optimizing what's already there using free online tools. So this is literally a sequel of the last. Experiment. Now part three. Is not a sequel. Or sorry. It's, it's not a, uh, yeah, it's not a SQL. It's kind of a totally different thing. We it's almost like, uh, you know, it was re-imagined, it's a remake, if you will. Okay. You know, it's like Mary Poppins to.

Or, or drastic world, I guess this is that a re is that like a re-imagining of now? Because the. That took place prior. It's like Spiderman. Like any of them. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Okay. So. Uh, what's the goal here and this experiment, I'm only focusing on increasing product sales. We're not talking about a affiliate marketing. Uh, this was the year that Amazon, Amazon actually slashed my commissions in 2020, like right at the beginning of the pandemic.

And kind of fucked me and everybody else over. So, uh, just, you know, I honestly, if I'm being honest with you right now, like I don't really focus on. Affiliate marketing all that much, you know, it's kind of like, You know, who cares? It's just bonus money. To me, I'm more concerned about my own products now. Okay. So if we go. Uh, thinking back to. Uh, 2019, August, 2019 to be specific, I did something that was. Pretty. Uh, significant to my business.

Okay. I switched from using Gumroad as, as what I was selling my products through and I switched to a company called podia or, or as I like to call it. Podia. Because I'm from. You know, south Jersey. Uh, so podia. Is, and kind of an all-in-one platform now. What's crazy is if we go back to what I was, uh, you know, back to that, um, That post before, you know, the first thing. I want to say, uh, Let me just let me just try to scroll back, see if I can find it.

Okay. So you, so you know that I made $35,000 roughly in product revenue in 2017. Well, I'm happy to report in 2020. That just in June. In one month I made 44,000. So. All year going from 35,000 all the way up to $44,000 a month. Well, in June. So again, seasonal, right? That's like peak month. Okay. And that was a big increase over even last year's numbers. Okay. Now. The part three of this. Um, I think it's going even up even more and I did all kinds of shit for that one.

So. Uh, just kind of going back. I, you know, back in the other experiment, I had just a pool care handbook that was $49 and a hot tub handbook. That was $49. I increased the price. I added a third product called the ultimate money saving guide for pool owners and I'm priced out at $24. Okay. So that's how this money was made. Uh, now I'm pretty sure now I'm not I'm I'm a little bit like taken. I was reading this. And I'm pretty sure. Yeah, there was a course. Uh, involved with this too.

So I'm trying to look. To see if. You know, Uh, yeah, so, so the 2020 plan was to just increase. You know, obviously gather. Milestones and data, right. Total page views broken down by page with pages. We're getting the most click through rate to my sales page. And then, uh, the total. Page count on my sales page and then how many visitors convert to a sale. So basically, you know, how many people can I increase going to my sales page?

And then how many people in the sales page can I increase into customers? It's kind of that kind of thing there. My optimization task force, basically to improve the click through rate from articles to sales page, and then improve conversions on the sales page. Really, really simple stuff. Okay. Um, Not really, really much to do here, but this was one of the more frustrating. Experiments that I've done because it involved a lot of AB testing.

Now, the big thing I think, uh, that I started with is improving the click through rate from my articles. To my sales page. Again, same thing I did in the first challenge or the first experiment. Except. I just want it. More data to work with on the sales page so that I could increase the conversion rate on the sales page and, and, and, you know, just having more people. I put eyeballs on the sales page would mean that I would just have more data to work with.

So if I did an AB test on the sales page, I might have a result faster, if that makes sense. Okay. So. Uh, Again, I used Google optimize to do this because it's a free tool. Uh, and this was something I. I guess, I, you know, again, Uh, using a tool like Google optimize is, um, It's a little frustrating because. It's not as easy as just putting, putting the code on your page and, uh, saying to Google optimize, okay, I want this page to be different. Here's how I want it to be different.

And I want you to track conversions on clicking this button. You kind of have to have that all set up in Google analytics first, before, you know, you have to have your goals set up in Google analytics before you can use Google optimize. And with Google optimize, it's gonna slow down your site. So just be aware that if you're going to do these experiments, You know, If you're going to have some issues with page speed. I mean, that's just the.

You know, you think because Google owns Google optimize. That they would, you know, make it a little faster. Perhaps, but I guess with the amount of. You know, processing that needs to be done in order to create this. It's it's tough. Uh, So, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Uh, okay. So I, this is where I want to talk about like frustration points and really not understanding. And I'll be honest with you. Like not understanding AB testing.

I tried a lot of multi-variant testing. And I just don't have the traffic for that. What's your, like, you know, if you know how. It's a lot of traffic. You know, it's 5 million visitors a year. There's a lot of people. But trying to do five different headlines. You know, It's just to try one or, you know, try to a B, not ABC. D E F G. Okay. Like I did those big mistake.

Okay. So I first, there was, there was like, so I had these like, um, these display boxes that appear in the middle of my posts. Uh, these are all custom coded by me. With a short code. And I just add the short code to the middle of the post. And it's a, it's a promotes my product. It's the same on every single page. So if I change one thing on one page, it changes. I don't all the pages that makes sense.

It's not like I have a specific sales box, you know, on specific pages, but the hat that has different copy and images of whatever. It's the same, all the way through. Probably fine. Cause I don't like the idea of having different copy on every single page and then trying to optimize per page. I like trying to optimize site-wide make big swaths changes and see what happens. Uh, and I really sort of micro tested this. So the way that the I'll try to explain it.

The way that the box looks right now or at the start of this test. Is you had. On the left side, you had my handbooks. It was a big, uh, image of my book, right? The cover. And then on the right side, you had a headline. Which the headline, in my case, red frustrated by adding chemicals and trying to keep your pool clear all the time. Question mark. And then a two sentence. Little description. Which red, like right underneath the headline, which read on still, still on the right side.

We cut out all the confusion of pull maintenance in this easy to read illustrated ebook and video course. And it'll help you save a hundred dollars on pool care right away. And then it had click here to learn more button underneath that. And I literally had the words click here to learn more all in the button and my thought process behind adding all that insane. Uh, Call to action. Is because I think a lot of my viewers, or I know a lot of my readers are older.

And I just needed to be very explicit. Click here, grandma. Uh, and I think it works. I mean, I don't know. So I, I did some, I, I first I wanted to try five different headline formulas, Abe Merrell multi-variant test that then tried like five different images to see which one would work. And then descriptions and then button, CTA color, all that stuff. Um, In hindsight. I think I should have just done. Instead of trying to micro test. Each one of those pieces.

Uh, I would have one started with the image. If I was going to test anything big, it would have been the image. Then the headline. I don't think descriptions really matter. I don't think buttons. Uh, really matter. It's like, you're, you're just splitting hairs at that point. You know, I think. If I were to do this experiment over again. I would have created completely different ads, like different headline. A different image. Different tax different color. You know, completely change it.

The other thing I probably would have done. And I know that's one test I would have done. The other one I would have done is just images. I would have just, just focused on image and trying to get people to stop the scroll. It's the same principles. I'm kind of learning over at Facebook when I'm doing Facebook ads and AB testing. Those. The biggest bang for your buck when it comes to AB testing ads for Facebook is the media is like the image or the video and, and, and comparing video to images.

All of those things, that's going to be really the biggest bang for your buck. The text. It's important, but it's not going to like really move the needle as much as your image is going to be. And so I would have tested that now headlines are super important. I don't think they're as important on Facebook because they're kind of the last thing you see in an ad. Whereas on this, it's kind of the first thing you see on the ad or the second thing you see on an ad.

So I do think headlines are important, but I would have done AB testing. Okay. Instead, if you go to read this post, which you can read at money, lab.co/website-optimization-to the L the number two. Um, You'll see that I just like, kinda just kept bashing my head against the wall. Right. And I was, I was following miles Beckler who was helping me kind of through these AB tests. I don't think we, I don't think we were, yeah, he was helping me, but basically.

You know, he runs a, a split test for seven days. And then, you know, he's looking for, uh, seven days are really two weeks with two Saturdays, two Wednesdays, et cetera. And then he wants to see a total of 500 conversions or a minimum of a thousand visits. And I'm like, holy crap. Like. Like visits. I can do 500 conversions. That would be, that'd be great. If I could to get that in two weeks. Uh, for this post. So. Yeah, I tried that. And then, uh, I just, you know, created better.

Uh, You know, and, and kind of going back. What I was saying is I, I micro test it, all these little pieces of this little ad. But I should have been testing the whole frigging thing, like the whole thing at once. And so, uh, Jay Abraham has a, uh, a mantra that's test screams, not whispers. Right? So test like completely different headlines colors. But I changed, like the image I changed the text, uh, changed the headline. It changed the button that made it bigger. I made it different colors.

Uh, still nothing. You know, like I got. Excuse me. I got like a zero. Point zero three conversion rate, like increase as like, okay. Not really moving. The needle here. And I started getting kind of too in my head. Or I was like, Started to ask questions to the audience and trying to use their words and. It just like. Sometimes I think it, you know, we just tend to over complicate things as human beings. You know, and, and it's just like, The other thing is. Maybe I'm maybe it's just me.

But I feel like, I mean, I, I mean, I fucking did word clouds. I know what words these people use, um, been in the industry for forever. Like. What's my word cloud. Got it. My word cloud came up maintenance. Pool clean. That's like, come on, man. Like you didn't need. You didn't need that. You know? And, and I thought I was doing all this research. I thought I was collecting all this data. It's a fucking waste of time, honestly. You know, your audience. I hope, you know, your audience.

You've probably had engagement with them in some capacity. Right. You know, you. I hope you're in your industry that you're writing about and perhaps you're not, and you need to do a little bit more research, but I don't think you need to talk to that many people in order to find out, you know, what they're struggling with. It's pretty obvious. And especially in my industry, Uh, which is like, ah, my pool is not clear or like I'm tired of dealing with water, chemistry.

It's pretty, pretty obvious. You know, it's like, there's really not that many other things. It could be. So. I know that the outcome they want. I know what they are struggling with. And for some reason I thought, oh, it's gotta be something I'm not tapping into. It's got to be something hidden. It's not it's right there under, on the, on the surface. Uh, So, yeah. Um, I was just testing all kinds of different things, but I will say that one of the best things to come.

Uh, there was two, two, I think maybe I'll say two things that came from this experiment that I. Firmly believe in today, it is like it's a Liddell fight in my brain as the right way to do something. Okay. The first thing. His site design. Aye. If somebody had to point it out to me. And this was before. Was this before? Yeah, no, I was doing lasso right. So. I had been working on. Doing the redesign of lasso. Which is a plugin that I worked on. It's an affiliate marketing plugin.

If you want it go to money, lab.co/lasso, but I was working on designing a UI. For technically a plugin, but really like a SAS product. And I had never really built a UI before, or had to think about building UI for paying users. And I started looking into. Uh, Google's material design and I actually have a whole post on money lab about this. If you want to read it, it's a. Oh, before I forget, uh, it is under. I think SAS make-over. Yeah. So it's called extreme makeover. SAS edition.

As the name of the post and in that post. I talk about how I learned about this really basic color structure of a website to not confuse people. And I had applied that information. I had applied everything I learned to the lasso UI, but I had not yet applied it to any of my own sites. So swimming diversity. Has always been a combination of four colors. It's been blue as the primary color. Orange as my secondary color. And that's literally those two are the two colors in the logo.

And then there's the white background and the black text, right. Those have always been the four colors of swimming diversity, however, My stupid brain. And this is not stupid, but it's, it's just like my brain. Thought that button should be green. Right. Because green means go. And buttons are green. So that's what I thought. And so I ended up making all the buttons on the site. Green. And then not using the primary color enough and then kind of ignoring. The secondary color.

I think I maybe had the button. For subscribing to the email newsletter orange, but then everything in the post. That had a button like this. Um, this ad I did had a green button. And. Somebody had pointed it out to me like, Hey man, like, you know, on your site, your, your, your color structure is all over the place. Like, you know, is that important? Is that going to move the needle? I think it's one. I think it just makes psychologically everything more clear. Right?

It's like, I know I came to the site and I see an orange button. And now I, whenever I see a, an orange color it's signifying to the, to the person, especially the new person. Especially the person who's never been to your site before. They know that that button means. I'm going to click it and it's gonna take me somewhere or it's gonna, it's a, it's a button, right? Aren't as button. Um, thankfully the primary color being blue for some university, that's always the link color. Right.

And that's a, that, that is one of those things where it's like everyone sees the logos as, or sorry, seasoned links as blue. Uh, I didn't want to make the links orange because then they're really, really difficult to see. And so I stuck with blue there. Now, if you look at money lab and the color structure there. I have it's a four. You know, it's a four-piece color structure as well. You have your, uh, black, white, right. Primary color being green, secondary color being pink.

And so I use pink. Uh, because it's such a bright. Uh, powerful pink. I use that for links and I use it also for button color. So it does work well on that site. Same thing with a brew cabin. My secondary color is blue and that's what my link color is. It doesn't mean you have to be that way, but. You know, It's a, that that's basically me saying like, oh, one of your colors has to be blue. If your links are going to be blue, that's not true.

Um, You know, my, my links are not blue on money, money, lab, and it works. So just, just something to keep in mind. So just that alone. You know, somebody bringing that to my attention and me doing, I think was huge for me. Uh, the S and just huge for conversion and just clarification to especially new readers. The second thing. That was really interesting. And I, and again, still. Uh, still very much gung-ho about this piece of advice. Right lead in.

Copy. This is, uh, something I include, I think in my, in my cheat sheet where I'm talking about. I have a, uh, an ad for my product or any product doesn't matter. I have an ad. It could be an affiliate link. Right. Lead in copy to sell that, to massage people into like, wanting to click that link, as opposed to just. Putting a link on a page, hoping people are going to click it. Those two things were like huge for me and just, just clarifiers.

Are they, you know, did I measure those to just see if they actually, you know, Increased revenue. No. But I'm almost a hundred percent confident that they did. I just didn't measure it directly. And then would it had a huge impact? I don't know, but I'm assuming probably not. But, but an impact. Sure. Here's what worked in this whole thing. Okay. Uh, and I think, again, a lot of these things paid off. The next year.

What worked is redesigning that the call to action box for the products to make it stand out. So, and so what I had originally was. You know, Uh, a really boring image. And I had a really. You know, muted. I was using the muted colors. And so it just never stopped. The scroll. People are scrolling through your page. And it, the, the, the imagery wasn't powerful enough or eye catching enough to make someone stop. And so I changed that. I made the background.

In the, in the add dark, which made the orange button stick out, which made the copy stick out, which made the, you know, the image stick out. All of those things, writing, leading copy, which, which I just mentioned. AB testing images in that call to action box. I changed it. From just a picture of an ebook. You know, like a plane. Uh, very, you should see it. It's a very plain ebook, not like the, you know, the ones you see from like 1994 internets, you know, where it's like a 3d.

Drop shadow, uh, ebook. You know, it's like a. It looks like a book, just like standing upright in the middle of an empty void. Not that it was just like a flat design kind of book. Uh, but I changed it to look like an iPad. So I modernized it a bit and added a play button because it's a video course. So I, I played up the video course. Uh, aspect of the product and not the book aspect of the product. And I believe that that helped me the most. Um, it definitely increased the click through rate.

And then again, redesigning the website to make. The things that need to be clicked. More clickable. Bye. Uniforming the color structure. What didn't work. Headline. And, and why didn't the headline in that box work? Cause I nailed it. This is the problem. I, this was the cycling through of the, of the nonsense that I was, I was driving myself through, which is, uh, I know the industry. I know what people struggle with. I've literally been doing it since I was 13 years old.

And so I'm sitting here thinking, Nope, it's gotta be something special. It's gotta be, I gotta be able to discover it. I got it. I need more data mirrored crunch. Um, No. I know. And I, and I apparently nailed it because I just like, and I was trying to like find different ways to say the same thing. Ultimately I had it. Right. But you know, Maybe it's its worth in your industry. If you don't know them enough, whatever. The other thing that didn't work was just me being frigging and patient.

Because you do need to let these things run. I mean I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm discovering that with Facebook. You know, I'm running these ads, I'm checking them every hour. Let's be honest. Come on. I'm not, you know, I can't just sit there and leave him alone. I see. I just put. I just, I just created a $5 ad $5 a day ad. I want to know if that thing I want to make sales. I want to know if it works. Got to just let it sit. Go do something else. You know, go work on something else. Ignore it.

For a, let it just let it collect. Let it do its thing. Being patient. So. I do think, uh, testing is important. You know, at the end of the day. And I do think that, um, I think. Micro testing, little things that don't matter. You know, I think going back to Jay Abram's quote is the best thing you can remember, which is test screams, not whispers. You know, test. Big swath, the changes. You know, if you have an idea that you think is like, oh, this is like a better offer. Not just a better.

Uh, headline. Or not just a better, you know, button color. That's an easy thing to test, test an entirely different product. You know, it has an entirely different. Uh, a downloadable lead man, whatever it is. That's what's going to work. Or you'll get really clear that like, you know, You know, one of the most frustrating parts is, is when you had it right the first time.

And then when you're like, fuck man, I just like created a new, I just created this whole new cheat sheet that no one wants. I started, you know, I tested a checklist versus the cheat sheet. Everyone wants the damn cheat sheets. The first thing I came up with. Ah, all right. Well, I got another idea. Let's try that one. Damn. They like the first thing again. Oh my God, what did I, what am I doing? Well, you're learning, right? You're learning that, you know, You're learning.

I mean, you know, maybe, maybe you didn't do it right the first time. And hopefully you get the other, other side of it anyway. That's the great website optimization experiment. Two electric Boogaloo. And, uh, Yeah, there was a lot to be learned from it. Pretty simple, more simple than, um, I think the last one. The next one, part three, which is coming up next week. Is going to be that that was like a frigging game changer. My friends game. Changer. Uh, It's all.

Thanks to miles Beckler, who I mentioned in this episode, and I will be mentioned mentioning heavily in, in episode three of this three-part. Series on optimizing your website. Uh, so hope you enjoyed it. Again, go over to money. lab.co/cheat sheet. Get that cheat sheet it's free. You know, I didn't even have to test that one. I knew it was going to work. You know, Uh, we'll talk about cheat sheets in the next episode, but yeah, go check it out.

Uh, the perfect blog post cheat sheet downloaded for free over@moneylab.co slash cheat sheet and check out a money lab in general. Mini lab.co uh, also. If you're out there and radio city land, and you want to say hello, please email me, man. At money lab.co. Because, uh, again, I'm just, you just look like a number on a page to me. Uh, in this podcasting world, I love, that's why I love YouTube more than, uh, the podcasting arena.

Because with YouTube, I can put out a video and start getting people to respond immediately, and I can have the whole dialogue with the podcast. I put this out there. And it's like crickets. You know, as far as communication. So I'm glad that I've been saying this in episodes because people have been reaching out to me. And that's been awesome. You know, just, just email me, matt@moneylab.co or. You know, also. Uh, if you have a question about anything. Please just shoot me an email.

I'm answering all my own emails. I know people don't believe that, but I definitely do. I enjoy it. Send me a question. If you've got a question, I will, I'll bring it up on a sh on an episode of this, of this podcast, or I'll bring it up on, uh, the YouTube show. One of the YouTube shows. Anyway, that's it. And I'll see you guys next week. Bye.