conversion rate optimization is not something you go all in on something for . It's optimizing , gathering more data , making a change you never know . I mean , you can never say , okay , if I do this one thing , it's going to work . This is going to create $50,000 if I add this new form .
That's impossible to know , but you can take your best guesses based off the data you already have by looking at best practices , by understanding your customer and testing them out . Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast , with your host , Josh Hall , helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love .
Hello , my friend , welcome in to this episode of the Web Design Business Podcast where we're going to talk about CRO conversion rate optimization .
We're going to really take a deep dive into this topic , which is oh so important and something I'm really taking seriously to dive more into , because over the years , I've learned if you make a beautiful website and you spend all this time working your ass off to build something for clients , you want to make sure it works and you want to get results .
But then the question becomes how do you know that you're getting results with your beautiful new website designs ? How do clients know that your work is actually growing their business and how do you increase your value ? How can you prove that ? Hey , I'm not just designing something . I'm actually creating an asset for your business to help grow your business .
Ie making you more valuable and creating lifetime clients that pay you over and over and over again . Well , ie making you more valuable and creating lifetime clients that pay you over and over and over again . Well , the answer is conversion rate optimization and being able to show clients how you're helping them grow their business with their website .
For that topic , I'm so excited to bring on a conversion rate optimization specialist . This is Lee Scott , the founder of Zanatanecom .
Got the founder of zanatanecom and we really just get into all the ins and outs of how to create funnels and conversion type of maps and customer journeys on websites , really get into the difference between micro goals and macro goals , which will expand on metrics that are pretty common in the conversion rate optimization world , how you can create strategy and the
ideas of different ways to offer conversion rate optimization as a roadmap for clients , which you can also bundle into growth plans and subscription services , and then , most importantly perhaps , how to sell all this to your clients . So all of that and more is covered . Lee is just truly an expert in this field . It was an honor to have her on .
In fact , if you like learning from Lee , I highly recommend , if you haven't yet , that you dive into my community web designer pro , because every month we have a guest expert come in and do a training and you guessed it , lee is our next guest expert , who's going to be speaking here in October of 2024 .
She's going to be taking this to the next level and what you learn here on the podcast is actually going to be shown visually inside of Web Designer Pro . We're going to look at the tools and dashboard that she uses for her clients , as well as doing a live Q&A .
If you happen to join Web Designer Pro later on , the recording of her live training will always be available in the archive . So join us in Web Designer Pro .
You can go to webdesignerprocom now to get access to that and , if you happen to catch this , the week this episode comes out she will be speaking on October 22nd , but in the meantime you can enjoy our conversation . To get going with conversion rate optimization , add it to your suite of services , no matter where you are in your journey .
And we do mention some other links that are going to be linked to the show notes for this episode over at joshhallco slash 348 . But in the meantime , here is Lee . We're going to dive into conversion rate optimization . You can check her out again at zanatanecom . We will have that link at the show notes for this one , joshhallco slash 348 .
All right , friends , let's dive in . All right , friends , let's dive in . Well , lee , I'm so excited to have you on the podcast and to chat about something that is a huge interest in Web Designer Pro right now .
It's actually something that I'm really having a focus on for all my members , which is conversions , because I feel like the beginning of a web design , the web designer's life , is to just learn how to build a website , and then I feel like the emphasis is on designing a website and then typically it's messaging copy , maybe SEO , but a lot of people just kind
of stopped there myself included in my journey and really didn't take a deep dive into perhaps the most important thing , which is let's make sure all that actually works for a client to keep them coming back , which I would say is conversion . For you , do you have like a 101 simple description of what conversion rate optimization is ?
Yeah , I think at its simplest version is how can you make the experience on your website as frictionless as possible for the client to achieve what they came to the website to achieve , while also keeping in mind your business objective ? So that part's a little vague , but we can definitely go in more into more detail .
Vague , but we can definitely go into more detail . But that's really the goal of conversion rate optimization is making that flow as frictionless as possible for your visitors .
Am I correct in saying that you would probably start with the business goals , the strategy , and then work backwards to figure out the right flow and simple conversion tactics ?
For sure . That's where I start . Everything is in a deep dive to understanding the business , because then everything ties back to that business goal .
So let's say your goal is to get five new leads a month from the website , or your goal is to generate $3,000 a month from the website , right , so those are your revenue or lead goals , and then you essentially work backwards from that . So how can I optimize the entire customer journey to help create that goal ?
And then there's a lot of pieces that go into that in different places to start , but definitely always ties back to the business objectives .
So one reason I'm excited to talk to you is because you're such a data person . I'm sure as a conversion person , you're a data nerd , I imagine .
And what's interesting is , I've found , and I've had this mindset for a long time , is that most web designers put the emphasis on the homepage and that's where you structure your main conversion , and I'm sure there's an important time and place for that .
But what I actually learned in my experience , and definitely what I'm learning now , is that people are entering the website like with my setup with podcasts , with tutorials , with resources in different pages and the homepage they may not even get to the home , like a lot of people may not even get to the homepage .
So can you speak to that idea of like making sure you have a customer journey for not just a homepage but for your blog posts and different post types ?
Yeah , for sure that's super important , and the reason I see that's important is because people get to your website from different places , right . They don't all come in and type joshhallco , like . They find you on social , they find you by Googling .
They find you coming from your podcasts , right , and then those links lead to different pages that aren't necessarily your homepage , and so it's really important to look at those different ways they're getting to your website and where they're landing .
When they first into your website because people who are finding you are on organic search are probably finding a blog post or a tutorial or something that's more specific in terms of content , and so figuring out how they're entering your site really opens the door into how can you optimize that flow to get them where you want them to be .
So start out with the goal . What if a client tells you they have multiple goals ? Do you combat against that ? Do you recommend and try to steer them towards just having one clear goal , or would you set up different paths for and different journeys for different goals ?
yeah , I'm a client can definitely have multiple goals , but they're it all the . If you keep asking questions , it all comes back to one goal , like one main goal . Right , like I want to make this much money off the web . You , you know from the website , I want to um , like there's a business goal , otherwise you wouldn't have that website . I want to .
I need to increase donors . Uh , you know , I need to get this many members in my membership portal and then you can . Then you can have goals like sub goals or KPIs or whatever you want to call them , objectives that are more specific that help lead up to that main goal .
But you have to have that main goal to make decisions , otherwise you're just going to be running all over the place and everything needs to tie back to that main goal .
Makes total sense . And I imagine , with that main goal , a secondary goal would be for example , they want a paying customer . The first step may be or maybe an additional step or a sidestep may be to get them on their email list , to have a nursing sequence .
So would you have like a priority goal , but then , like , if they don't go there , then there's like a secondary goal that could at least get them into the system . I'm just trying to map out , like if I were working with a client we talked about this what that would look like .
Yeah , this is where I get really excited , so I just saw you light up , yeah . So you know the jargony term for that would be like a macro conversion , so like that's the main conversion , right ?
So when you're looking at a sales funnel and I always try to for every client , map out the sales funnel and they're generic sales funnel , but when you start diving into it it can get really unique depending on the client . Like a nonprofit's funnel to get donors could be very different than someone trying to sell an online course .
It looks different , the needs are different , the touch points are different , and so , for example , if you have an established website , right , and you're selling an item , you may look at the data and say , okay , I've sold this many products . Of the people who have purchased my product , what did they do before that ? Were they on my email list ?
How many times did they visit my website before they completed that macro conversion ? And that helps you to really start understanding your customers and the types of content that they need to consume before they complete that macro conversion . That's what I'll just call it now . And you can find that by looking at data .
You can find that by talking to your customers . That's like the best way is you know how did you make this decision ? What information did you need to consume before you made this decision ? What held you back from making this decision ?
You know why did you wait , and so , based on that , you can create these like micro goals , like to get them on your email list .
Right , maybe you know that they come and read like three blogs before they even consider buying your product , and so , in order to do that , get them on your email list you can start sending them out new blog articles , and so hopefully that answers your question , but it's , all you know , tied back to getting them to that macro conversion .
Yeah , absolutely Makes sense . I think this is perhaps most important when you have a product or a service or some sort of client that has different customer types . Learned in my business just to flesh this out and make it you know real world is . I've realized in my community web designer pro there's three different , almost like web designer types .
There's people who are early stage and getting started I call them now the builders and I'm actually literally today , before this , I'm working on an option for just the courses and all the course access and web designer pro , just to help people get started and get to a point where they could come up to be a grower , which is the community level .
And then I have the top tier members , who are usually about less than 10% , who are more like the scalers , those who are multi-six figure . They need time back .
They have a different set of problems and challenges that I need to speak to at that level and I think that's a really important thing for any client that has different customer types is to Would you agree to pinpoint those challenges and those almost like keywords , like key pain points for those different customer types ?
Yeah , for sure it would be important , if you have different customer types , to map out those touch for case studies of people you've worked with that have scaled their business . So the needs are different and so the actual steps may look similar , but the types of information they need to consume could look very different .
Yeah , that's a good point . So what are some of the other ? What are some metrics to conversions Like ? What are ? What are the things that you're looking at ? If for most web designers , I imagine the thought is well , sales is the big one , if there's a product that's selling that , that's a very clear indicator that that was a conversion based thing .
But I imagine contact form submissions . There's , of course , google Analytics type stuff , bounce rate . What are some of the key indicators for better conversions on a website ?
Yeah . So of course , at the end of the funnel it's looking at leads or sales . Once you have a lead , then it kind of goes offline in terms of getting them to buy potentially , but in terms of the website , that's kind of the last conversion to measure . But in terms of other metrics , so , yeah , looking at bounce rate is a great start .
So looking at your homepage and seeing if there's a high bounce rate , but why , what are , what are some of the things that may be getting people to bounce ? You have a slow load time . That's a huge . You know that that is a really impacts .
Um , bounce rate , uh , or does the content like that you have in your H1 , like your page , the page title , just not make any sense ? It may make sense to you , but does it actually resonate clearly with your target audience ? Or do you not have a clear call to action as soon as I land on the page ?
You only have a few seconds to actually capture their attention . So bounce rate is one . The other thing I love to look at is acquisition channel . So if you look in Google Analytics and acquisitions and actually see where your client's coming from and this kind of leads out into digital marketing , marketing .
But if you're doing paid ads or SEO or social because that really helps you to understand where you need to be investing your time in terms of those types of marketing efforts and let's say you see you're investing money in paid ads but no one's actually converting , or you have a high bounce rate , but you look over here and you see , oh , my SEO people are
highly engaged . They're like clicking multiple clicks there . They are have like an 85% engagement rate . Maybe I should be spending my time building up my SEO channel and then , instead of sinking money into paid ads right or vice versa and all of this money into paid ads , right or vice versa , and all of this , there's not a clear answer .
For there's not a clear answer . It all comes down to who your client is , who your , what your industry is . You know , are you targeting a specific geographic location in terms of the answer ? But the metrics are very similar across companies .
So bounce rates , acquisition channels , how much time they're spending on your sites that's a good indicator and you can Google and look up benchmarks for your industry . Email . So let's say , one of your goals is to increase subscribers , because you know you need to nurture your people before they actually purchase or complete a lead .
So , looking at email signup rate , what is the like standard for your industry and that's always important is comparing . You need a benchmark for all of your data and looking at your industry is important and that's easy to find online so that you can actually know . Okay , is this good or bad ?
Where can you find that ? Because I wouldn't quite know . This is so out of my realm of expertise and knowledge base . So where would some of the easy places be to find your competition ? I ?
honestly don't know the actual websites . I just go on Google and I'm like , okay , what is the average email signup rate by industry ?
And then there will be all these resources and publications or email marketing companies that have done this type of research and they're presenting it , and then you can just look at the different industries and see what is the average email signup rate by industry .
Gotcha Okay , so you Google it . I imagine ChatGPT could be a huge additional component for that too , as long as it's relevant and true , as long as it's up to date as well .
Like those , things change year every year in terms of um average averages . But yeah , I'm sure chat gbt could give a good starting point yeah , that or makes sense , googling it and then googling .
It is the first level , but then it brings you to the you know mailchimp's data or convertkit's data or whatever that looks like that makes sense . I'm really glad you also mentioned that it's not just about the website .
I think a lot of people think about CRO conversion rate optimization stuff and it's these metrics like one single call to action , having a main sales funnel on the website .
But there are so many things that contribute to conversion as a whole and something that you've done well on your conversion rate strategy page , which I'll make sure we link to at your website . Is it Zanatane ? Is that how you say it ?
Yeah , zanatane , zanatane , you have a absolutely beautiful layout and really really clear conversion minded , of course , for your CRO services . What's interesting is you make it really clear . Let me go back to the section I just saw . It's like the website is very clearly just a part of your analysis .
It looks like You've got awareness , conversions , relationships and then improvement . So we've talked a lot about some of the conversions , a little bit about the awareness .
I'd love to deep dive into the relationship part of thing , and this may come into play with what I talked about whether they don't purchase , still having a funnel or a path for them , ideally , I would imagine , as an email sign up In that awareness or that excuse me , the relationship part .
I feel like a lot of web designers are sitting on a gold mine with awareness or , excuse me , sorry relationship that they're just not utilizing . So how are some ways we can build better conversion for that relationship ? Part of things .
Yeah . So , yeah , the relationship part is very important , like you said , and applies to really every industry , but it can look different depending on the industry .
And it first comes to just , you know , recognizing and we know this right , but recognizing these data points we're looking at are people , and people have different needs , and one of the main needs is building trust with you as a company .
And so there are so many different ways that you can build trust with your visitors store and you just kind of stand at the back and ignore them and don't help them or build a relationship with them , or you're rude to them Not that a website's rude to someone , but you know , the relationships are so important and that could look like social proof , right .
That could look like showing your reviews . That could look like getting on your email list and driving them to your podcast so that they can hear , like develop more of an emotional connection with you . So it's finding ways to build trust building out an about page with your story , letting people know who you are .
About page with your story , letting people know who you are , um , that's and and I'm always shocked sometimes when I go to websites because I'll see a product or something I'm like this is really cool , but who is this Like ? Where's this coming from ? And there's no about page . There's no our , our story page .
Maybe that's intentional in some cases , but um , but that's just a huge gap . And it's such an easy thing to do is just tell your story and show proof that people like your product , and that's such an easy way to build trust .
And with this little four-step framework that you have on your site , it's awareness . Again , just a quick recap awareness , conversions , relationships , improvement . Could these be interchanged , and what I mean by that is could it start with awareness and then go into relationships and then conversions ?
For sure .
I imagine they could kind of flip-flop , depending on the journey of a customer .
I flip-flop those all the time and , for example , like , really nurturing could come after . If you're looking for , like , repeat donors or building loyalty or repeat buyers or keeping someone in your program , you know , building out that and whereas um , more of the nurturing in front of the macro conversion is probably more for more high ticket um um items .
So you know it's not somebody going and buying a $5 , um I don't even know what's $5 anymore a $10 , uh latte , right , well , you don't buy that on the website , but you know what I mean . Like you , you you have to build more trust before people will give you more . You know money essentially , and that's just kind of how it works in most cases .
But so , yeah , and then in a lot of cases it's both you're building a relationship on the front end and you're building a relationship on the back end to maintain loyalty with those people .
In my business course I talk about my favorite little sales . I don't know what to call it . It's the three C's of sales . I heard it it was actually a podcast guest years ago here on the show who talked about it in relations to converting a customer , and the three C's are connect , converse , convert .
And it's very similar to this type of framework , except in the pure conversion rate optimization world . It absolutely makes sense that you're going to convert differently for a new customer and the type of stuff they need versus a repeat customer , which is really important .
I love this distinction because there is two different forms of sales for web designers , there's new customer and there's repeat customer . You do all new customer sales in the beginning and then my big push for a lot of my members over the past couple of years has been let's shift that narrative and really start focusing on your repeat customers .
They're so much easier to sell to . They already know like and trust you . They're going to be way more valuable . If you are getting any sort of results which we've already covered some metrics you can measure those here . It's a lot easier to sell to .
So , yeah , I really like this framework , this idea of awareness , and then conversions or relationships and maybe those mix and match .
Yeah , for sure . Yeah , and and keeping a client , you know , is like , like you said , a lot easier than getting a new client , and so in a lot of ways , it's just like in the web design world it's making the offer or having the conversation , and like a digital world it's maybe . Hey did you know you're sending an email ?
Hey did you know we also offer this getting them back to your website , um , you know , offering additional content that's relevant to where they're at in this stage .
Uh , so yeah , I mean , it looks like I'm headbanging , I'm nodding like you're preaching . Yes , absolutely . What about the last little step you have in your diagram ? There is improvement , and I've always wondered for somebody who does CRO and any sort of like conversion rate analysis or program , or even if it's a part of a web designers package .
One of of the big questions I get and I've been curious about myself is when to look at results . Like we all know , results typically don't happen instantly on a website . However , there can be . We just had a Web Designer Pro member , win , who said the day after he launched a new website they got like immediate contact form submissions .
So those things can happen from a design perspective and copy maybe , but when do you start to really measure results for conversion rate optimization ? Is it something you could do monthly ? Is it like a plan that you could do quarterly ? What are your thoughts on that ?
Yeah , that's a great question . So let's go back to , like the revenue goals , right ? That's not going to be an easy thing to track week over week and say , oh , am I , am I have , I improved this metric . That's why you need to have what I call like KPIs , or to do small tests , and I'm a big fan , a huge fan of doing small , incremental tests .
Conversion rate optimization is not something you go all in on something for . It's optimizing , gathering more data , making a change . You never know . I mean , you can never say , okay , if I do this one thing , it's going to work . This is going to create $50,000 if I add this new form .
That's impossible to know , but you can take your best guesses based off the data you already have , by looking at best practices , by understanding your customer and testing them out . So a good example of this would be when I add like a pop-up to a website .
I always A-B test it and it's fascinating sometimes how much a little change on a pop-up can , how , like , just a pop-up can impact conversions by adding like a picture , or adding not having a picture , or making the button orange or making the button black .
And it sounds ridiculous but it does , and I love sometimes when I'm like running these tests and this is I should , probably shouldn't be doing this , but I'll go in daily and just kind of see , like how they're competing with each other and so that is not , you know , tracking .
Okay , did they sign up for the email and then did they get on the email list and did they open the email and then it create this much revenue is looking at like those little things along the sales funnel that you are testing out that contribute to that big goal , and so these little things you can look at more frequently . You can look at them daily .
If you have enough traffic , you can look at them weekly , and then you can make these small incremental changes . I'm a big fan of and I remember I was talking about this with some folks of like you don't want to fall from .
Like you don't want to fall from like the top of the ladder , right , like if you're going to get it , if it's not going to be right , you want to fall like from the first rung of the ladder , right , so like cause that's , that's going to hurt less .
And so you want to take these small steps and then prove them out by testing them and then layer on additional ones .
And I would imagine if a conversionary optimization type of plan or program is in with a growth plan for web designers . My framework is build , support , grow . It's my favorite model . It just works for any type of web design model .
You build websites , you support them with care plans , hosting , you know basic work and then you have some sort of growth plan and for a lot of people I would imagine , even if you just measure results , that could be a growth plan .
The really cool thing about that is if you get somebody on a recurring growth plan , whatever that looks like , I would imagine these small step wins are kind of the key to keeping them , because they may have the ultimate goal and they may have all these little micro goals like we've talked about , and maybe they're not at the revenue yet .
But if they are seeing a big increase in email signups , then you could say , well , what is on the website is working , but now we need to look at the email sequences . So maybe over the next couple months , now we look at the email , is that the email ?
Is that the way you approach doing this ongoing Is having these different indicators , these KPIs at different levels and then getting one to work , like you said like the small step approach . Is that ? In short , is that the way you keep these clients coming back ?
Is you just get small wins in one of these areas and ideally , you get them up to the main level of more revenue ?
Yeah , yeah , I mean definitely if you're doing some type of growth plan with a client . Yeah , I would break these things up into smaller pieces . One , because it's never good to test all these things at once . You need to be able to test things . You wouldn't want to do a whole bunch of changes at once . You need to like to be able to test things .
Um , like you wouldn't want to do a whole bunch of changes at once , because then you don't know what works like or what didn't work , um . Second of all , like no one has the capacity to implement all these changes at once . And so when I work with a client and come up with a plan , we prioritize and figure out okay , where do we need to start ?
Maybe we know we need to build out organic search and we know SEO is a longer term play than running a Google ad . So let's focus right now on SEO and optimizing that and then building out some KPIs to see , okay , are we actually starting to rank for these keywords ? And then you can show the client look , we did these things .
These keywords are now ranking a little bit higher . We're getting this much more traffic and that's an improvement , right ? And then you go to the next stage and say , okay , how can I get these SEO folks on my email list ? And you start doing some tests and you say , okay , I helped increase your email signup rate by this .
Much for your organic search channel . Let's take that to the next step . And so , yeah , there's just so many different ways you could approach it with a growth plan to help a client make those small steps towards achieving their bigger vision .
Is this something that could be a one-off product or service and an ongoing , like forever month-to-month growth plan style thing ? Do you see conversion rate analysis , optimization services as both , or do you feel like this just kind of needs to be a month to month as long as you can kind of thing ?
Or do you feel like there could be like I would imagine you probably need to do at least 90 days to truly do some good CRO work . But yeah , what are your thoughts on that as offering this either as one off or ongoing or both as an option ?
Yeah . So I definitely think that ongoing is the most impactful offering in the long run , just because things change . Things change so much .
Businesses change , industries change , the economy changes , and so you're going to need to adjust and pivot , and so will your strategies analysis with a client and make some really strong , informed changes to the site that you know are going to have a major impact . And those things could be like I mean it's proven for example , forms .
The more fields you have , the more people are going to drop off . Can you work with your client to figure out are these fields , are there fields we can remove from this ? Can we make this form more engaging so that you know at a progress bar ?
So there , there are definitely things you could go in and do as a project , like I'll have clients and I'll do the analysis and do the audit , and then they'll hire me just to implement some of them , and so that's definitely an option .
Be a great way to get a quick win too , I imagine , if it is something just like that . I mean , I'm just my mind is just swimming with ideas of how to package these up and market it . And it's something that , like you've rightly said , could very quickly open up a can of worms with all the different things you can do .
But even with that form idea , I mean I would imagine if somebody just wants to have like a , even if we just made it a simple $99 entry type thing or a couple hundred dollar product that just gets clients in the door to make sure they get a quick win , a form would be a great option .
For that is like it could be a conversion form optimization , conversion type thing , like $99 , let's optimize your forms . And then this includes , like we'll look at it one month later and we'll look at how many submissions you got now compared to compared to before . I imagine there's a lot of opportunities for that .
Or even , as I'm thinking about this in my framework , which is build , support , grow , if you do a website design for somebody and then the form is a part of it , you could say we're also going to take a deeper dive into just the form and then , as we get more form submissions for you , then we'll look at more conversion stuff and once the new website's live
, we could go more . You know , have ongoing options .
AB test the form see which form works best . Yeah , there's so many different fun ways you could take it .
I think one thing you touched on is making sure you're not overwhelming the client , because if you're like me , I love coming up , I love a new challenge and I love coming up with solutions , and I love the creative aspect of conversion rate optimization as well , and you could get really excited and come up with all these ideas .
But what the client really needs to hear is a prioritized list of recommendations . They're looking to you for the expertise and I'm sure they'll want to review it before they'll make any changes , but they need you to tell them what to prioritize , because they're focused on running their business .
They don't want to have to go in and figure out what do I need to do first , optimize the form or change the color of my buttons , like that's not a decision that you need to give them , and actually I feel like you're doing a disservice to the client by putting that type of decision on them , because they may , okay , sit down and want to , you know , have
a whole exploratory session on button colors , but what they really came to you for was your expertise and guidance to help them make that decision .
I feel like there's a quotable meme here which is something to the effect of you know , don't make your client make web strategy decisions , or something like that . This is so reminiscent of a coaching call we just recently did in pro , and so this one's actually live . It was with Freya , one of our members from the UK .
So if anyone's hasn't heard this , this , we had it on the podcast recently and then it's on YouTube as well . We just searched Web Designer Pro Coaching Call , but Freya mentioned the same thing . She is a super talented designer and is really a strategist and maybe a CRO gal at heart , but she had a problem with just overwhelming clients .
She just got so excited with all these ideas and it speaks to exactly what you talked about , and my recommendation was the same thing as to . Like you know , I want you to be excited and we want to share this with clients , but in phases and when it's necessary .
We don't want to overwhelm them with everything that can be done , especially everything we've talked about . You could do forum , you could do copy conversions , you could do design conversions , you could do email sequences , you could do lead generators , you could do signups .
You could do analytics conversions there's all these different conversion metrics , but that idea of prioritizing this and putting it into a plan , which even more so . I mean , what did I just riff off there ? Like 12 things . There we go , friends , there's an annual CRO plan for you . Like , tack , $2.99 a month .
On that and make it a CRO plan with your website packages like a growth plan . You could absolutely roll all that into . Like this month , we'll look at forms . Next month we'll look at bounce rate . Next , do you do that kind of thing too ? If you do see a lot of work to be done , phase it out like that and make it into an ongoing plan .
Oh yeah , one thing I definitely started . I had an option where I didn't include a roadmap and that did not go well because it was too overwhelming , and so I only offer options now where I include a six-month roadmap for the client .
And I think one important thing to remember I think sometimes the reasons we give so many options is because we don't want to have to make the decision , because you feel so much pressure to make the right decision and there's not going to be a right decision . It's the . You have to bring your expertise to the table , what you already know .
You're not going to know everything , but you have to make the best guess and you have to guide that client through that journey and take small steps so that you're not making a , you're not getting all the way here and well , no one can see me , but you know you're not getting .
You're not getting all the way at the top of the ladder before you realize it doesn't work .
About a third of podcast listeners are also watching this on YouTube , so some people saw it . The roadmap idea this is a very common theme I've found with web studio and agency owners who are at a multi six-figure or seven seven figure level . They seem to prioritize a roadmap as strategy .
And it's funny because when somebody thinks of paid discovery or strategy or consultive services , roadmaps , it's kind of all like an umbrella term for just this kind of thing . Like you're just looking past the website , you're looking at the business growth and what are all these other things that come into play here .
Troy Dean , who is the founder of Agency Matters are you familiar with him ? He's a WordPress person . I'm not sure if you're familiar with him at all . No , I probably should be . He used to . Well , I mean , he's like you're . You're speaking his language because he was on the podcast . Let me look back at when that last episode was .
So he was back on on episode 324 . And the big thing that I got from him in that episode was we talked about paid discovery and recurring income as a web designer and he said that what they do in Agency Mavericks one of their main things is they sell roadmaps in the form of paid discovery and as a strategy session . And then they lay out the roadmap .
You get the client excited and then they move forward . And a web design , like a full website rebuild , may be a part of it , might be a smaller part or certain pages , and then you execute on that 12-month plan .
And it just echoed what you said there , which is how important clients or how important a roadmap is for clients , so they don't just see a menu of options but they actually see a customized plan for them . Yeah , so I just think it's pretty cool .
And then in terms of the relationships like that builds trust . When you present your client that roadmap , that builds trust in you because you have a plan . People like plans . They don't want to , just , you know , wander out into the wilderness , which I enjoy but most people don't let's talk about these plans , this roadmap idea .
How do you because that may sound great for a client , but I'm wondering , how do you put a ? I don't want to . I don't know if guarantee is the right word , but how do you put a goal towards those plans ?
Because a 12 month plan I'm just riffing here , of course , but it may be something like start with the contact forms , then go with the button styles , then go with the copy , but what would that look like in that plan for results ? Like , would you say we're hoping to .
You know , the goal with this first step is to get 10% more conversions or contact form submissions , 10% more sales . How do you put a number and results to these sections of the plan ?
Yeah , so when I come up with a plan , all of the recommendations and recommended tactics for implementation are all tied back to the different steps in the sales funnel , which are all tied back to that macro goal . Right , and so everything's tied back to that . But let's say they want to double their revenue .
That's not realistic to achieve in a six-month roadmap . However , you and I would never put a guarantee on this , but you could say you know which , based off of this plan and these tasks , we should expect to see improvement on different stages of the sales funnel that ultimately impact your macro goal .
And then what's important for you is setting , as the service provider is setting up those micro goals so you can actually prove out that you've helped move the needle towards achieving that macro goal . Yeah , cool , and that's by having those analytics set up in place so you can easily track those .
So take the macro goal and try to divvy that up . We're both divvy users , so pun intended . Divvy that up into these different steps and of course that may look different with those certain steps . I imagine some of those steps may have a huge impact . If it's a new design or if it's a call to action , change versus , maybe , an email sequence .
You know , maybe that's a or an SEO type work that might take longer .
Yeah , and it's . Sometimes it's harder to prove that something moved the needle just because the data isn't available , and but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it . But sometimes it's easy to measure the data and sometimes it's not .
For example , like if you're driving people to a podcast like you want to , you want to generate um awareness for your podcast and you you're running ads to it . There's not always a great way to track um engagement within spotify for the people who came from a Google ad right . But you could look at okay , did episode downloads spike during this period ?
And those types of things , and just try to make some correlations so you can try to prove whether something worked or didn't .
This is the number one . Sorry if I'm looking off screen . I'm typing some bullet points on this because this is like a course outline that we're going through right here .
One of the number one things I hear in my community Web Designer Pro from members who want to do some sort of strategy or results-based growth plan is they often say I'm not confident I can get them results . And I think that goes back to this is typically for early stagers , but this does go back to the idea of selling results if you can't prove it yet .
It's easy to sell a website design and easy to sell a maintenance plan because you know the start and finish to that . There's going to be a new website and there's going to be a maintenance plan with updated and optimized resources and stuff . But the results for a business is like you said .
You know resources and stuff , but the results for a business is like you said you can't really guarantee that . So I guess my to dig into that a little bit like where does the confidence come from to sell something you're not a hundred percent sure of ?
Do you just have enough client , social proof and and kind of general things that you know work , even if it boosted a little is that what you're selling Is not necessarily an exact monetary goal , but you're just selling some improvement in these areas . How do you sell results you're not absolutely sure you can get ?
So the way I have found confidence in selling this is , um , it's because every decision I make is data informed , and it's not a gut Um , although my gut , you know , tells me right sometimes . But sometimes it's a challenge that I've never dealt with and I've never had to come up with a solution for .
But if you're looking at data , that's going to lead you in the right direction , and if you're making small changes instead of big changes , the data will tell you if you're headed in the right direction or the wrong direction . And so that's how I have . The confidence is because I'm looking at data . And then I'm a creative person .
I don't want to just be like looking at numbers all day , but that's where the creativity comes into play , because there's not always a clear cut solution to solve something . So , for example , one time I was helping a client dry .
They were trying to get leads to their website and they had this longest form ever , but they wouldn't get rid of any of them and they weren't hitting the number of submissions that they needed , and so I was like , how can we achieve these numbers and not get rid of any fields ? Like that doesn't add up .
And so I just started um , it just hit me one day while it wasn't working . I was like you know , like those Buzzfeed , buzzfeed quizzes where it was like which kitchen appliance are you ? And like you play it even though you don't have the time , and you're like , oh , I'm a toaster , but you still play it .
And I'm like what if we turn this form into one of those quizzes ? And we went from and I'll just caveat with this , not all of them were high quality leads , but and that's important is not just getting leads , but quality leads we went from 15 to 400 leads a month just by changing it to that . And I'm not saying turn all your forms into BuzzFeed quizzes .
What I'm saying is that's where the fun comes in is looking at the data , seeing what's working , what's not working and then coming up with creative solutions to test out , to see if you can move the needle . And that's what I love that's so great .
It reminds me of when I uh shifted from gravity forms just a long form for a questionnaire to conditional logic and I just I phased it out , I just stepped it out and I definitely saw a big from Gravity Forms just a long form for a questionnaire to Conditional Logic and I phased it out , I just stepped it out and I definitely saw a big difference .
It's funny because we're actually doing a lot of this . We just don't realize it's Converge Rate Optimization . When you adjust your copy and make it better and you get more contact form submissions , you just did Converge Rate Optimization . When you change the button color from like a poopy brown to like green for go and you get a lot more clicks .
You just conversion rate optimization . So , yeah , like all these things , we're doing a lot of them , unintentionally , I imagine . As web designers , we just need to present it better and package it up , which we've really covered a lot on here . So this is really really great .
Like my mind , I'm almost struggling with keeping a conversation going because I'm trying to map this out . There's just so many ways , I think , put this together specifically as a growth plan .
But one thing I was curious about is when is the time to offer this initially and when do you offer this ongoing , because I imagine all the metrics we've talked about could be done on an initial build . So how do you balance how much to do with this up front , with a website redesign or a website build , versus ongoing ?
Yeah , like how , how , how do you make the offer ? How do you , how do I determine whether I'm making like a one-time offer versus ongoing ?
yeah , I'm wondering , like , how much conversion rate optimization should be done in a rebuild or redesign , versus like things that we're going to tackle , you know , in a row on a roadmap plan that's 12 months or something yeah .
If people ask me , should I do this before , after my website rebuild , my answer is always before your website rebuild , because then you have an informed set of , you have the data to tell you what your customers care about , where they're bouncing .
So it's gold for web designers because you can build out a web design that just looks beautiful and is built well , but it's built to convert because it's built based off of what you know the customers need and what they're looking for and what the business goals are .
So if you can go to a client and pitch a website redesign and say I'm going to take all of these things into consideration while I'm doing your redesign , that really is going to set you apart from someone who is going to be implementing a website , not looking at any of that data .
So I'm working on a website redesign now and one of the first things we looked at is you know , the client told me oh , my clients care , my , my customers care about these things before they purchase a membership . But the data said something completely different .
They're looking at something completely different and if it were up to the client , they would have prioritized the content on the homepage a certain way and the information their prospective customers actually care about was like at the bottom of the homepage .
So if your client's focused on actually meeting their revenue goals , then I think they will appreciate the fact that you're bringing this to the table as part of the website redesign process and it helps the client make better decisions , like if you're asking them to review something , if you're tying all of your decisions , your design decisions , back to data instead
of just saying I think green is going to be good here instead of blue . You know it's like I mean those pieces go into it right , but it just . It builds so much trust with your client .
The cool thing about that , too , is I imagine you could do quite a few things on an initial build , but it doesn't mean that you can't sell it ongoing in a growth plan , because you need to measure those goals and you need time for it to see how things play out .
Like you mentioned earlier , it's constant tweaking , so it really was so exciting about this is like it works really well with initial one time work but ongoing because that one time work you may end up changing it six months down the road . Or if they have a new lead generator or a new funnel , maybe they want to now do work on the homepage .
Well , that's a whole different conversion deal if they're changing one lead generator and now they have a whole new funnel kind of thing .
Yeah , for sure , there's always something to do . I've redesigned many websites and then I've gone and redone my designs based off of something that's changed . I had client that like 90% of their traffic was desktop and that because that they were in an industry where people only purchased the product on desktop and so .
But then they found out , like Google ads was a great channel and all those people were coming from mobile and we did not have a great . We had an okay mobile experience , but it wasn't what it should be . And so we went in and I redid everything I'd done a year earlier and improved um revenue on the mobile channel .
So there's always things that are going to change in the market with the business that you're just going to and you have to be okay with , like , redoing your own work , because , because it's not , you can't do one thing and it's going to be good forever . It's just not the way . That's not the way this industry works .
Such a great point . It's different than a support plan . It's different than a maintenance plan . In my eyes .
Oh yeah , for sure , you're just keeping it alive with a maintenance plan .
Yes , yes , yes . You build a site , you keep it alive with support and then you optimize it and you I mean , yeah , that's when you actually make changes , do new things , have new strategies Like this is just what an opportunity for web designers .
We have to be able to be the web person for so many businesses and we have to be able to be the web person for so many businesses and you actually don't need so many businesses .
If this is rolled out into a , you know , multi , six figure kind of thing per year , you can build a very , very healthy six and multi , six figure business with a dozen clients with this type of of offer .
So I think there's a big gap to where there's this huge . You know there are a lot of web does there's web design is big . People know who web designers are . They build websites . People know who digital marketers are . Digital marketers are focused on driving traffic , creating a brand .
But if you're driving , if you have a digital marketing strategy and you're building out your social media channels , and then you have this great website , but you're not looking at the middle , like how are people getting to my website and what are they doing when they get there ? There's a huge gap .
And that's such an amazing place , as a web designer , where we can help bridge that gap , because not only do we have access to all the data , but we can actually make the changes .
And so it's such a huge value to bring to the table . I have one final question for you about guarantees , so I want to get your thoughts on guarantees on this . Before we do that , though , a couple things I wanted to mention as we wrap this up . I really feel like we've just scratched the surface here , which we absolutely have .
So I know you're coming into Pro here very , very soon . This is going to release , I think right before you do , a live training in Web Designer Pro to dive into this deeper . So , first off , publicly , I want to say I'm so excited to really dig into this , and visually too , and talk about some of these tools and resources .
So , everyone , if you haven't dove into Web Designer Pro yet , we're gonna be doing a live training here to talk about CRL with Lee here . And for you , I want to give you a chance , before we dive in , to wrap this up with guarantees .
Where should people go to find out about you and I know you have this analyzing service as a service for web designers too right . Where should folks go to connect with you ?
Yeah , my website is zanataincom . Yeah , my website is zanataincom and I have to spell that because it's not a real word , which , in hindsight , you know , is not necessarily a great way to brand your company but I named it after my son , so I won't change it , but it's Z-A-I-N-A-T-A-I-N . Zaynatain Gotcha Dot com .
Is that not on your website , that story about naming it after your son ?
I feel like it was and maybe I took it off .
Because I feel like that would be so cool . I would love to know that , like what's behind the name , it was after your son , that's .
Yeah , I figured . You know I'm kind of like a shiny object person and I always and I , when I left my job I've always wanted to start my own company . I was like you know what ? Because it was right . When my son was born I was like , if I name it after my son , I'm going to stick with it .
I'm not going to shut down a company that's named after my son .
That's fascinating , that's great . I try to avoid coaching because I end up coaching every call , but my coaching advice would be to get that back on your about page . That's an amazing . That's such a cool little thing there . I feel like it makes it more memorable too . Anywho , yeah , so we'll have that linked .
I know you have an analysis plan that's available for web designers a couple of different tiers there so we'll have that linked in the show notes for this episode . So , yes , I would love to wrap up just with this idea of guarantees , and I ask this because , going back to the point earlier about like , how do you sell results ? Um , it's been a while ago .
On the podcast , though , I had a founder who's the founder of converticaorg . Are you familiar with them at all ? No , they're a pretty big , I think , in the e-commerce space .
Okay , but , um , they have , if you go to converticaorg , if anyone wants to check this out they do have a guarantee for conversions , but their guarantee is that they'll increase conversions by 20 to 100 on your website . So their little loophole is they pretty much know almost every situation .
They can at least increase conversions , whatever that metric is , by 20% . So if it's contact form submissions , they know the things generally you could do . I imagine you're in the same boat to where , like you could probably pretty accurately say you could do at least 20% on something . But that's their guarantee is they'll at least do it by 20 .
He told me their guarantee where , if somebody doesn't get the conversions in an amount of time at least 20% they will work for free until they get it there . What are your thoughts on guarantees ? Is that not you know ? Is that something that might help sales , or do you think it's not really needed If you already have a trusted client relationship ?
What are your thoughts on guarantees for cro ?
that I think that's awesome if they figured out a way to do guarantees and um and do it . I I'm not a fan of doing a guarantee , um because , um , because I don't feel like . So the client , right , is not going to come in and say I need you to increase this by 15% and then you say , okay , I'll increase it .
But maybe they are if they're like , you know , a marketing team at a corporation or something . But what , what I promote is one I have a , I have a framework . I I have . I'm not selling the results , I'm selling the framework that's going to help achieve the results . And I have case studies where I've done it for other clients .
And I think one thing that's unique maybe was what I do is I don't focus on an industry , and so when you're not focused on a particular industry and a particular type of website , I think it's really difficult to say I can go into your website and increase your conversions by this amount , because you have no idea where the company is at in the stage of
business . You have no idea what's going on in their company , you have no idea what they're built on , you have no idea what's going on with their customers , their pricing . What if their pricing is too high for what they're trying to sell ?
That can be such a contributing factor to If you're trying to hit a revenue goal can be such a contributing factor to like if you're trying to hit a revenue goal , or maybe it's not priced enough . There's just so many things out of your control , um , that I don't feel comfortable doing a guarantee . So that's my spiel .
But if you , if you feel like you can , then more power to you .
That's great . Look , it just goes to show that it works both ways . You don't need a guarantee . If it works for them and I think they're , I believe , being in the e-commerce world , I think they're more in the ads world . They just may not have like . They have a bigger team , so they're probably a much different type of customer than yours .
Whereas you're working with , I imagine , quality over quantity and more direct service with you , I think they're more of a team-based approach . So it probably needs you may need that guarantee with a colder audience . I don't know what their funnel looks like , but I would imagine it's a lot of cold traffic .
And I imagine too with eCommerce and they're focused on ads , they probably have a strategy they can replicate with defining the target audience , coming up with ads like generating revenue , and it's a very clear sequence if you're driving someone from an ad to a product page to a purchase .
But if you have a more , if you have more steps there , it's going to be a lot harder to to like sell that that result quicker , because maybe the , the , the nurture time is 60 days for for a typical client or 90 days .
but I could see how that could definitely work for like a very streamlined sales funnel well , I would imagine , if you don't have a guarantee , you could have stats based off of what you know works , what you've done for clients as a cro person . You could probably say like uh , you know what we , for our contact form work .
We , you know we often help , or our clients on average , get like 50 more contact submissions or or something like that . You could probably pull out some , some real stats . That would help if there is a worry about a guarantee , because I I think that's important too , because I'm sure there are clients who are like how do I know this will work ?
And if you don't have a guarantee , cause I I think that's important too , cause I'm sure there are clients who are like , how do I know this will work ? And if you don't have a guarantee , you could at least back , you could have some stats to say like well , um , you know we have a proven framework that works at different levels depending on the need .
But , um , these are some common stats like contact forms go here , bounce rates go down on average . Those are the things I imagine you can back that up with .
Yeah , for sure Anything to build trust with them .
Awesome . Well , lee , again , we've just scratched the surface . I'm so excited to see you here in Pro shortly to dive into this in a little more detail , with a Q&A session and more visual . So super , super excited to learn from you . This has been great . I learned a lot .
I really felt quite muddy about conversion rate optimization services , but I mean , like I mentioned , I've wrote out like the outline of a CRO course here . This very well may be the outline of the next course I'm going to be doing in pro , because I plan on doing kind of a mini course . So awesome . I really I thank you . Thank you for this .
This has mini course . So awesome . I really I thank you . Thank you for this . This has been gold . So I really appreciate your time and for sharing , most importantly , what's working for you too . This isn't theory , this is like what you do , so I really appreciate you sharing this today .
Yeah , I love to talk about it . There's not many people I can like nerd out with this about this stuff , and so my four-year-old doesn't really care about forms , so thank you for giving me the chance to talk about it .
You know , sometimes it takes some excitement because earlier I figured out a new workflow option in Circle , which is what I run my community on .
Oh , I love Circle . I just started . I used them for a client and it was amazing .
Oh well , I'm going to so doing the training in Pro . I'm going to give you a profile . So , um , that's coming next , so you get to see Web Designer Pro in its full form . But uh , yeah , we were working on these workflows and tagging and stuff and they had a new feature that came out and I told my , my four-year-old daughter .
I was like , guess what , sweetie , circle released new automated workflow , so now I can tag and I can disable messaging or enable messaging without going to Zapier . And she was like , wow , I don't always get that result , but hey , sometimes it works .
That's great , you got a . Wow . My son would be like , okay , where's my apple juice ?
Oh , she said that after it . But yeah , awesome , all right . Well , thanks so much , lee . I'll see you in pro here soon and again appreciate your time .
Yeah , yeah , thanks .
Woo , it's like a masterclass in conversion rate optimization , really , really excited to have Lee's expertise both on the podcast here and very soon at the time of releasing this inside of Web Designer Pro in the form of a workshop , a guest expert training .
Again , cro is something that I did haphazardly in my journey , but if I were to go back today and start web design , I would have much more of an emphasis on conversion rate optimization , because a pretty design and nice copy are very important . But at the end of the day , what do web design clients want ? Results ?
They want a website that is making them money . So if you can position yourself even on a very basic level to do that , you're going to be getting a lot more clients , you're going to be charging a lot more and you're going to have a lot more free time . So all of those reasons and more , I would consider taking this very seriously .
Again , join my community Web Designer Pro If you are catching this live the week it comes out , or at least immediately to watch that presentation live with Leigh , and join the Q&A Anytime . You join Pro , you'll always be able to access the archive of that training , along with the entire suite of prior web design expert trainings inside of Web Designer Pro .
A big thanks to Leigh for sharing what she did on the podcast here and inside the community , so I hope to see you inside the community Again . All the links and resources we talked about can be found at joshhallco slash 348 . So I'll see you over there .
Cheers , my friends , to adding CRO to your suite of services and making a whole lot more money as a web designer . Holla .