Our Guest:
Chris Dayley started his own conversion rate optimization agency in 2014 after six years of experience in the digital marketing space. He founded his company because other CRO agencies he was searching for were over priced and he realized he could do CRO better and cheaper by starting his own agency. His company merged with another agency called Disruptive Advertising (disruptiveadvertising.com), where he is now the VP of website testing and optimization.
A Quick Preview of the Podcast:
- Two things that need to be tested on your CTA button on your opt-in form
- How to increase opt-ins through an opt-in form
- How to use aggressive language to optimize your conversion rate
Tim: One of the most effective ways to get a quick split testing result is to test your call to action but far too often, people just test for the sake of testing. Chris Dayley had an idea though. He wanted to discover if his client’s potential customers would respond better to more or less aggressive language on that calls to action. He made a really interesting discovery which led to 38% increase in optics. This is a cool study and there’s a lot of stuff here you’ll be able to take away and apply immediately if it’s up your [0:00:33] [Indiscernible].
Now in just a few weeks we’re launching the all-new ConversionCast and I kind of tell you my excitement is through the freaking roof. I’ll be able to share some details soon but for now just know it’s going to be awesome. I’m Chris Paige, the Senior Conversion Educator here at LeadPages and this is ConversionCast. All right Chris let’s start with the results. Can you share the result from today’s case study?
Chris You got it. We had a 38% left in opt-in form submissions.
Tim: Nice, I dig it. Okay and was this for you or for a client?
Chris This was for a client.
Tim: Dig it. Okay so tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Chris: Sure so my name is Chris Dayley. I am a simple guy from Utah. I’ve got a life and two little daughters at home. I got 3-year old and a 6-month old that are just the best part of my life and I am a conversion rate optimization guys, so I am…I guess my quick background, I started my own conversion rate optimization agency back in 2014 after about 6 years in the digital marketing space. I started it because I realized that a lot of the Zero agencies at that time were greatly overpriced. I was actually trying to find a conversion rate optimization for my company and I realized that I could what these other agencies are doing. I could do better and cheaper. I mean it’s your typical EMyth business beginning story and then earlier this year I merged my agency with Disruptive Advertising which is where I am now as the VP of website testing optimization.
Tim: Nice. So can you kind of give us the foundation for this case study. What were you looking at and what was the goal you are looking to accomplish. I mean obviously we’re looking to increase conversion rate but tell us a little bit more.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely so for this one, we were looking specifically at an opt-in form on a blog so that the cyber social examiner and they get a lot of traffic, a lot of opt-ins to their blog. So for this particular test we had…we were systematically testing everything on the opt-in form and for this test we are testing the call to action and so we wanted to…obviously we wanted to make the call to action something that was compelling, something that drove users to want to convert and there is a lot of different ways that we could do that and so we were specifically focused on how the call to action factored into the form opt-in conversion rates.
Tim: Got you. All right so what did you run?
Chris: Yes. We actually run a couple of different test and with form opt-ins and especially with call to actions. These are things that…there are so many different things that you can do and I’ll explain. The call to action in my mind with the form opt-in is the text on the button. There’s basically four elements on this form opt-in that we had. We had a headline. We had some content. We had the button the call to action button, so were specifically focused on that text that was trying to tell the user what to do. There is actually two buttons. So there is a yes opt-in call to action and then there is a no option and so we wanted to test what should we say on these things. How long should it be so we tested…we did one test where we tested the length of the call to action then we ran a separate test where we tested the types of verbiage that we use within the call to action, so we used kind of an aggressive yes versus an aggressive no so that was kind of the basis for the test was we had already tested kind of the length that the people responded best to and as we test it one button….one word buttons that were just like submit or add or yes and then we had tested button that had just had a couple of words like download now or those types of things.
[0:05:08]
Anyway we tested it a little bit longer that were more phrase type so we would have things like send me my guide. Things like that and so we had found out that the longer phrase and as the call to action work best and so now we were trying to refine that call to action. We wanted to know what exactly should it say and how aggressive should it be and so for this particular test, we tested we tested both they yes and the no language. So we had different combinations of the yes and no language. So our aggressive…or I’ll say or our yes verbiage that we had tested in was, yes I want the report so it was, you can download an industry report by opting into the blog and so for the yes we said, yes I want the report.
For the no, we tested a pretty aggressive no that says I’m not interested in improving and this is something that I’ve seen different audiences respond differently to this type of test all the time. Some audiences love it. Some audiences are repulsed by it and this particular audience loved it and so like I said we had a 38% lift in form opt-ins from using this type of language. So as I said, again, we had some software NOS and we had some slightly less possessive yeses. So the yeses were again, “Yes I want the report.” “Yes send me the report.” Deep things like that or even without send me the report saying, “Send me my guide,” things like that. So saying, “Yes I want the report,” with this aggressive, “No, I’m not interested in improving,” had a pretty big impact.
Tim: That’s really fascinating. Do you have any sense of why some audiences respond well to that and why others don’t?
Chris: Well my thought behind it is and a lot of it depends on what type of side it is. It depends on what the content is. So it also depends on how aggressive you’re going on the no.
Tim: Sure.
Chris: Like I’ve seen some sites that say, “No I just prefer to remain an idiot.” I think…
Tim: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: It’s like, wow, I don’t know about that but for me the intent of putting this kind of an aggressive no on the page is just to get people to think twice when they’re going to click on that no because there’s a percentage of the population that as soon a form pops up they’re immediately looking for the button to get rid of it.
Tim: Right.
Chris: So for me the intent of creating this aggressive no is to go wait a second, what am I saying no to and so when you use something that’s a little more aggressive I’m not interested in improving and a lot of times it will cause them to go back and think twice. Now obviously you’re still going to get opt-outs and there’s still going to be people and again it may offend people but for this particular and it seems like it caused them to think twice before they said no instead of just immediately bailing.
Tim: Right and it could be because it is a marketing driven audience and so they could be somewhat primed to that kind of messaging which makes it easier for them. They’re still making and they’re more focused on a goal but I think this is something interesting regardless of what your business model is to test this kind of thing if…what I would say probably is if you personally are reversed to that kind of messaging and that would make you feel uncomfortable don’t do it but I don’t think that there is anything I guess we could say “morally wrong with saying no. I’m not looking to improve this or no I’m not looking to achieve this outcome,” and presenting them the reality of what saying no is actually saying.
Chris: Exactly and I think that’s what it’s doing is it’s attaching the consequence to the no, right because there is…whether or not they know there is a consequence to not getting the guide and to not getting this information that you have and so you’re helping them attach that consequence with their decision.
Tim: I dig it. So Chris where can somebody find out more about you and what you’re doing?
Chris: Absolutely so like I said my company is Disruptive Advertising or our site is disruptiveadvertising.com. You can find me on LinkedIn or Twitter at Chris Dayley. My last name is D-A-Y-L-E-Y. I would love to take a look at anything that you’re…that people are doing right now and see if I can help out.
Tim: Awesome, thanks for coming on the show.
Chris: No problem.
Tim: The all new conversion cast is coming very soon and I think you’re going to enjoy your journey. We’ll see you next week.
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