How One Word Resulted In An 81.4% Increase In Purchases (with Justin Christianson)

Tim: Can one word make a huge impact on your business’s results? I think we’ve proven in several interviews on this show that it can but it doesn’t hurt to add further fuel to the fire. Today’s guest is Justin Christianson, one of the cofounders of Conversion Fanatics, which is a great name by the way. Justin had a client with only marginal traffic numbers so squeezing every ounce of conversion juice out of their site was key. And recognizing that button copy has historically proven to be a test worthy element Justin changed one word and that changed everything.

Alright, my flare for the dramatic aside this really is a great case study and something you can try right away so let’s get going. I’m Tim Page the conversion educator here at LeadPages and this is ConversionCast.

Hey, Justin, welcome to ConversionCast.  Thanks for coming on the show.

Justin: Yeah, thanks for having me. Tim I appreciate it.

Tim: Absolutely. And I’m excited because we’ve got a really clean easy thing to talk about and I think anybody listening whao has any kind of an ecommerce site or even this imagine this could work outside of ecommerce but it would be pretty easy to implement either way. So before we get into the case study itself can you just tell us the results that you were able to get from this particular case study?

Justin: This particular case study actually increased the amount that people added products to their cart by 22%, increased paid views on checkout 95.3% and increased purchases 81.4%.

Tim: [Laughs] Oh this is a beautiful just sweeping improvement from this one little thing. I think when you tell people what you did, they’re going to be like oh my gosh, that’s all it took. But before we get into that can you tell us a little bit about kind of who you are and what you do?

Justin: Oh yeah. Well my name is Justin Christianson. I’m actually the cofounder and president of Conversion Fanatics.  We’re a full-service digital agency focusing primarily on conversion rate optimization.

Tim: Nice. Was this case study done for one of your clients or was this done for one of your businesses?

Justin: THIs was done for one of our clients.

Tim: Okay. Perfect. And so tell us a little bit about what caused you to actually try to this and then let’s just go ahead and get into it.

Justin: Okay. Well we wanted to make an overall impact the amount of traffic that they had wasn’t staggered by any means so we wanted to make a big impact so we tried to think of ways that we could move the needle across the entire store rather than just trying to test incremental pages and different elements. WE basically have tested a bunch of these different elements on various other clients to go [[0:02:47]] [indiscernible]  well let’s give it a shot. It actually proved that out to be a big winner.

Tim: Nice. I love it and so this was on button copy, is that correct?

Justin: It is and all we did was changed add to bag to add the cart. Nothing else was changed other than bag the cart across the entire store.

Tim: And how did you get the idea to do that? Because I mean I know that you know there’s a lot of testing around button copy and the language that’s used and what kind of makes people feel more comfortable but what made you think let’s try this and and let’s change it to the plain kind of simple, clear language?

Justin: I think there was probably some confusion around the bag style. It’s more kind of trendier and you know looking at the direct response world which is a strong background of mine, is we just wanted to make an impact and like you said there’s a lot of testing that has been done around button copy and colors styles and things of that nature. We’ve done it many, many times to show an increase. So they actually made some changes to their site and their original copy was actually add the bag as well and they made a new version of their site so we wanted to make a big impact. So we just thought let’s try the traditional direct response sales channels methodology and see what kind of impact.

Tim: Yeah that’s great. You know, I think there was big lesson here for more than just button copy. There is a lot to be said for simplicity and clear language. We find over and over and over again when people try to get too complex and too confusing you know, whether it’s with the headline on your main page , it’s like this big confusing thing that’s full of jargon or whether it’s just simple and clear and conveys an easy to understand benefit. Over and over we keep finding based on all these case studies and all the things we’re doing here at LeadPages and all of these things that our customers are doing over and over the clear easy to understand things seem to out convert everything else almost every single time. Have you found that to be the case?

[0:05:01]

Justin: Exactly.

Tim: Yeah.

Justin: We have found that to be exactly the case. Is we look at conversions from a whole as in does it convey the benefits over the features and are you telling them what to do not assuming what to do and just keep it simple. The more clutter you have, people don’t read online anymore. You know, you guys are firm examples of that at LeadPages. You know with the simplicity behind some of the templates and various things there it’s just you’re pushing people to keep it simple which is what most people actually need.

Tim: Right. Yeah we get caught in this idea that we need to build these big complex landing pages to get people to actually take action but time and time again with you know, the opt-in landing page, we found that a simple landing page with a nice background, a simple headline and a clear call to action out converts these crazy long form you know, landing pages and pages with videos. You know, but again I think the other thing to understand too for anybody that’s listening that wants to try this is don’t just blindly go and do this. Don’t hear this and go oh okay add to cart, out converts, add to bag, let’s go switch to add to cart. You guys are always testing everything you’re doing. We’re always testing everything we’re doing. You want to make sure that whenever you hear something like this, try it, make sure it works for your business and your niche and your audience first and then weight it out and decide what to do from there.

Justin: Yeah. I firmly agree there. Don’t just assume it’s going to work because we’ve seen go the other way. And —

Tim: Absolutely.

Justin: And another test we’ve ran.

Tim: I love it. Well Thank you Justin so much for coming on the show and sharing this clean case study. We love these things that are so easy to just you know, give it a shot and see how it works. So again thanks for coming on the show.

Justin: Yeah thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Tim: Alright, this episode is done. If you want to discover how you can turn your website into an evergreen lead generation machine, then I’m going to need to see you on this Thursday’s live LeadPages webinar. It’s called 4 Steps to Quickly Grow Your Email List Without  Spending all of Your Time on Marketing and let me tell you it’s been getting rave reviews, which I really appreciate. It’s happening this Thursday yes this Thursday at 3 p.m. eastern time and joining me is super easy.

So here’s what you do. If you’re here in the US, you can just text LeadPagesLive to 33444,  again that’s LeadPagesLive to 33444. Or if you’re outside of the US, go ahead and go to LeadPagesWebinar.com, again that’s LeadPagesWebinar.com and you will be able to reserve your spot. Over a thousand people register every single week so don’t miss your chance to join us. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next time on Conversion Cast.