Accidentally Awesome Results: How MindValley Accidentally Increased Their Completed Checkouts (and Sales) by 23%

Tim: Hey, Ajit, thanks so much for coming on the show. I’m excited to have you here.

Ajit: Thank you, Tim. I’m excited to be here.

Tim: Great. So we’ve got some really fun stuff to talk about today. The first thing that I want to share is can you let me know just the results that you were able to get from the case study we were about to talk about?

Ajit: So we tested the case on our checkout when people have actually gone to step 1 of the checkout and we found that by doing the test that we did, about 23% more people would finish the transaction and go to the thank you page and the conversion page.

Tim: That’s awesome. I love it because I think a lot of people forget about that as a conversion point. I mean a lot of people forget that you know the transaction isn’t really complete until the person as gone ahead and paid and the order is complete. So unfortunately a lot of people focus you know, solely on getting people to you know, add something to their cart or you know, to you know, click the buy button but a lot of people forget about that conversion point. So I’m really excited to discuss this and talk about what I believe is a really unique way to get people to continue through the transaction. So that’s awesome.

But before we do that, I want to hear a little bit about you. Tell us what –you know, tell us a little bit about what you do and kind of what your role at Mind Valley is.

Ajit: Yeah, I’m the CEO of MindValley Media and what I do generally is I’m 100% into marketing and sales. I’ve started many companies in  partnership with Mind Valley, in partnership with other really fantastic people and that is what I do. I do traffic, conversions, pretty much anything that have to do with the online space and yes that’s what I do.

Tim: Yeah that’s awesome and you were introduced to me by Juan Martitegui from MindValley Hispano so that’s perfect. I figured we can kind of jump over and see what you guys were doing that is unique. So I’m very excited about this. So if you could set the stage for us. Tell us what the control was like before you went ahead and implemented this test?

Ajit: The control was ready but general checkout based. So you would click on the buy button and you would go to a standard check out page with a little description about the product, standard controls you know, like the security seals and your guarantee seals and very, very standard one step, one. When you have a two-step checkout the step 1 of that. That was the standard page that was the control.

Tim: Gotcha.

Ajit: Just a little header about the program.

Tim: Awesome. So this was just –you know, your general kind of checkout page. So was there kind of like a deep reason behind why you decided you wanted to figure out if you could get people to continue to finish the checkout. Like what drove you to want to test something like that?

Ajit: I see. That’s a funny story. We actually didn’t really did the test because we wanted to get more people to convert and finish the checkout. We tested them because we have a policy where we want to over deliver always. So were giving that extra bonus to everybody who would buy anything from us. What we realized was that we were always giving away this bonus but not all these people would notice that they’ve got something extra from us. So just as something that we must out to our clients, we said why don’t we add this to our checkout? But of course you don’t want to just add something to the checkout that we said let’s test it. So we know that [0:03:21] [Indiscernible] and even if we wouldn’t have made any progress in conversion we would have still done it.

But surprisingly we found and we found it not only on one of that sites because we have many stores and many commerce sites. We tested at five different websites and every time by just simply adding a bonus just right below the actual product description, we added something that we were – and even if giving away for free we just added it and added a little description about it as to what they’re getting for free and literally said price zero. It’s a bonus that we’re giving away and that boosted the conversion by 23%.

Tim: [Laughs] I love this because this is something that the idea wasn’t even based on driving conversions. It was simply to get people to you know, actually get the bonus that you were already giving away to people. So I love that and it turned out that providing more value but just doing it in the right spot ended up getting higher conversions. I think people you know, marketers all over the world that actually care about their customers are like cheering and jumping for joy as they’re listening to this. Because we’re always looking for ways to provide value in a way that also increases conversions so why not do something like this?

So I think the next thing that I’d like to hear is can you share with us like in this case what was the bonus that you were giving away and what would be an example of a product that somebody might buy in order to get that bonus?

Ajit: So it was the first step that we did was with our [0:04:51] [Indiscernible] system program and we were giving and information product that helped people be in a peak state. It takes them to the alpha level of the mind. It’s a meditation product. What we did is we added some sounds that you need for those meditations.

[0:05:02]

It’s [0:05:02] [Indiscernible] in the product but we kind of separated it and said these are some sounds in case you want to follow your own meditation. So it was kind of complementary to the main product. We just added that and that was pretty much it. That’s again we did the space, similar kind of test but the other products. So these are just complementary sounds for meditation because our niches where we tested this is a personal growth meditation niche and that was it. It wasn’t something dramatically different. It was literally like a mini program which comes to the complementary itself with the main program.

Tim: That’s awesome and so with any of the sites that you have did you test any that were noncomplementary or were they all complementary?

Ajit: No we always tested something that actually related back to the product. So we didn’t want to give away — any of our bonuses are not completely not aligned with the main product. We always give something that supports the product just like an add-on to what you already got. So every time you tested, there was a complimentary product.

Tim: Yeah that’s great. That’s I mean I think that’s the smart way to go. I would love to see just for curiosity’s sake what it would do to conversions if the bonus was non complimentary? I mean my hypothesis is that it wouldn’t affect conversions positively but it probably wouldn’t affect them negatively. But I’d still love to see something like that. But that’s awesome. So I think the next thing that would be valuable for people to know is so you’re giving away this bonus in this example. You know, you’re giving away the sounds to help people kind of do their meditation and yoga. So what would be like could you describe the layout of what the checkout page would look like where you would put the bonus and kind of the copy that you used to demonstrate that this was something that people were going to get once they purchased?

Ajit: So we kept it very simple. So every time when somebody is checking out you know, how you always have your product descriptions, a person knows what they’re purchasing? We literally added on line below that with the image of the bonus because there was an image of a product. So it looks like as if a product is added to it but it looks like you have two products. The second product which was the bonus has an [0:07:11] [Indiscernible] and then let’s really say bonus, name of that particular complementary bonus and [0:07:17] [Indiscernible] and then like dollars 0.00 and your total price is just the price of the product. So people can easily see that they are getting this for free. So that was pretty much it. It’s a very straightforward layout, nothing major on the copy literally just said bonus and then name of product, of the bonus product that is.

Tim: That’s awesome.

Ajit: And the price is zero dollars yeah. You know what could be a fun test while you’re mentioning?

Tim: Yeah.

Ajit: A fun test could be and I think I’m going to do that next is try to see if we add a bonus which is maybe not even complimentary like I said but actually is a lead in to another product.

Tim: Oh.

Ajit: And see how the long term cycle of that goes. Maybe it’s like an introductory part of another course. It could be a fun test to do. I should do that as well.

Tim: Yeah that would be interesting —

Ajit: I’m taking that down now. Thanks for the idea.

Tim: You’re welcome. That would be really cool to see how that you know, 1 if that affects conversions with the existing product and 2, if it results in kind of the purchase of an additional product. That would be really cool.

Ajit: Yeah that will be a fun test.

Tim: Yeah I love that awesome. So and I love that this is –you know, we’re adding basically it almost looks like another item that they’re purchasing even though they’ve only purchased the one. It looks like there’s another item but that item is at zero dollars. And so it just seems like they’re getting something extra as a part of this product even though it’s something you’re already giving away. So that’s something awesome and if anybody wants to see the exact kind of layout of what that looks like, you can get that if you go to ConversionCast.com/MVdownload, that’s like Mind Valley, MVdownload, again to see the image so you can see exactly how to lay that out. So the next thing that I have is in terms of setting this up, you know, was this something that you just like I think there are a lot of people that wonder how could I add a bonus technology wise? Like is this something that you would just add in your shopping cart software?

Ajit: Yeah we have a caption software. So I don’t know if it’s possible on Infusion or the other more popular softwares but I’m getting it’s literally if you added, it’s processed literally like adding to our shopping cart. I don’t know how it translates to other technology but I guess it should be as easy as just adding a zero dollar product to your shopping cart and then making sure that gets added to the membership area. So you can just upload it in your membership area. The title is bonus and then just as a shopping cart item, you just literally say bonus zero dollars and that goes in the shopping cart.

Tim: Awesome. Yeah that would make sense and then you know, it’s something that just automatically gets added for that one product. Like if somebody were to add that product to cart it automatically adds both. Well Ajit, I think this is perfect. It’s a great place to stop and this has been so cool. I’m really excited for people to start to test this and to see if it’s getting the same results for them that you folks have been getting in your various sites. So thanks again for coming on the show. It’s been awesome having you here.

Ajit: Thank you Tim and I hope people will utilize this.