CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION:

BEYOND WEB DESIGN

Patrick McKenzie (@patio11), Starfighter
Kalzumeus Software Board Meeting
“What Did You Consult On?”
(P.S. It’s not button colors and CTA text.)
True Of Almost Everyone In Here
 Pricing: You don’t charge enough.
 Packaging: You sell too few things.

 Positioning:

 You have too many options.

 You “cap” your provided value too low.
So What Can We Do About It?
 Pricing: Charge more!
 Packaging: Add more possible options!

 Positioning:

 Present a single or small set of decisions per

channel/interaction.
 Relentlessly position upmarket.
Services Businesses
Consulting / Agencies / Productized Consulting
Sales Models For Services
 “Big deals, low volume”
 Concentrate on getting more qualified leads
 “Small deals, high volume”
 Concentrate 50/50 on leads and conversion to sale
 “Productized services”
 Add recurring model if you don’t have it already + upsell.
 Get more email addresses, use lifecycle emails on them
Distribution Of Clients

Experts

Intermediates

Beginners
Capability Of Clients To Pay

Experts

Intermediates

Beginners
Highest Signal-To-Noise Channels
 Conferences / Local Events
 Good to pitch from your own website/presence
 Direct emails from prospect (referrals, etc)
 Upgrade into phone/Skype ASAP
 Your mailing list… but only semi-automated
 “Just hit reply” one of my best CTAs
Organization Of Effort For Content

100++ content pieces

10~15 creatives

3~5
premiums
1 mailing
list
Templatized Site w/ Swappable Creatives
More Mailing List Signups

• Low friction form

• Not “mailing list”
• “Get Free X”
• Social proof
• Low attention cost
• Clear value prop
• Qualification

Most importantly:
goal drives content,
not other way!
Good Emails Earn More Subscriptions

• Give emails shareable URL

(archive link)
• Explicitly encourage people
to “forward” that
• Add signup CTA into main
body of email, automatically
or semi-automatically
• This is half of my list
growth: 0.4% conversion
rate from website, ~2% from
this single CTA
• +500 subs per email sent
Packaging For Services Offerings
 “True services”
 “Menu” proposals: A / B / C
 Negotiate on scope, never on rate

 “Productized services”
 Lifecycleemail -> Single option pitched in any email
 Downsell if they don’t take recommended option
E-Commerce
Single Product, Multi-product (first party), Multi-
product (3rd party)
Single Product
 Impulse buy?
 “5 minute rule”
 Longer cycle? Where are they in it?
 Hone the buying process to a freaking mirror shine
 Build or buy more products!
Walmart
BalsamicSauce.com
Zimmerman’s
Multi-product
 “I don’t know what to buy”
 Hand-curated bundles
 Popularity lists (automatic or semi-automatic)

 Persona pages

 Live chat, live chat, live chat

 Invest in photography / video
Amazon Is Baseline. You Need To 10X.
Processes Let You Have Quality At Scale
Processes Give You Room To 10X
E-Commerce Offers
 Free shipping
 Buildit into price of offering if possible
 Better to eat a loss on 1% of orders to Timbucktu than
to complicate core order flow and cost 10% of orders
 Events: Sales -> “Limited Availability”
 If you sell razors, find and sell your blades.
Bonus Round: SaaS Signups
Simplify and Break Into Stages
Thanks! I Like Hearing From People
 patrick@kalzumeus.com  I love hearing from people
in software/entrepreneurship, at any time, for any
reason. You cannot waste my time.
 softwareconversionoptimization.com  will ship one of
these years, let me know you were at DCBKK and I’ll
give you a free copy when it does
 http://bit.ly/dcbkkcro  free emails on A/B testing
(mostly for software companies)