CaddieOpen in CaddieDownload for Mac

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): 7 Ways To Get Started

Shared by Caddie Library · Updated
App Masters18:14Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

Raising the percentage of visitors who act, through small tested changes to screens, buttons, prices and pages, grows revenue without buying more traffic. Every touchpoint can be A/B tested cheaply, so the easiest win is the one nearest your existing users.

Key takeaways

  • Growth can come from converting the visitors you already have. 1:16
    • Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tracks the percentage of visitors who take a specific action on a site, blog or app.
    • Most teams chase the top of the funnel (downloads, traffic, leads) and ignore what users do after they arrive.
  • Priming users before the ask makes them more likely to buy. 2:43
    • Adding benefit-led onboarding screens before the paywall lifted sales by 234% over showing the paywall first.
    • Shopify's sign-up flow drops the navigation, shows a progress bar and asks easy questions before the account step.
  • Tiny changes to icons and button text move results a lot. 5:29
    • Swapping a star icon for a crown raised taps to the paywall by 57%.
    • Get started beat Subscribe by 30% in sales, and Unlock lifetime insights won by 12.5% in an app test.
  • A third, decoy plan on the pricing page pushes buyers to the plan you want. 13:11
    • With only monthly and yearly, 60% chose monthly. Adding a weaker yearly plan moved 86% to yearly and raised conversions by 233%.
    • Superwall data shows two plans lift results 61% over one, and three plans lift them 44% over two.
  • Landing pages and blog posts convert best when they lead with benefits, proof and a clear action. 16:01
    • A health insurance landing page gained 79% more leads by stating a benefit, echoing the ad keyword and putting the call to action above the fold.
    • An exact figure like 4,173 customers feels more believable than a round 4,200.

You don't need more traffic, you just need to convert the percentage of people that are already coming into your app, website, landing page, blog post.

App Masters

Chapter summaries

0:00 Why CRO matters and the first-time user experience

Converting more of the people who already arrive is cheaper than buying more traffic, and the first screens they see are the place to start.

  • Growth also lives at the bottom of the funnel. 1:16
    • Top-of-funnel thinking means more downloads, traffic and leads.
    • CRO asks what people do after they land or install.
    • It works the same on a website, a blog or an app. The percentage is what counts.
    • Pick one tip, the lowest hanging fruit for your own site or app, and start there.
  • Onboarding screens should sell benefits, not features. 3:08
    • Three to five screens before the paywall is enough.
    • A resume app example: make a resume that wins interviews, a recruiter-tested CV maker, templates built to impress. Then the $25 a year price.
    • The control already converted. Paywall on the very first screen is the app best practice.
    • The user wants one template that gets the interview, not a thousand templates.
  • On a website, the top landing pages are the first-time experience. 3:45
    • Shopify's homepage likely tests start free trial against get started and learn more.
    • In A/B tests on the web, headlines matter a great deal, along with the call to action.

4:31 The main screen and lead flows

Put the path to payment where users see it, and keep the flow and its wording easy to say yes to.

  • The upgrade button belongs on the main screen. 5:03
    • No website hides its pricing page. Some apps bury the paywall in settings.
    • The test ran on what users see when they reopen the app after onboarding.
    • The yellow crown won with a 20% tap-through rate. The black crown came second, then the yellow star.
    • A plain text label like upgrade lost.
  • A lead flow gives both sides something. 6:37
    • Shopify's questions (just starting or already selling, where next, what to sell first) give the company data.
    • The user feels the product is being customized for them.
    • Social proof sits in the flow beside the questions.
  • Wording the account step as "continue with" beats "sign up". 8:44
    • Sign up feels like a burden and more work.
    • Continue with feels like rolling along. It has worked well in apps.

9:07 Call-to-action buttons

Button wording is the cheapest thing to test, so start at the places where users drop off.

  • Test every button where users can leave. 9:28
    • That means homepage buttons, sign-up buttons and any other call to action.
    • Anyone can start right after learning this.
    • Shopify follows its onboarding with a trial offer: extend your trial for $1 a month for 3 months on select plans.
    • The Subscribe test ran on the pricing page of a client's web platform.
    • The wording that wins sounds less like a commitment, because nobody wants to subscribe.
    • The app test, from a friend at Blue Throne, compared six labels, including "Unlock everything" and "Let's explore stats". The speaker disliked the winner's wording but it still won.

11:08 The pricing page and the rule of threes

A paywall with three plans, one of them a decoy, sells more and pushes buyers to the plan you want.

  • Offer a cheap plan, an ideal plan and a decoy. 11:23
    • The pricing page is where people sign up, download or buy, so it is the "money shot".
    • With only two options, buyers usually take the cheaper one.
    • At a San Francisco startup, the old paywall offered monthly or yearly. The test added a yearly plan with fewer features.
    • The ideal plan should be the one with the highest customer lifetime value.
    • It works like movie popcorn: a medium at $8 makes the $9 large an easy pick.
    • Buyers did not just convert more. They also paid more at the moment of purchase.

13:54 Blog posts and landing pages

Pages that already draw traffic should give visitors something to act on and nothing to wander off to.

  • Add an action to blog posts that rank well in search. 13:56
    • HubSpot's post on conversion rate optimization offers a free A/B testing kit for marketers to collect emails.
    • The action can be an app download, an email signup or a product sale.
    • The speaker found the post by searching "conversion rate optimization", so it likely gets heavy traffic.
    • The reasoning is that the post already gives away valuable information.
  • Landing pages should have no navigation. 14:52
    • A landing page is a page you send paid traffic to. Otherwise it would just be a homepage.
    • Without navigation, users stay focused on the one action.
    • The winning page repeated the ad keyword, health insurance in China, because that is what the visitor searched for.
    • Its call to action sat above the fold, and testimonials sat below it.
    • The original page opened with generic copy and a form.
  • Design landing pages for mobile first. 17:13
    • Most searches and visitors come from mobile.
    • Testing landing pages lowers cost per lead or cost per subscriber.
    • Light navigation can stay if the page is mobile friendly and the call to action stays above the fold.

In the growth library

App Masters (host presenting solo), App marketing and growth agency hosting a video on conversion rate optimization. Seven places to start conversion rate optimization for apps and websites, shown through A/B test results on onboarding, icons, button copy, paywall plans and landing pages. The tests show large lifts, such as +234% sales from adding onboarding screens before a paywall and +233% conversions from adding a decoy yearly plan.

Lessons that draw on this:

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript460 lines
0:00

coming up what is conversion rate optimization cro well we're going to explain all about it and the Seven simple ways that you can use to get started what is up app nation in this video we're going to talk all about conversion rate optimization now if you're out in the wild and you want to seem cool call it cro and see if people know but that is what conversion rate optimization is all about and that's the acronym that the cool kids use cro we're going to explain why cro is so important because it's all about working smarter not harder you don't always need to drive more traffic to convert that traffic or downloads into leads or eventually paying customers and we're going to break down the seven simple ways that you can use to get started backed by data so let's get to it all right here it is the pillars of cro let's break down each element of cro and how you can get started and while you're

1:03

watching this video really pay attention to the lwh hanging fruit for you all right whether it's your website or your app really pay attention to the tips and pick one to get started now for those who aren't familiar with cro it is all about the marketing strategies that you can use to increase the percentage that's the key the percentage of visitors who take a specific action on a website or blog or app that doesn't really matter but the percentage is the key A lot of times when we think about growth we think about top of the funnel growth more downloads more traffic more leads Etc but it's also important to pay attention to the bottom of the funnel after they visit your website what are they doing after they download your app what are they doing that's what cro is all about so let's get started number one it's ftu or Fu as most people like to call it but it's the first time user experience okay first time user

2:00

experience that's what this acronym is all about or for apps it is your onboarding experience okay so here we go now I'm going to assume people have already visited your website or downloaded your app so for the app side of things and I'll play a game with you guys if you guys want to guess which one one A or B but for the appside of things it's important to really focus on your onboarding experience so once the user has already downloaded your app what is the first thing that they're seeing as you're looking at this screen take a second hit pause if you want to see which one won now a for those who are just listening is just the pay wall B has a couple of screens before the pay wall all right the winner is B we saw a 234 per increase in actual sales once you added onboarding screen now the app was already converting by showing the pay wall during on the a side of things by showing the pay wall on the first

2:55

very first screen that is a best practice in the app space but if you prime your users get them excited talk about all the benefits that your app has when they use it you're more likely to convert more of those users so let's break down these different screens and three to five onboarding screens before a pay wall is good enough so screen number one really talk about the benefits not the features make a resume that wins interviews boom that's what I want not a thousand resume templates I want a resume template one really that gets me that interview number two a recruited tested CV maker tool for those in the states that just means resumé CV and then lastly resumé templates built to impress boom then why wouldn't you want to buy for just $25 a year sign me up okay on the website of things you're going to see really it's your website that's that first time user experience it could be a blog post as well but

3:48

really think through how people are coming into your website and what are the top landing pages that people land on and really think through how you can better optimize that particular page I just pulled shopify's website and homepage as an example they're so huge why not let's break down what they're doing right and wrong all right so this here and I'm sure they've tested this start free trial versus get started versus learn more versus anything else so it's really testing the headlines which from my web experience when we've run AB tests headlines super super important along with the call to action that you want your users to take so you can see start free trial start free trial making Commerce better for everyone number two we just talked about it but it is your homepage and I didn't put that as number one cuz apps have a you know a couple of screens a couple of flows before the homepage but going back

4:42

to Shopify it is that homepage we already broke that down now on the app side of things the homepage as I like to call it is your main screen it's after the onboarding experience that first- time user experience they've already seen those screens they're not going to see that again on that second open but it's really the page that if I were to exit your app what is the first thing I see on that second open and here I want to show you guys a case study that we ran where on the homepage of this app we had a star to get people to upgrade right and that was the symbol or in B we had a crown I'll give you a second so you guys can play along but guess which one led to actually more clicks or taps all right the winner was B we saw a 57% % increase in actual taps or visits to our pay wall page when we change the icon from a star to a crown now why it's so important on apps is you wouldn't go to any website and not see a pricing

5:43

page or a contact us page right on the apps side of things sometimes developers hide their pay wall their pricing page their main venue or their main path to monetization they hide it in the settings and you want to really put it on on your homepage the main screen of your particular app and here is the stats to back it up you're going to miss 100% of the shots you don't take so you want to make sure people are more inclined to tap on that button so that they can get to your pay wall where then they can pay you and you can sell them on why they should pay you for your app and you can see this Crown this Yellow Crown was the winner with 20% tap through rate followed by the Black Crown which is 177% followed by the yellow star and so forth don't put text upgrade text fail all right let's get into the next one leads and flows and this is one primarily more in the webs side of things is what I'm going to be paying

6:44

attention to from the lead side okay so let's break down Shopify again I get into Shopify I say all right I'm in I've already heard about them people have already told me about how great Shopify is maybe I heard a podcast ad I'm going to tap on start free trial now really pay attention to this flow it's just like the first time user experience on an app you can see the navigation is gone and that's what you really want to do on the website of things let me go back to the homepage we have Solutions pricing resources what's new log in all that stuff right once I hit start free trial and I'm in the flow you don't want any navigation you want to make sure the user is primarily focused on completing this flow and you can see things like progress bars work really really well I've seen down here having some social proof here you're really engaging the users and making them feel like you're going to

7:38

personalize the product to their needs so it's a win-win situation it's a win for you because you get data on your users it's a win for the users because they feel like you are customizing that experience for them and lastly it's a win for you once again because you're going to convert more of your users all right let's get started which one of these best describes you I'm just starting or I'm already selling online or in person next where would you like to sell next and I love how the progress bar is moving like oh I'm almost done perfect what do you plan on selling first so you're getting some Intel on your users and your users are feeling like whoa Shopify is going to probably customize this experience for me awesome and then the US region create an account I like how they ask for everything before they asked you to create the Shopify account I've seen that work really well on the app site

8:31

and the website as well and then boom I sign up now I'm more inclined to sign up right because I've already given you some info so ask for some easy wins easy yeses first and then ask them for something that is more interesting now what I've also seen I'm going to stop here Shopify create a Shopify account I love this but I would say continue with rather than sign up we have seen that work really well on the app side because sign up feels like a burden or it's more work whereas continue with just seems like just rolling along you know passing along and signing up all right and here I'm into the Shopify platform as well so love that experience I really wanted to break it down for you really pay attention to the the non naav right and then asking for the user sign up or even showing a pricing page right after this as well and this is what Shopify is doing so here extend your trial for $1 a

9:23

month for 3 months on select plans right here the next thing super simple to do anybody can literally do it right after this video test your call to actions these are the buttons on your website these are the buttons on your homepage these are the buttons for you to sign up right think about where all the places users can drop off on and then really start testing that particular page here's a website this is a figma file that I found online so thank you to the figma community but what we did was we AB tested for one of our clients that had a web platform as well his pricing page and we AB tested the call to actions so he originally had subscribe and then we're like hey let's test get started as an example ex Le now I'll give you a second again guess which one won A or B get started or subscribe it was a get started 30% increase in sales when we change that button from subscribe because nobody wants to

10:14

subscribe for crry out loud to get started that simple change LED to 30% increase in sales that's what I'm talking about when it comes to call to action furthermore you can do that on the app side of things friend of mine from Blue throne. tested this as well they had get spot to Stats plus that's a hard thing to say or they also said get all features unlock spotted stats plus unlock everything unlock lifetime insights let's explore stats which I pretty much hate but guess which one won for this one 1 two 3 four five it was number four unlock lifetime insights that led to a 12.5 increase in click-throughs and conversion right that's what I mean these simple textual changes on your buttons can make a huge impact and they're so easy to implement number five here it is the money shot it is your pricing page your pay wall it is where people go to sign up for your services your products download buy from

11:19

you all right now I believe especially if you're running a subscription based service or a SAS product I believe in the rule of Threes okay and I'll show you what I mean this is a little growth hack that I'll share with you all right our original pay wall when I was working for a startup in San Francisco was a monthly or yearly typical right monthly or yearly what do you want to do B we changed it to monthly yearly which is an A minus right you only get a few different options or yearly plus which you get so much more just for $10 more now you're already getting savings here and B I recommend if you guys are listening to this go check out the visual it's really interesting I'll pause here and let you guys guess which one do you think one A or B I think it's pretty obvious but B one right here all right so let's break it down a when I only have two options I'm usually going to pick the cheaper option

12:20

and that's what we saw we saw 60% by the monthly whereas 40% bought the yearly now in B because a only has two plans right a yearly plan and a monthly plan now in B what I did was I did a yearly plan that was less attractive than our normal yearly and that's how you have to think about it you have two plans one is the cheap plan quote unquote one is your ideal plan and one is the less than ideal it's a complete decoy so if you're in a movie theater you'll see a medium popcorn is maybe $8 whereas a large popcorn is just is $9 you're going to buy the large popcorn is this type of psychological tricks quote unquote that you can use on your pay wall and so here when we added this a minus plan this less than ideal yearly plan to the mix we saw 86% by the yearly and only 14% by the monthly and we also saw a 233% increase in actual conversions so more people bought and they paid us more at the time that that they purchased

13:30

right so these are little hacks that you can use on your pricing page and here here's a stat from Super wall they saw that two plans saw 61% lift versus one pl we have data that supports this and then three plans saw 44% lift versus two plans so again three plans your cheap plan your ideal plan that is the highest LTV lifetime value of your customer and your decoy plan that's how you go about it the next spot that you can start testing is your blog post especially if your blog post do very well on an SEO perspective AB test is now you can see on HubSpot you can see this huge spot in their blog post all about how they can set up a kit so the complete AB testing kit for marketers now how do I land on here I Googled conversion rate optimization this was a blog post that ranked really well in SEO I come here so they're probably getting a lot of traffic to this blog post I come here makes sense conversion rate optimization

14:28

is all about AB testing and they're going to try to get your email from this blog post these are things that you can start adding to your blog post whether it's app downloads where whether it's email leads whether you're trying to sell a product it doesn't really matter try to incorporate some type of way for users to take action on your blog post because you're already giving away valuable information lastly it is landing pages now these are pages that you're probably driving paid traffic to right and that's why you call it a landing page otherwise it would just be a homepage as an example so some people use their homepage as their landing page but landing pages you want to make sure there's no navigation in there right especially if you're running paid traffic because you really want users to stay focused on your landing page and you want to have certain elements in the landing page and I'll break that down in

15:19

a future video but here I want to share this case study that Tech crunch covered as well and you can see that before so that will say a and after so the before has health insurance in China makes sense of course health insurance in China for foreigners Made Easy fill out the form and get your personalized medical insurance comparison now that's great great copy thank you very much or B was save up to 32% on your health insurance in China there's a reason why more than 4,173 foreigners in China trust us and then show prices now as to call to action with some social proof and a testimonial at the very bottom now I'm sure you already know which one won but B the after led to a 79% increase in leads lowering your cost per lead this company right and here are the main things one you want to lead with the benefits this is just what you're getting the features so you can save up to 32% on your health insurance in China

16:22

you also want to have health insurance in China right because that's potentially the keyword you're bidding on that's what people are most looking for so you want to remind them hey whatever you're looking for we already know what you're looking for because we paid for it and secondly we want to regurgitate that on the landing page the other things are social proof right call the action above the fold so the before was really bad right call the action before the fold you have social proof here with some odd numbers this isn't 10,000 apps or 10,000 people foreigners right it is 4,173 when you have a weird number like that or an exact number rather than 4,200 people it's more believable right so you have that in there you have your call to action and then you also have some social proof with some testimonials in there so it's a no-brainer why the after one and you can see they have some navigation here but you want to really

17:15

make it mobile friendly because most of the searches and most of the visitors are going to be on mobile and then secondly make sure it's above the fold as well so just AB testing your landing pages can dramatically lower your cost cost per lead or cost per subscriber and increase the number of leads you get remember cro is all about you don't need more traffic you just need to convert the percentage of people that are already coming into your app website landing page blog post Etc that's it let me know which one you're going to start with in the comments below and then make sure you subscribe if you want all the latest greatest when it comes to app marketing and digital marketing in general and lastly check out our website at masters.com if you need help increasing your app downloads or your revenues especially if you have an app with a web component we can certainly help you guys out as well till next time

18:11

I'll see you on the next video