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Optimizing Your Website for Conversion

Lesson 10 from: Pinterest Marketing for Makers & Designers

Megan Auman

Optimizing Your Website for Conversion

Lesson 10 from: Pinterest Marketing for Makers & Designers

Megan Auman

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Lesson Info

10. Optimizing Your Website for Conversion

Lesson Info

Optimizing Your Website for Conversion

So let's, talk about optimizing your website to convert pinterest traffic so optimizing it is going to depend again a little bit on what you know your customers dio and what you want them to do when you get to the site. But there are some very clear things that we can dio teo make it easier for people to either opt in to our email site to get them to spend more time on our site, which is also really important and then to get them to buy so there's a couple things here, the first one is that you want an email sign up form with a compelling called toe action compelling called action means you give them a reason now is anyone laughing? Tippi? Because my reasons, though, is take twenty percent off, and I know I could have a better, compelling called action you could and here's my question for you because this actually brings up a really good point, so you have take twenty percent off, and it means you you have a code set up for that. How often does it get used? I actually, you know, since ...

that website's kind of a new thing, now I get email sign ups and quite a few, but I usually get the purchase that right it's true, so what that says to me is that people are being compelled to sign up to your sight but they're not actually in don't actually care about the twenty percent just actually what if they're not actually in purchase mode yet? Yeah, right if they're not using that coupon code I am that same thing at the bottom of my online shop I have you khun you sign up to the mailing list for free shipping no one ever uses that free shipping code right? So instead you can think about something else that might be more compelling so I use email capturing a lot of different ways I really really, really want your email address really? Um so I d'oh sometimes used the evil pop up on my main site I guess it's good though my public collecting the pop up collects and here's the other thing I don't like to think of the evil popov is intrusive I actually like to think of it as the welcome mat welcome to my space let me tell you what you can expect here it's the front door and so what I have in this one is actually set up specifically for people coming to my outfit post so if they're coming in the bloc looking at the outfit post this one's word it a little bit differently than if they come to the main site the main site is welcome to meghan on dotcom something else something else but so what I'm telling people is what they're going to get on the mailing list you want outfit inspiration delivered to your inbox so I'm asking them if they want more of what they're already getting right and then I'm saying you can get some style tips from discounts and free shipping on your next order but I'm actually what I'm just asking them what do you want more of what what you came here looking for right? So in your case sara, it just might be like, do you want more inspiration or do you want ideas on aging gracefully? And I know the internet marketers will tell you we'll tell you over and over again, you know? So then there needs to be like a pdf for a freebie or something there's no pdf there's no specific freebie they just signed up for the list and then when I sent out an e mail I might include it. You know, I might just repurpose the contact from the block right here's my three favorite outfit posts so that content remix strategy that bridget was talking about I just carried over to my email list then I don't really create new content I either email a product where I may email product or two and an outfit post that it's in so that pop up from male chimp or something or is it from your website so this one is actually not this is from wordpress and I use it's the w p pop up plug it on wordpress now male champ it does have an option out to create a pop up it actually if you're creating the sign up form there's a little button that says check here to enable the evil pop up they actually call it the evil papa it's new that's a new feature does not work on shopify there are templates you she she has a template to you have why not just pay a monthly fee you write ugo I'm not sure if that one works on shopify haven't looked into that but you can yes enable male chimp now but yes so I actually use this word press pop up and part of the reason that I do this that I actually really like to do this is because I can set this pop up toe only appear on specific posts so I have some old content that I like and that sometimes drives in traffic through some stuff that I don't want this to show up on and so its content that I don't really want to mark uses a marketing tool just happens to be there so I can just select that this kind of one outfit inspiration on ly appears on posts that are about style so that it actually makes sense so that's why I like that word press pop up plug it sarah you look confused okay no no so I use this but it doesn't come up all the time and it actually doesn't come up on mobile it only comes up on desktop on dh that's because if you're on my main site it's actually optimized for mobile so this little bar floats around and gets fancy and bigger on dhenin mobile it's really big I didn't design my theme it's part of the template it's magic it's somebody else's magic right but so when you go to my sight even if you don't get the evil pop up it's very clear that I really want you to join my email list and then if you're in my block post I actually just embed the male chimp code in the more break of my block post so if you're right and wordpress you could have that more break so when you're scrolling through the entire block you don't see the email sign up form on every post it's only when you're in the individual post do you see that in the middle of the post so these are all things that I've experimented with and I've played around with kind of seeing what the best places are and where people use them I do you can kind of feet up in the corner I do actually have a subscribe button in my side bar nobody uses the sidebar subscribe button like once a year I think it gets used so I do have it there and part of that reason though is if we remember three quarters of all pinterest traffic is coming in on mobile right? They're on a tablet or on their smartphone and so the way my themes have have been set up for a while now is that on mobile all that sidebar stuff shifts to the bottom so they're never getting to that sidebar so the only place you have an email sign up is your sidebar no one's using it I think that might be where your is this kathy yeah yeah you and on your store site like when your puppet say if you were going to have a pop up on your store site is that through shopify you could do that and it will not through shop there's a there's a nap and trap ified there's several hey yeah and I actually the only one that I have in my shop is the one at the bottom and again part of that is because it's what I know about my traffic right so I know that most of my traffic is coming here to my site before they're getting to my shop okay so I'm focused on capturing them here you want a pop? I don't twice right exactly I don't pop up pop up again so that's the first thing that you could do to optimize and it really is the most important thing now it's also the most important is only the most important thing is that you actually use your email est, right? And we don't have time to do a whole lot about email marketing, right? So what I'll just say is, if you want to continue, if you want to use email marketing is part of your pinter strategy, and you should. I don't feel like you have to send a newsletter once a week. One e mail one thought here's one product I want a highlight or let me share with you the post for my blogged, so we're just remixing our old content let me share with you opposed to my blogged p s I've got new wearing is in the shop you don't have to send out a coupon code, you don't have to do anything fancy you're just reminding people that you're there, I'm going to mail champ plug in your pretty images, send the email, remind people that you're there it's really all we're doing and send them on to the shop, give them that little bit of inspiration remix that content from the block and then send them on to the shop once a week, you can add that to your once week strategy, it shouldn't take you more than fifteen or twenty minutes to get that email together any questions about the email conversion well, that is one that just just actually came in and you just answered it so thank you so much great times two is asking that five people voted on it and you want to distract away going great. Ah, now I know that some of you were kind of smart and sneaky and did go to my site and sign up for my email lester me because you felt forced to buy the evil pop up either way it works so you guys will see actually how that works on my email us? Because I do a lot of that hears you know one product one idea put that out there now another thing that you want to dio toe optimize your site is make sure that you have related products and related posts so that's on shopify tio correct or no, you are not on that can automatically just turned that on in a setting there's a setting in chopper pilot turn on related products I think there are app that lets you customize related products. Okay? Like I the way it's set up right now is that it automatically shows the first four from whatever category the product is in. You don't have a lot of customization, but I think then you get an after you but still okay, right? Yeah uh right. So one of the things that you have to be careful of that with traffic from pinterest is you want traffic to come to your site, but you want them to stick around for a little bit, right? You want to make sure that you don't have what's called a high bounce right now some people say that it's okay, if you have a high bounce right bounce rate is how quickly they leave your sight so I will say it's okay, because they come, they might realize it's not for them and they might leave and that might be true, but if they're coming from pinterest, they've already got a visual sense of what they're coming for you so we don't want them to leave, right? We know that they at least sort of think it's for them and one of the best ways that you can get people to stay is to make it easier for them to find other content. So if they've come to a product post instead of having to go back up to your navigation and choose a category now you're saying here but these four other products that you might also be interested in and you could do the same thing on your blogged right? So I used the related post plugin onward press it's literally called related post plugin by changes to say something like you might also like so again things that you couldn't dio to encourage people to actually spend a little more time I one of the things that I noticed when I put that in there that I saw an increase in people pinning posts directly from my sight right? So they had come for something and then they stayed around a little bit longer went to another poster too and pin something different so that's a simple thing that you can do to help people stick around and actually I showed you guys know my email often form in the middle of the block post that set up so that they do it but they say on that page so they can sign up for the email list and doesn't take them away I don't remember exactly how I did that but I know you can do it so it takes them there so that they can continue on the post they confined my related post now the other thing that you're gonna want to do then is when you're thinking about your online shop and you're trying to just increase sales we do want to make sure that we're giving people all the information that they need because chances are pretty good that if they don't know something that they're not going to stick around right, we want to make sure that we're giving them all the information so the most important things you can have if you're trying to sell online and you're trying to increase that conversion is you need to have information on return policy and shipping and you need to make it really easy for people to find, so you'll notice. So I have my return information in my frequently asked questions if we look at the bottom of my site where I had links, I used to just have a cues, and I knew people were emailing me and saying, what's, your return policy, but I have it on my about paige and my cues, but I didn't have a link anywhere that said return right? And they're asking me this before they bought right don't ask me this after let's be clear that they want to know before they want to make sure that they can get it and like it. So I just change this link or turns and f ake use so much easier to find such a little switch, but you want to have those things that people are looking for. The other thing that I dio is at the bottom of all of my product descriptions. I actually say free shipping on all us orders over one hundred twenty five dollars, I put it at the bottom of every product description because I'm not counting on someone to click around my site, right? They're not, they might not, they're probably not going to get to my home page if they're coming in from pinterest. They're very unlikely to be coming in to a home page they're coming into a block post or a product page if they're coming into the product page and I have only have something like free us shipping free shipping and all orders of one hundred five dollars on the front page I was out on an order because I might I have an order that doesn't get me is high of a value is I could have gotten if they just realized that had they spend a little more shipping would have been free so those little bits of information if you could actually put them into your product descriptions still keeping them kind of race but put them into your product descriptions means he won't have to dig around it makes it easier yes it's a little bit of a pain to go back into every product description and add that but if it's a difference between a sale and not a sale it's worth it also just answering things like how will the order ship? How soon will they ship? You know, when people come teo a big brand they've heard off, they don't have to overcome kind of all the trust issues that they might have when they come to our little independent brands right there's a lot of trust that has to happen you're actually asking people a lot to give you kind of big chunks of money and they're not sure if I like is this person still in business or they're gonna ship on time? So any little thing that you khun dio to increase trust is also going to help increase conversion so we want to eliminate confusion and increased trust those were really the two big keys to conversion you'll also notice at the bottom of that product page I also threw in a little testimonial it's not specific to that product but it is from terra gentilly noted business strategist teo I just threw that in there as well. So testimonials if you're the kind of brand where it makes sense to have product reviews, you could put those on there right? Social proof social proof is a big one right? People like to see things like that so just the logos and here's the thing studies have shown that it doesn't even actually have to be a big name logo any set of logo's on your site now don't lie, but any sort of logo's on your site could actually help people feel like they can trust you more. So if you were featured in something smaller regional even if you were feature on somebody's blawg that maybe most people haven't heard of just put that logo out there because that social prove absolutely increases trust and then of course if you have specific products and you can highlight that thats even better right so I was really fortunate and that these earrings were worn by tricia yearwood on the cover of better homes and gardens don't ask me how that happened I had no control over that one it was magic but you better believe that the first thing that I did was upload that picture and put as seen in better homes and gardens actually one of my stores called me they said we saw your earrings we can't believe it and people say that to me sometimes and I don't always believe them so I ran out to the store grab the magazine and sure enough there was uh so I I believe that they're her personal pair she's warned them also on tv so I think she just don't uh but yes you better believe you're put I'm putting that social proof in there so what I actually want to do now is come to our studio audience and take a look at their websites and maybe see where they could be converting better right because I think that's what we want to show you we're not missing any opportunities all right so tiffany let's go ahead and take a look at your sight so I know that you have the evil pop up and it might not play won't come up thought four hours it's not gonna come up for me right now you guys can take my word for it that tiffany has the evil pop up but what I would say is right, I don't think that that twenty percent off is maybe serving you as well as something else could yeah, I also don't like my graphic on it, I don't think you and I have to tell you, just like a little point of detail, I have the mack with retina display, and it is it pretty looks pretty low rise on my screen, so I would play around with that for sure, and then I'm not sure if you can kind of change that if you're coming in on the blogger because it might be that if they're coming in from a block post, which now that you're going to start more aggressive content creation, they might more often than not coming here so especially there that twenty percent off coupon isn't quite right know, and so I like the idea of putting it can you scroll dio I haven't email often at the bottom of each are let me out, let me actually you're like no, no, no e no, now I have a follow, so I don't know how to do that, but I could look into how teo and actually here's something in addition to that that you don't have, um, which is you don't have a pin it button on those posts, right? Put the air on the picture no not happening. Okay, that's on the word press one yeah, so that might not as you remember it over it's funny because spotify eyes enable rich pins automatic right? So you ads on maybe my products and I don't have it on my block. Yeah, I'm sorry that I would get it coming up in your shot. I didn't know that. Okay, can you explain rich pins? Yes. So rich pens and there's actually an entire bonus video devoted to that because we didn't quite have time to deal with it here, but what rich pins are is a pin with actually more data so you can see right here this one is coming in from apartment therapy and it's got their little savage caan there and when I click on it in addition to whatever description the re penner has put in, I actually get apartment therapy is just like title and description and on a product pen scroll down and find out really quick like I have many, many of them I'm not taking my own advice. I actually scheduled a lot over the holiday weekend. Okay, so when a product pin what you actually get then is the title, but then you also get the price and whether or not it's in stock and the nice thing about shopify is that they now do that it automatically I actually sent by not manually because it was before they started doing it, but that was one of the reasons that I chose shopify is my online shop is because they did enable rich pins and rich pin zahra really easy way to increase click through even on product pins so they're definitely important all right let's go back to stephanie site so you come up with the bottom of the theme cash that's really far in that it is really far to scroll down all right? So the other thing actually that I'm looking at since we're talking about conversion here is you haven't option for customer reviews but they're clearly no yeah yeah so what I would dio is customer reviews could be a really great tool for building trust but you're gonna need to reach out to your existing customers and ask them to write reviews I actually have an automated email that does that the uh but the thing is, is the site so new right that I have only had maybe twenty sails on it? Yeah, ever then I might actually take this down for a little bit. I was wondering I thought about doing that I do normally right? If I have a review on an item like yes hips have a review from other customers I would do that for now but it does it looks like nobody's ever shopped there bataille for right and actually what they say to is that people would rather see, like, one hundred four star reviews than one five star review, so the number of reviews influences people as much as actually the rating itself. So until you've got a little bit more of a customer based on that site, I would probably just take that down and I would do what you've been doing is actually putting in those testimonials you do, you don't related product there, so that that's a good thing, and then you have arrived at the bottom and you just described the bottom and you have the pop up. I feel that v I p status thing, it doesn't really tell people anything. Also esso there's probably a better way to phrase that yeah as well, and that might actually be what I included my public is what the status is. Yeah, what does it mean? What does it mean? What do you get? What do you get? Right? So people like to get an instant that twenty percent here's what you get with what he's got, what do they get with the status? The latest tiffany and studios content and items and what's new and wearing matt yeah, yeah, and, you know, make peak you can also even more strategic, like, if you're, you know, you have that pacific northwest collection that you haven't put online yet yeah study that I'll throw it out there so you could actually go in to this post and you could make your email called action very specific to this post so I would probably go in and change this post because this has already happened, right? So instead, what you might say is and you have you know you have new collection coming soon, but I want to know when the new collection is available online join the mailing list yeah, so you can and then you can just plug in that that basic male champ form right in the middle of the post you could pace the code, but you couldn't give them a very specific reason, so if they came over because they said they saw this on pinterest and I would also crop it yeah, make it another version if they come over because they saw that you want to get them on the list because they want to be like yes, I absolutely want that so you want to add that as well? Uh, the other thing is you don't have anywhere thank you, you haven't thanked you and even more important than that is just the word return yeah that's really what they're looking for they want to know if they can return it if they don't like it and they want to know how much it costs to ship right? Yeah free and I should be putting for moving everywhere chips free no matter why no matter what price yes yes tio needs be everywhere like I actually haven't seen that anywhere right? So right that's a really important thing that not only do they not know and they think it might be extensive they don't know it's they really don't know and then they're missing out because it should be free yeah so so I should be in each one of my listings I yeah each one of your listings and you may even want to go ahead and do it at the bottom and the other thing is you know this is going to change maura's you're blogging, right? Right but if you haven't posted in a while which you should be now because you're gonna do it every week right? But if for some reason you want and you want to just update this, you could always just be like, hey, don't forget free shipping right eye so you could use that to kind of change things a little bit or you could even make one of these links say all order ship free you could do a lot of tweaks in there to help people realize you know hey come here and then I'm not sure if it's an option with the shopify blawg tto add related posts in yeah get that sidebar that should anything either that or not I don't know you could actually do that manually right? So we're talking about that content remix and so now you develop a couple more posts around the pacific northwest go back into the old ones in at the bottom say like you know you could throw a tiny little thumbnail image and say and don't forget to check out this post don't forget to check out that post so it's not as eazy is doing it automatically it could be a bar even along the way a bar at the bottom absolutely could be some code that you copy and paste in every single one you know you try to make it easy for yourself all right? So you don't have a ton of change is just some minor good yeah so it's going to take a look at cathy on dso actually, cathy has an interesting scenario that I think a lot of our online audiences in and that you have the sight but your shop is through nsc shop reign and we don't ask this question before you know if that's where I have my products is that ok? And it is okay but I think is you're seeing you can't optimize at sea the way that we just talked through optimizing tiffany's site right so that's a really big problem because people are probably pinning your products from etc and you and it might be generating traffic. And you might know that if you have google analytics set up for your etsy shop, but if they're coming and clicking and leaving because they have to think about if it fits in their space, or maybe they really want something custom, and I know as he lets you request custom, but I don't think many people use that as they were probably rather contact you so you might be missing that, um, should capture email address, right? You can't capture email and here's. The other thing is you don't capture the emails when they buy with shopify. You can link that with male chimp. So when people check out are you doing that, they have the option to be added to your list? Must I need to look into that again? I did it on my wordpress site. Yes, sure make sure that you're doing in here extend it another way. If we are fortunate enough to get them to buy right away, we still want to get them on the email list because it's actually much easier to sell to your existing customers, then it is to sell the new customers, right, so if we do get them to buy we want to make sure if they're interested they join our list so shopify actually lets you integrate with male champ and there's a little check box at the bottom of the check out that says, you know, yes, I want to receive updates and then they can check it if they don't. So I make sure you have that in there as well, and then you're actually going to be making those changes in your blog's as well, cathy, because you're going to move over to another blood. Now, the nice thing that you are doing well is that you do actually have those related post, so you have that right from the beginning, which is nice, but you may also I'm not sure if the blogger one lets you like the word press related post play unless you change which poster being shown, so you might wanna look into that because it will auto populate if you don't do anything. So if we look at my site, you know those related posts, if you don't do anything to it, it'll auto populate what it thinks is a good idea, but all actually going and edit them and make them really focused so that I feel like it's the most related things in there, okay, so I mean, I know you're about to kind of do a sight why your graphics so I know you're about to do kind of a site. Relax, are you thinking you're going to go to shop afire yourself? Not sure where you think you were pressed, what I was thinking was with the block, but how important is it to be able to have a pin it button to a photo? Because I think it's actually really important, because it makes it so much easier for people to pin your content if they show up on your site and while you were looking at it on my computer and you can see I have a painted button and also button if I want to schedule it, and if I want to schedule it a different way, you know, I have a lot of panic buttons, but this is my job, right? Your customer might not have all of those bookmarked and b there's a seventy five percent chance that there on mobile, great. So having those pennant buttons makes a big difference. So on shopify on, if you have your blogged on shopify, do they have that pin it button like one? Is there an option that that in there, do you know tiffany way? Not because I didn't do it otherwise I know I would, oh, so I am imagining that is a separate plug in or a separate they are tiny dad, so it might be an app that you have to buy separately, and you can actually go to pinterest and add things in manually. It's a pain in the butt, I think it's, maybe it's, good use. I don't know exactly. We'll find out you can actually add it. No, not that I'll find it later. Maybe we'll have them post it somewhere. You can actually manually add a pin it button to any content you want there's a code, right? Yeah, and you have to pace it everywhere. It's like their goodies, page, right, and there's a code, and you can pay, sit so you can do it. It's. Not the most ideal, but it is a work around if you absolutely need it.

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bonus material with purchase

Pinterest® Marketing Resources
Syllabus
Workbook

Ratings and Reviews

Ronna
 

Megan is a gifted teacher and fantastic presenter. I have enjoyed several of her courses on Creative Live and as always, great content and great style in every lesson. I have learned so much more about Pinterest, strategic pinning and having a long term marketing plan. Since taking this course, I have implemented a content pinning strategy resulting in a huge increase in views + new customers to my Etsy shop. Thanks Megan!

JenVazquezPhotography
 

SOOOooooo worth the purchase -- I am so amazed that one little one day class could help me so much. I'm just overwhelmed with information. Fortunately, she includes information and workbooks to help you step by step. My analytics show that 80% of referrals to my website are from Pinterest, thank goodness for this course to help me with all that new business!

Mirka Laine-Pietila
 

This was my first Creative Live course ever and I found it totally worth the price. Megan is very knowledgeable and professional, plus her way of speaking and telling is very pleasant, which I think, is also very important when following classes like this. I´m not on Pinterest yet, but her class gave me the encouragement to join and make the best of it. Thumbs up, absolutely!

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