15 07 sean johnson

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO FUNNEL OPTIMIZATION

sean johnson @intentionally http://www.sean-johnson.com

http://www.twitter.com/intentionally

http://www.sean-johnson.com


http://www.digintent.com

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO FUNNEL OPTIMIZATION sean johnson @intentionally

Partner at Digital Intent and Founder Equity Professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg school of Management

Product, UI/UX, Development, Traction www.digintent.com

Seed stage technology investors. www.founderequity.com



http://www.digintent.com/

http://www.founderequity.com


http://www.founderequity.com

HTTP://INTLY.ME/FUNNEL-NICE

http://INTLY.ME/FUNNEL-NICE

“TODAY’S PRESENTATION BY @INTENTIONALLY

WAS THE BEST I’VE EVER HEARD.”

“TODAY’S PRESENTATION BY @INTENTIONALLY

WAS THE WORST I’VE EVER HEARD.”


“Most startups don't fail at building a product. They fail at acquiring customers.”

gabriel weinberg http://intly.me/XFf69t

http://twitter.com/yegg



http://intly.me/XFf69t




“Growth is about taking your product and optimizing it to produce compound interest. There are very few (if any) silver bullets when it comes to growth. But there are many micro optimizations.”

andy johns http://intly.me/WNGdDF


http://intly.me/WNGdDF

http://www.twitter.com/ibringtraffic


How to do experiments.

1. Identify an area for improvement (homepage to email conversion, etc.) 2. Create a hypothesis (if we simplify the form we’ll improve conversion.) 3. Deploy as an A/B test. 4. If the change improves the metric you’re measuring, roll it out. 5. Rinse and repeat.




“A great deal of perseverance is required. There are a huge number of failed experiments before success. There is a fine line between failure and success.”


michael birch http://intly.me/Vw1xin

https://twitter.com/mickbirch



http://intly.me/Vw1xin







Your first thousand users are an extension of customer development. Focus on learning and getting to product/market fit.

hiten shah http://intly.me/W0kpAJ


http://www.twitter.com/hnshah

http://intly.me/W0kpAJ




You don’t need more features. Spend 80% of your time on refining existing features, and only 20% on new development.

dave mcclure http://intly.me/XWdGcF

https://twitter.com/davemcclure



http://intly.me/XWdGcF

Use surveys to home in on product/market fit. When you get 40% of users telling you they’d be very disappointed, it’s likely you’re on to something.


sean ellis http://intly.me/ZhXBCZ

https://twitter.com/SeanEllis



http://intly.me/ZhXBCZ

ACTIVATION





ADS BY 19% HOMEPAGE BY 19%

PRICING PAGE BY 19% SIGNUP FORM BY 19%

= 100% CONVERSION INCREASE

18



19

Segment your users and survey them. Identify their objections.

Use Quaraloo to ask questions.

Use Olark or another live chat tool to capture users who might leave.

20




Value Proposition: The promise you make to customers. The most important factor. !Relevance: Is this what the visitor thought they were going to see? !Clarity: Is it clear what action you want them to take? !Urgency: Is there a reason they should take action now? !Anxiety: Are you doing anything to give the user pause about taking the next step? !Distraction: Are you doing anything to divert the user’s attention from the action you want them to take?




The LIFT Model lets you look at your pages from each lens, identifying ways to remove conversion blockers and leverage conversion drivers more effectively.

45.5% IMPROVEMENT




23




24




25




26




27




28




29




30




31

32




33




34




USE ANCHORING.

35




USE ANCHORING.

36




37




38




39




40




Provide an offer to get emails (whitepapers, etc.)

Identify the window when they’re most likely to convert and focus your energy there. If there’s < 1% chance of conversion after 7 days, focus your energy before 7 days.

A/B test every email - focus on the subject line.

Add a call to action to every email.

Segment your subscribers based on the call to action that caused them to sign up.

Create auto-triggered emails using customer.io to follow up with people who bail out of your signup process.

EMAIL CONVERSION IN 90 SECONDS


http://customer.io



Provide a simple walkthrough of your core experience.

Have your demo assist the user in the creation of their initial content.

Use gamification (LinkedIn’s % complete, etc.) to incentivize users to complete next steps.

If connecting with Facebook, consider auto-following friends already on the service. http://intly.me/Uq4xet

Auto-follow influential users to get over the cold start problem.

Don’t create friction in the user experience with heavy moderation tools, etc. Particularly early on. You can address spam later. http://intly.me/Uq4xet

Send a series of email autoresponders over 1 week teaching users how to get the most out of your service.

ONBOARDING IN 90 SECONDS


http://intly.me/Uq4xet




Get users to the Aha moment as fast as possible. For Facebook that’s 10 friends in 7 days. For Twitter it’s following 30 people.

chamath palihapitiya http://intly.me/12T1saz


https://twitter.com/chamath

http://intly.me/12T1saz









Backfill data




77







Strongly consider using web viewswhile figuring out activation.







RETENTION


Bucket and track the retention rate of specific sets of users using cohorts. This allows

you to see how product enhancements impact retention for new groups of users vs. old.

http://intly.me/Urou4B

!


http://intly.me/Urou4B



Your best tool for retention is email.

You’ve been outbid (eBay) Year in Review (LinkedIn) You have a new friend/follower (Facebook, Twitter) You’ve been ousted as the mayor (Foursquare) !










Pinterest auto-follows connections but staggered them, sending an email notification each time a “connection” was made to boost returning users. http://intly.me/Uq4xet !























REFERRAL


Make heavy use of social artifacts. Ask for automatic notifications during network connection. Identify every meaningful sharable event.




Make it painless for users creating new content to also spread the word via external networks. http://intly.me/VWpJKQ


http://intly.me/VWpJKQ







https://medium.com/getting-real-survey-answers-out-of-smart-busy-people?

utm_content=buffer40dbb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_ca

mpaign=buffer



https://medium.com/getting-real-survey-answers-out-of-smart-busy-people?

Allow users to embed widgets on their sites, with text links to your site (SEO benefit to boot!)




Address book importing is likely your best tool for generating referrals.







Filter friends before suggesting invites.




Autofill referral text.




Send your friends a gift.

!vs.

!You can only send 1 more gift today.




Create custom, personalized landing pages http://intly.me/12PiTEz


http://intly.me/12PiTEz












Provide incentives - ideally ones that improve the experience of using the product.




ACQUISITION


Make sure your site is crawlable, has good information architecture and loads quickly. Eliminate duplicate content.

Do keyword research and target high volume, low competition, low cost phrases.

Create consistent, compelling, evergreen content targeting long tail keywords.

Link internally to other relevant content pages.

Optimize headlines and meta descriptions for clickthrough. Use video xml and Google authorship to get thumbnails into results.

Find out who’s linking to your competitors and try to get links to you as well.

Build links through guest posts, product reviews, directory submissions, etc.

SEO IN 90 SECONDS

rand fishkin http://intly.me/YdXAsX


http://www.twitter.com/randfish

http://intly.me/YdXAsX



Write about the problem space, not your product.

Aim for 20 posts per month. http://intly.me/Ye1Atq

Create evergreen content that will still be relevant and searched for in 2 years.

People can’t get enough of lists. Use odd numbers.

Collect emails and send them new content - http://intly.me/XVagqJ

Interview people who would be influential to your customers. They’re likely to spread the word about the interview, and the content will be well received.

Google likes longer content. http://intly.me/15jEusz

Do lots of guest posting. 1 for you, 2 for them. http://intly.me/W0vxxD

People love infographics.

Always include something for people to do when they finish reading. Suggest other posts, include a call to action, etc.

!

CONTENT MARKETING IN 90 SECONDS


http://intly.me/Ye1Atq

http://intly.me/XVagqJ

http://intly.me/15jEusz

http://intly.me/W0vxxD



Target individual writers, not publications. Do your homework.

Start with small blogs and work your way up.

Be brief with your pitch.

Craft a compelling story. No one cares about product specs.

Build relationships before you need them. Send reporters tips.

Have 1-3 key points you want to get across during an interview. Hit those hard.

Follow up immediately with logos, headshots, product screens, etc. Make their lives easier.

PR IN 90 SECONDS

sean blanda http://intly.me/Yx3INN


http://www.twitter.com/seanblanda

http://intly.me/Yx3INN



You probably shouldn’t do it except for testing, or if your LTV is high. http://intly.me/Xb233s

But if you do...

Monitor conversion, not just clickthrough.

Use broad match initially to see what people search for, then narrow to increase CTR

Use negative keywords to avoid showing up on undesirable SERPs.

Create one ad group per keyword to increase quality score.

Match ads to highly relevant landing pages.

Kill off or rewrite anything with less than 2% CTR

Always be running variations.

!

ADWORDS IN 90 SECONDS


http://intly.me/Xb233s



Use Followerwonk to research potential users to follow.

Engage - retweet, favorite, etc. to get on their radar.

Tweets have a half-life of 1 hour, Facebook 1 day. Set a posting schedule accordingly.

Use social to warm up leads before sending an email. http://intly.me/XbcDHH

Hashtags are usually noise, but can be a great way to reach people at conferences remotely. http://intly.me/VmdmFt

Images in Facebook have the highest clickthrough rate. Include link in the copy.

Answer highly visible questions on Quora.

Post presentations to Slideshare.

Submit relevant posts to Reddit, Hacker News, etc.

SOCIAL IN 90 SECONDS


http://www.followerwonk.com

http://intly.me/XbcDHH

http://intly.me/VmdmFt

http://www.quora.com



Images are the most important factor. Test 50 images. Test orientation (looking right, looking left.) Test color and shape of borders.

Use country targeting when testing conversion. US costs 5-10x other countries. Use Canada, New Zealand, etc.

Focus on conversion, not just clickthrough rate. It’s not uncommon to have 40-60% conversion rates if it’s targeted well.

News feed ads get 45x higher conversion than sidebar ads.

Use mobile app installs to acquire new users for iOS/Android apps

Leverage custom audiences.

Take advantage of retargeting.

FACEBOOK ADS IN 90 SECONDS

andy johns http://intly.me/WNO2ct


http://www.twitter.com/ibringtraffic

http://intly.me/WNO2ct




HTTP://INTLY.ME/FUNNEL-NICE



http://INTLY.ME/FUNNEL-NICE

sean johnson @intentionally http://www.sean-johnson.com

http://www.twitter.com/intentionally


http://livepage.apple.com/


15 07 sean johnson

Documents

ultimate guide

productmarket

important

email conversion

conversion

users

content

create