Opt In/Sign Up Option: Things to Avoid

The Ultimate Conversion Webpage Review webinar series reviewed several websites to show where website owners make mistakes when running their websites for conversion. One of the websites reviewed is a tax deed report site. The site doesn’t offer an enviable value proposition on what one is actually going to get when they complete the call to actions on the site.

In this webinar, A/B testing software Convert along with Creative Thirst‘s Bobby Hewitt reviewed a number of things many websites do wrong which in turn end up hurting their conversion optimization efforts. Conversion is a marketing technique of convincing or turning your casual visitors and traffic into paying customers. In the webinar, there were several sites submitted for review, if you want to find out more, you can watch it all here.

To start with, the headline is just a short presentation which reveals the simple method of acquiring properties for pennies on a dollar generating safe returns. It seems to imply that this is what the featured presentation is all about and you need to watch it. The problem is that when you click on it, you can’t watch it straight away. Rather, there’s a cutesy message that asks one to opt-in first. It feels like things kicked off in the wrong foot – like you have made a mistake.

Giving Compelling Reasons

That said, what do you expect to get in a Tax Deed Report page? On the site, there is another video that is 10 minutes long. Apart from leaving one wondering how many videos there are, the question of whether your name and email are worth the 10 minutes also comes to mind. This is something you want to correct, if you want to get their attention.

[Tweet “A good test for a long video is cutting it down and showing the audience what they’re going to get before asking them to convert.”]

Most of the time, people are reluctant to opt-in primarily because they are tired of receiving spam email, and yours is no different. With that information, you need to assure the visitor it’s worth it. You could begin by letting everyone know that there is more than one video. Also, tell the site visitor the length of the videos combined – is it 60 minutes long? They’ll want to know that. This shows just how much value has been missed on this site.

The video featured is just a short presentation. Short is good if you wanted a customer to watch it right there and make his decision. Quite contrary in this case though – the site wants you to opt-in first then watch the video. So, the short video may hurt conversion since the visitor may not see it as valuable enough for opting-in. They also have no idea if the view they are opting in for is worth all that trouble.

Deliver on Your Promise

One thing you should also consider is what your visitors are going to get if they click the play button. If they don’t get what they are expecting, it will be a disappointment. And disappointment only leads to high bounce rates (visitors quickly leaving your website). So, make sure that what you infer on everything that is clickable – links, images, videos – is what you give people.

For example, in another video they’re implying that the value of the short presentation is so high that visitors will be willing to share their email address. Yet, they’re not even willing to share a snippet of what it’s all about, what one will get once they click the play button. A good test here would be to cut down the 10-minute video into 2 or 3-minute portions and show what the visitor is going to get – or give a brief demonstration – before actually asking them to convert. Dan Shewan further explains that here,

People almost always overestimate how long a video should be, and how long it will take to produce. No matter how well-produced your video might be, or how valuable the information on offer, attention spans are finite, so resist the temptation to include an epic, eight-minute video on your landing pages unless you’re absolutely sure that doing so is justified.

If you can, produce several versions of a video, each of a different duration, and test them. I’d recommend shorter videos for landing pages, ideally around 90 seconds – just long enough to convey the essential information about your product or service, but not so long that you risk boring your visitors into bouncing before they convert.

You can read more about this in his article here: Why Video Landing Pages Kick Ass.

What’s your Expert Level?

When you get to the copy itself, it lacks an expert status. There really is no reason for me to listen or believe what the site is saying because there is no status to suggest that Jack Bosch is one of the country’s foremost experts in tax delinquent property investing. Anyone can say anything about anything (especially in the internet) but you have to have credentials so that people will actually believe you. A good copy should:

• Support the Headline
• Outline Benefits
• Address Common Objections

None of that is indicated. All this needs is to be lifted to the top and the value augmented in order to get the opt-in that you want. In giving your customer what they need, you also have to think about what they need to see or read first before making any kind of commitment.

Answering the Questions

The page also features an image of the United States, complete with all the colors, and is not congruent with the values of the proposition as well. There are so many questions that spring to mind when you look at it: How does the image relate to the Tax Deed report? Is this the report that I’m going to get? Is the same report that I’ll get entirely in the video? For one, it would quell some of these issues if there was a sample report. This is a big value and cost problem what with the vague statements used.

If you consider a statement like getting an instant access, it doesn’t tell what you’re going to instantly access – is it the video, or something else? It would be interesting to see the heat map results on how many people are clicking on the video. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch the webinar here to get a better picture.