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What Could Your Company Do With 5% More Sales Next Year?
Hiya guys,
In a perfect world, I would write software and it would sell on absolutely nothing other than product quality. I don't live in a perfect world, and neither do you. We have to succeed at the sales and marketing aspect of the software business to achieve our goals.
I've gotten pretty good at writing messages and designing sites and applications which convert over the years, but the engineer in me has to level with you -- it can still feel like Black Magic. I don't understand why adding two words to a homepage can increase sales by 10%. I can't fathom why people would ignore a 10-year-old company's reputation if they were turned off by something as simple as the copy on their trial sign up page.
It makes no sense.
And yet I'm a scientist. I know how to run experiments. And I know what those data have demonstrated to be true, over and over and over again.
- Customers are exquisitely sensitive to the words we use -- in our headlines, in our copy, in our shopping carts. Phrases which "feel" equivalent at first blush often have wildly different results.
- The exact same software product, built with the same loving care, supported by the same team of experts, can see two different web pages which feel equally aesthetically appealing sell $1 million... or double that... or half that. (The customers involved will swear blind that they are far too rational for this. Either math doesn't work, or they're mistaken.)
- We systematically neglect cheap, easy, and inexpensive nudges near the top of the funnel, where it is easier to persuade users to start a relationship with us, in favor of over-investing on expensive, difficult improvements late in the funnel or in the product itself, where it is harder and slower to meaningfully move the needle for our businesses.
- We pay lip serviceto the idea that we should be using data-driven decisionmaking, but the actual practice of our companies frequently ignores it. We collect Big Data but our decisions are Big Guesses.
- We recruit teams of smart and talented people both to build the product and to market/sell it -- and yet they find themselves fighting each other rather than cooperating, because of seemingly irreconcilable differences in priorities, communication style, and ways of reasoning about common responsibilities.
We know, to a moral certainty, that conversion optimization works. We've seen the case studies from the savviest firms in our industry, from Google to 37signals. Many of us have seen it work in our own companies... and yet we just don't actually manage to do it every day.
There's a word for that. Negligence. If a doctor knew that a particular procedure improved results as much as A/B testing does, and he routinely just didn't bother to do it, he'd end up sued, brought before the medical board, or in jail. Our profession is newer and (mercifully) only kills our sales figures when we screw up... but man, do we ever screw up.
You don't have to be stupid to make wrong guesses about copy, design, sales messages, and application behavior. Oh no! Smart people do it all the time... which is why smart people have cottoned onto testing.
Minor Changes That Had Drastically Outsized Impact On Their Businesses
- 37signals replaced a beautiful sales page for one of their products with a more minimalistic page heavy on sales copy. (It was a variant on long copy, a style roughly similar to what you're reading right now, which is popular with savvy marketers because it converts extremely well.) Despite the team being skeptical, the redesign increased paid signups by 37.5%. They then tried other variations, focused more on their users than on their product... and more than doubled their original signups.
- Bingo Card Creator changed two characters in it's source code -- changing a trial limitation from 15 cards to 8 cards -- and sold five figures more software as a result. (I had built that business from the ground up for 5 years, and I had publicly claimed -- prior to running the test -- "I strongly doubt it will make any difference at all." Shows what I know.)
- Khan Academy is the world's pre-eminent charity offering a totally free, high-quality education to students who might not otherwise have access to one. They've received extensive media coverage and most people find them by looking for Khan Academy by name. Their users know their story. We increased their signups by 3.6% by adding three words to their homepage. (The addition? "Completely free, forever." But for the want of those three words, which might seem unnecessary, Khan Academy would have lost the opportunity to reach tens of thousands of students.)
How do we know that these changes mattered, and that the results aren't the result of caprice, chance, or confounding factors? The same way we know that aspirin cures headaches. Science. It works. Specifically, all used an A/B test, which is a variant on "Give half of the people with headaches a pill with aspirin, then give the other half a placebo, and measure which group sees more relief of their symptoms."
A/B testing is well-established in traditional marketing, having been used by catalog retailers and direct sales operations since at least the 1920s. It is one tool for conversion optimization, a discipline for crafting messages, designs, experiences, and software which convince our customers to take the actions which we want them to take.
Naturally, we are going to use this power in the service of selling our customers good software which solves real problems in their lives, rather than using it to enslave middle American housewives to dopamine treadmills farming virtual cabbage. (Bad dog, Zynga, bad dog.)
Conversion optimization can:
- Increase sales by inducing more free trial users to purchase the software, or by helping them navigate through the payment process.
- Slash advertising costs by increasing the rate at which an ad collects clicks or a landing page collects leads.
- Get more users for our software by converting more website visitors into trialers, through increasing the effectiveness of our marketing message and allowing us to identify (and remove) barriers in our signup process.
- Increase revenue by re-positioning our product line, such as plans of a SaaS or software packages, such that customers decide to opt for our richer offerings.
- Increase customer happiness by allowing us to smooth over rough edges inside and outside of our software, by making our websites easier to use, and by helping us make our copy comprehensible, educational, and appealing.
Why Aren't You Succeeding With Conversion Optimization Already?
I've consulted for dozens of software companies on conversion optimization. Very few companies feel like they have as good a handle on it as they could. Let me hum a few bars and you tell me what sounds familiar:
- You know you should be A/B testing, but just never found a good opportunity to get started.
- You know you should be A/B testing, but haven't had the time to figure out what to test.
- You know you should be A/B testing, but aren't quite sure you know how to do it the right way.
- You've read what seems like a thousand posts about A/B testing, but they present results which appear random and contradictory, and if you start A/B testing you want to do it in a disciplined and systematic fashion.
- You actually have A/B tested, once or twice, but you lost momentum and it isn't a common practice at your company.
- You A/B test all the time, and you've gotten decent results, but you'd love a second set of eyes to make sure you're not overlooking other opportunities for improvement.
- You'd love to A/B test, but it causes political issues with other people at the company, and you don't know how to solve them.
- You'd love to A/B test, but you need the cooperation of other people at the company to do it, and you haven't been able to convince them to help you get started.
How I Will Help You Improve Your Conversion Optimization
- I built two software businesses on the back of conversion optimization. I'll be sharing a comprehensive, holistic view of a software company, and my substantial bag of tricks. (I've failed at 500 tests so you won't have to... well, quite so often. If you're not failing at tests frequently you're not doing them right. See Chapter 1.)
- I consulted for roughly 2.5 years at over a dozen leading software companies on A/B testing and conversion optimization. My clients included Fog Creek, Matasano Software, Wildbit (makers of Beanstalk), and WPEngine. We often produced absolutely smashing wins, including improvements which increased revenue by millions, conversions by double digit percentages, and the like. I am intimately familiar with practical issues that sometimes stymie real companies' attempts at conversion optimization, like coordination and politics, and how to overcome them.
- I quite literally wrote the book on conversion optimization at software companies. It was called Sell More Software, sold over 1,000 copies, was received well at many savvy software companies (Dropbox and Heroku among them), and has a 4.5 rating on Amazon. I can explain both the art and science of conversion optimization in a manner comprehensible (and non-threatening) to engineers, marketers, and executives.
- I developed the leading Ruby on Rails OSS A/B testing framework, A/Bingo. I know the technical issues you'll face if you try to do things with server-side frameworks, the tradeoffs with going with off-the-shelf tools, and how to make the right decision at your company. I also speak geek natively, so if you're trying to convince engineers in your company to give this a try, they'll be inclined to trust my arguments. (I am also bilingual in marketer.)
Is This Course Right For Your Particular Situation?
Who will get the most benefit out of this course?
- B2B software businesses with good appreciations of their unit economics benefit strongly from conversion optimization. For example, if you know that you convert roughly 20% of free trials of a particular plan level into customers, and they stay an average of 20 months at $200 a month, then the LTV of a single free trial is $800. If you get a hundred free trials a month, a single A/B test which causes a 5% lift in conversion rates -- i.e. 20% to 21% -- to the paid plan is worth $4,000. A month. Forever.
- Companies which have a low-touch step in their funnels anywhere, like a lead capture / free trial form coming off of paid traffic, benefit disproportionately from conversion optimization It's often easiest to nudge customers early in their relationships with companies. Think of it as taking your best shot at making a good first impression, since that gates your ability to have a second impression.
- Engineers with a desire to learn marketing, or marketers with a desire to exercise quantitative rigor, often perform best at A/B testing. A/B testing is a tool which helps smart people get radically better at things which they often originally thought they couldn't ever learn to do. I've seen classically trained engineers (like myself), with no marketing or sales background, become some of the most accomplished copywriters at their companies. I've also seen conversion optimization used effectively by non-technical marketers, as a supplement to the creativity they bring to the job, and a good way to get buy-in from engineering-heavy companies.
- A/B testing works good at producing highly visible results which communicate well internally. Many designers, marketers, and engineers sometimes find it difficult to convince internal stakeholders that their favorite project deserves the time and resources that it needs to be done well. A/B testing provides comprehensible, independently verifiable evidence that the work that was done was to the benefit of the company. You'll look like a hero to your boss and coworkers.
A/B testing and conversion optimization work for most software companies operating at scale, but are not appropriate for everyone.
- If you do not already have a software product, do not take this course. Ship stuff to customers. Everything else is a distraction.
- If your software company has not reached scale, don't take this course. You should have thousands of visitors a month and sizable revenues already. Conversion optimization is multiplicatively effective with the size of your business, so if it's still embryonic, put this off until you've grown a bit.
- If you don't have a B2B product (or a B2C product with a very strong revenue model) already operating successfully, don't take this course. Assuming you're selling software with B2B price points, you'll recoup your investment in the course extraordinarily quickly -- for many software companies, on the first marginal lead. If you're selling B2C apps at $0.99, I appreciate that it's probably not economical for you. (n.b. Businesses pay money for things that make businesses money. Like, say, this.)
Take the Software Conversion Optimization Course
What will you learn from this course?
- How to get started with A/B testing, even if you've never done it before, don't have a statistics background, or are new to conversion optimization
- How to apply conversion optimization to the points of highest leverage in software companies specifically, like home pages, trial signup forms, lead capture forms, SaaS pricing pages, and purchase flows
- How to think about conversion optimization systematically, so you can stop doing a random walk and start making intelligent predictions (which you'll be wrong at, occasionally, but that's OK)
- How to prioritize possible tests so that you can start working, right now, on something which is likely to be high impact for your company... and keep working on high impact items
- How to make your organization successful with conversion optimization as a team, and over time, so that it's a repeatable strategy rather than a fun one-shot magic trick
So what will the course contain when it is released?
What's included?
- 5 hours of video lessons (Tentative Chapter List) to start (and supercharge) your conversion optimization. Watch them in your browser or download them. No DRM nonsense.
- Actual results of real A/B tests by a variety of software companies which have given their permission to be featured.
- Interviews with other software experts about their experiences with conversion optimization, stories about tests which worked (and which didn't), and insights on design, copywriting, and pricing/packaging
- Worksheets, Checklists, and Presentations so you can follow-along with the videos or refer to the tests presented in them after the fact
- Bonus: I'm throwing in a few surprises.
What Options Are Available To Customize This For My Company?
- The Starter Package, for teams who want to learn about conversion optimization then plan and execute their own tests.
- The Personalized Advice Package, for teams which want both the training but also some concrete recommendations of tests that their company, specifically, can get started with.
- The Mini-Consult Package, for companies which want a more in-depth strategic review in addition to the course and personalized recommendations.
The Starter Edition (Pre-Order)
Interested in taking the course? The course is not ready yet -- I'm still actively working on it, but I don't want to offer a date in case it slips due to reasons beyond my control. If you want, you can pre-order it now. If you pre-order it, you'll be charged today. I'll tell you via email when it is ready, at which point you'll be able to watch the videos online or download them. No DRM nonsense -- I trust you.
| Item Name | Price (USD) |
|---|---|
| Software Conversion Optimization (Starter) (Pre-order. ) | $497.00 |
The Personalized Advice Edition (Pre-Order)
Frequently, companies know that they need to do A/B testing but aren't quite sure where to get started for maximum impact. If you buy this edition of the course, in addition to the videos which you can watch at your own pace, you can join one of two webinars, to be scheduled in early 2015, in which I'll present recommendations for your company's design, copy, and signup/lead gathering/purchasing flows. You'll be able to ask questions. You should anticipate roughly the level of detail you'd get if we went out to coffee together or if you participated at a "teardown" live-feedback session at a conference.
In addition to the personalized advice for your website, you'll also see the personalized advice for the other companies present that day. (And they will, naturally, see the advice I give you.)
Boring administrivia: I'll be in touch when the course launches to ask which day you'd like to attend and, if you have a preference, which part of your site or app to focus my recommendations on. All participants will receive a recording of the event after it. It will not be posted publicly or sold afterwards. To ensure all participants receive appropriate depth of coverage, there is a maximum of 20 participants per day.
| Item Name | Price (USD) |
|---|---|
| Software Conversion Optimization (Personalized) (Pre-order. 36 available out of 38) | $997.00 |
The Mini-Consult Edition (Pre-Order)
You can learn at the videos at your own speed, and you can receive brief advice about your design/copy in public, but it is possible you want to get more in-depth feedback, a more holistic look at your strategy, or simply a conversation held in private. It's a miniature version of a consulting engagement, at a fraction of my old $30,000 weekly rate.
This is intended for software companies operating at significant scale, with annual revenues above $250,000. Please don't purchase if that doesn't describe your company -- I'll cancel your purchase, which costs me about $100 out of pocket. (Why? To make sure that the limited bandwidth goes to companies that can substantially benefit from this, and to avoid disappointing companies not ready for this level of engagement yet.)
What It Is: I'll be in touch with you in when the course launches to ask about scheduling both our conversation and, if you desire, your participation in one of the feedback sessions. (You'll also get the video course when it is ready.) The conversation will be over Skype or Google Hangouts, scheduled at our mutual convenience, likely in August. You may have up to 3 people from your company attend, if you feel like that is valuable. I will have feedback for you prepared for the discussion, and will give you formal written recommendations shortly after our conversation.
What It Is Not: This lacks a lot of the formalities of a traditional consulting engagement, including a) a formal proposal (you're reading it) or contract/MSA/SOA, b) a formal NDA (you get my handshake agreement that I'll respect your confidences), and c) any sort of non-compete agreement (as my business will almost certainly do business with a firm competing with you, eventually). I understand these conditions make this impossible to swing for many firms. If you'd still like to engage me, I'd be happy to entertain your proposal for a standard multiweek formal consulting engagement, but -- fair warning -- do not anticipate having availability for it.
Boring administrivia: Need to pay for this via invoice rather than credit card? Drop me an email at patrick@kalzumeus.com. You'll be invoiced and pay in advance of delivery.
| Item Name | Price (USD) |
|---|---|
| Software Conversion Optimization (Mini-Consult) (Pre-order. 7 available out of 7) | $2,497.00 |
If This Doesn't Create Value For Your Business, I Don't Want Your Money
My experience with conversion optimization is that, if you have a software company at scale and you actually put the work in, it's virtually impossible for it to not work out well for you. I can't actually sit down and do the work for you, but I trust you to be diligent about it, and you can trust me to give you good, actionable advice. If you're not satisfied with the course, the advice you receive, or the results you get from implementation, I'll refund your purchase. I won't argue with you, at all, and I'll give you 30 days (counting from delivery, not purchase) to make up your mind.
Why do I do this? Because I'm confident that I give good advice. I've built two businesses on the backs of conversion optimization and consulted successfully for dozens of clients on it. I know, having sold similar training products before, that it is likely that less than 1% of customers will ask for refunds. And because I want you to be absolutely thrilled. I have a very public career in this and a reputation to uphold, so if this doesn't produce a major win for you company, I don't want your money.
About the author: Patrick McKenzie founded two software businesses. He consults on making and marketing software for clients, including Fog Creek, Matasano, and WPEngine. His advice has demonstrably sold millions of dollars of software.
P.S. Do you offer a money-back guarantee for your software? If not, for the love of little apples, you should do that. It often increases conversion rates in a statistically significant fashion. I've never seen it to decrease them, in dozens of tests. Also, for most companies (and especially in B2B), conversion rates are absolutely minuscule. Unless you have huge integration costs, it's basically spending nothing (refunds of sales to customers who shouldn't be using your product cost you virtually nothing) to meaningfully increase revenue... with no work required.
(If you don't already have a guarantee, that P.S. probably already earned you more the price of the course. Seriously. Implement one, then come back when you get the data back on the A/B test.)