The true value of popups is typically neglected. But think of it this way: they literally jump into your face. Imagine how many visitors you could convert if you use them smartly!

Yes, we know what you’re thinking — you’ve had awful experiences with these things. Don’t let them put you off! When used in a targetted way, popups can better your visitor’s experience. Trust me, they’re a fantastic marketing tool.

They can help you grow your audience, highlight your latest offers, expand your email list and regain a visitor before they click away.

Why Bother Using Them?

In short, they work. That’s why. And it is precisely why web development and CRO agencies actively incorporate them into their operations.

Popups ensure people stay on your site longer, reminds visitors of your products or services, and gives you valuable data to produce leads. Consider them your marketing best friend who has a phenomenal gift of increasing conversion rates!

Tips, Tricks and Design Bits

Don’t Forget the Headline

Good headlines sell. In fact, 80% of people generally just read the headline.

My advice? Make the visitor’s benefit super clear, right from the start. No one will click unless they realise what they’re denying themselves if they don’t!

Oh, make it concise too. These days, people have insanely short attention spans. They lose interest quickly so make the headline count.

Relevance is Everything

This doesn’t just apply to your popups. All your content should be clear, to the point and relevant to your product, service or niche.

Everything about your popup should be relevant to your visitor, the page it’s on, and the emotions or thoughts you want people to feel. Don’t let it compete with your page. It should fit your vibe.

Walk-In Your Visitor’s Shoes

Keep your visitor in mind the entire time you’re designing the popup. This is how you ensure it’s relevant. Adopting their perspective when putting it together increases the chance it will actually do its job.

Call Them to Action

A CTA (or call to action) asks your visitors to do something. This should be the main premise of your popup. Of course, this should stand out and have a clear message.

Remember, one popup equals one CTA. You can’t have two. The actual action you want your visitors to do is the CTA.

A Little Respect Goes A Long Way

Yep, within your internet-using lifetime, you’ll have dealt with some awful popups. However, following all of the above (and avoid doing what’s below), you can make a splash on the right side of the pool.

No Exit

We can’t tell you how many times we see a popup that’s like a booby trap. Repeat after me: exiting a popup should be quick and simple. Sure, you might get a few more seconds of watch time from your captors but it’s not worth the sheer anger you’ll create. The ironic part? This no-escape popup strategy could be preventing those who wanted to spend more time looking at your site from doing so!

Confirmshaming

You guessed it, the internet has coined yet another word. What does this one mean? Confirmshaming refers to the act of dissing those who aren’t interested in your popup offer.

When opt-out options say something like, “Nope, saving money is stupid”, or “No thanks, I love looking like a loser”. It was probably quite successful when the first clever soul launched it. Nowadays, it’s annoying and pretty condescending. You’re trying to help your visitors, not give them attitude.

Golden Rule

At the end of the day, make a popup that you would be happy to view. Avoid attitude and sarcastic remarks. Be kind, friendly and respectful to everyone, everywhere.

Top 5 Popup Designs to Help You Grow Your Audience

1. Straight Forward Yet Still Fun

Cutting right to the chase with your headline’s offer is a sure-fire way to get people intrigued. Afterwards, the body text (which people are going to read if they’re interested) needs to be kept fun and light-hearted.

A good tip here is to make sure a popup like this jumps up on the right page. Like a product or service page, for example. Don’t go shoving them on blogs. 9 times out of 10, people just want to spend a few minutes reading articles, not being hassled to buy something.

2. Pop Under (these are fantastic)

That’s right. Your popup doesn’t have to take over the entire page. What a concept!

These are more of a gentle nudge in the right direction. They appear at the bottom of your page, super low-key and discreet. Pop unders are fantastic if you want to ask people to join a mailing list.

Psst… and they’re good for blogs too!

3. Empathy Will Get You Everywhere

Giving your visitor a chance to postpone a deal (without missing it) is priceless. These popups get so much merit in our opinion for just being empathetic and respectful of people’s needs. Interested parties who don’t want to splash the cash yet automatically feel included and understood. Winner.

Also, it’s splendidly simple. There is one call to action. No typing involved. Just one easy click. Magic.

4. Multiple Choice

This one gets 10 out of 10 for directness.

You can just ask what they want to see. It’s pretty fool-proof. You make the headline a question like “What do you need the most help with?”. Then, have three different options below that all lead to relevant pages once clicked. Happy days.

For best results, choose bright, attention-grabbing colours for your option buttons. Your visitors could potentially see the one they want to click before they’ve even read the question!

5. Self Segment

You need a pretty varied target market for this one to work. For example, “teacher, student, parent”. The basic premise is that each button on the popup will take the right visitor to the right place.

Contrasting colours with a powerful message focused on the benefits is a great formula for self segmenting popups.

Success!

The effects of a wonderfully designed popup can fast track your way to more leads, conversions and revenue.

Unlock your business’ full potential with popups and you’ll see why your conversion rate optimization agency is so keen to see you use them!

The post Top 5 Popup Ideas to Grow Your Audience appeared first on Yoshiro Digital.

Are you ready? Let’s go.

So, What Is a Landing Page?

Your business has goals, correct? The goal of your landing page should be to boost conversion rates so you can meet your goals.

This can be your homepage, a standalone page or a different page on your site. It doesn’t matter.

Now, don’t get confused between a landing page and a homepage.

A homepage is typically found through social media or word-of-mouth spreading. A landing page is found organically through keyword searches. See the difference?

In short: a homepage is a gateway, a landing page is a conversion tool.

Benefits of a Great Landing Page

Any reputable web development service will strongly encourage the creation and use of landing pages.

A great landing page does more than just increase conversions. I’ll tell you a bit more about this now (before I forget).

SEO Ranks

As I said earlier, landing pages are a conversion tool. So, they are created to hit a certain set of search terms (or keywords). They’re also promoted using Adwords sometimes or other paid services.

Whatever the method, they move you up the search rankings. What does this mean? More eyes on your product, promotion or sale!

Winner, winner.

Streamlining the Buying/Subbing Process

Landing pages (well, a high-converting one), are portals to get your visitors through the sales funnel quickly and easily. You don’t want your CTA smack bang in the middle of your homepage, or on a blog article. Instead, your visitors should find it sitting pretty on your landing page so they can go on to sub or buy.

Promoting an Upcoming Sale/Product Line

Focusing on a single promotion, sale or product is the job your landing page. It exists to get the singular message out there. Why bother? Let me tell you:

• Gives you the chance to track the success of a specific set of keywords, goal or product
• Allows you to put one sales goal in the foreground

The Real Truth

Before I jump into divulging copywriters’ secrets, I’ll point out that there aren’t any set in stone rules regarding the making of a 5-star landing page.

They truly are as different as our fingerprints. All of them have different target markets, products, services, niche, call to action and motive.

Despite this, some elements stay constant (9, to be exact). The following is what copywriters don’t want you to know. But, I’m going to tell you.

Juicy bits, here we come!

What Copywriters Don’t Tell You: 9 Elements for a Killer Landing Page

1. Attention-Grabbing Headline

The headline is where the journey starts. It’s the factor that decides whether or not a visitor stays. Yup, it’s that important.

Here’s what it needs to do:

1. Grab attention
2. Tell visitors what your product/service is about
3. Short (20 words max, 10 is preferable)

Having said this, if you’ve got an image that explains your deal, you can take out a lot of copy detail. Just a lil tip.

So, you’ve got the basics down. Now, I’ll show you some examples of this in action.

Craft

Adobe Xd

2. Don’t Forget Subheads

Subheadline is next.

As they say: come for the beauty, stay for the brains. It’s the same concept here. If your headline gets them interested, your subheadline should be powerful enough for them to stay.

Here’s what to do:

1. Position directly under the headline
2. Be persuasive
3. Go into more detail and depth

3. Imagery Will Get You Far

The brain processes images considerably faster than text. Visitors will be immediately impacted by pictures on your landing page.

So, remember: your pictures should be:

1. Big
2. Relevant
3. Attention-grabbing
4. High-quality (never stock images)

Check out Mixpanel or Shutterstock for sweet examples.

4. Explain Yourself

Be exceptionally clear about what you’re offering. If visitors don’t understand, they’re gone. Straightforward explanations are the way to go.

Keep in mind that it should be benefit-oriented. Yes, they are functional but always in favour of your potential customer.

One other thing: do not think about this as a separate element. Incorporating it into your subheadline is best practice.

5. Like Pain

Vague, huh? That’s the point.

The concept of pain leaves room for conjecture and interpretation.

Humans want to steer clear of pain. Your product can help them relieve pain in one way or another.

Prompting someone to think about their pain will cause them to want relief. Therefore, more likely to buy.

So, how do you do it? Here’s how:

• State what they’ll lose, not just their gain. Loss aversion is real, people
• Reference pain in testimonials
• Ensure you relieve the pain

6. Like Pleasure

Humans are hard-wired to avoid pain but they’re also hard-wired to seek pleasure. Gaining pleasure, in whatever form, is something that people find hard to pass up.

To implement this successfully, you can either:

1. Display how your product gives the user pleasure
2. Display how your product will fulfil an emotion (i.e. that it isn’t just functional)

The Listings Lab have got the “Like Pleasure” rule down to a T.

7. Contact is Key

Your business is genuine, right?

Make. It. Clear.

The most persuasive landing pages have contact details. A phone number, email address, contact form and a postal address are necessary to boost conversions and incite trust.

Some go a step further by using popups to ask if you need any help. This might not be for you, but it packs a punch with your visitors.

8. Everyone Loves a Guarantee

Guarantees help your customers to feel secure, reassured and safe while viewing your landing page.

Trust me, you need this.

It’s like the pain thing again — if people feel unsafe, they run. That’s the hard truth.

So, regardless of the form, put a guarantee on your landing page. Preferably, by your CTA.

9. Powerfully Call

You guessed it: the call to action. By far, the most important element.

Ultimately, it’s what converts your visitors so, keep the following in mind:

• Make it big
• Make it compelling
• Use a button
• Use contrasting colours
• Brownie points for eye-drawing CTA graphics (crazyegg is the best at this)

In Conclusion…

A high-performing landing page is the place where all your hard work pays off. Visitors click, they buy and you earn more revenue.

Don’t worry, it’s not rocket science!

The post 9 Elements of a Landing Page appeared first on Yoshiro Digital.

A sales funnel is the stages that people take through a website and how they become a customer.

Let’s go through each stage to present more of an explanation:

• Stage 1: awareness – a person acknowledging and becoming aware of the shop. Imagine walking down the high street, and you see a particular shop that catches your attention, you then stop and look into the window, and then you decide to go into the store.
• Stage 2: interest – once the person is in the shop, their interests need to be met to keep them in the store and interested. Imagine you have walked into the store, see a sale rail with a color you have loved recently, and then pick out a top you love.
• Stage 3: decision – once the customer decides they want to purchase the item(s). Imagine you are now looking at the top, pick your size, and you decide you want to buy it, so you walk over to the till.
• Stage 4: action – this is the fourth and final step of the sales funnel, the action taken of purchasing. Imagine you are now at the till, the cashier is scanning your top, you then pay and walk out of the store. You have now purchased and secured that item and you are now a purchasing customer.

The same process works for every business, brick-and-mortar or online stores. Whenever you purchase an item, you have gone through a sales funnel.

Optimizing your sales funnel will secure you the customers, ensuring there are no ‘holes’ in your sales funnel is key. Closing the holes in your sales funnel is something that takes time and observation. To optimize your sales funnel, you must understand how it works.

How does a sales funnel work?

A sales funnel works by capturing your customer’s attention, this could be by promoting offers, good advertising, and new campaigns often to satisfy customers. Social Media marketing funnels are prominent in today’s marketing strategies.

If your business has a site created using web development services and is online, an excellent way to keep your customers coming back is by interesting them to sign up for your mailing list. By doing so, you are opening the door for more opportunities to bring them back to your website by sending new stock drops, new promotions, or catching their interest by emailing products to suit them.

How to create a sales funnel?

It takes time to build a sound and effective sales funnel; it won’t happen straight away. It will take time to see what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve to connect with more customers and grow.

The main thing is turning visitors into leads, so here you can find some of the best ways to create a sales funnel for you. But keep in mind that a sales funnel is the ideal scenario, a lot of the time customers leave the store empty-handed, same goes with online, a certain percentage of customers won’t make purchases and will end up leaving the site.

• Step 1 – plan your ideal buying process; obviously, the most important thing for most businesses is the purchasing stage of the funnel. But you need to consider that not all visitors will make a purchase. So, it is essential to come up with a couple of different purchase paths; different people come across your page through various sources. You also need to remember that all customers are different, some are browsers, some are ‘save later’ to buy, and some are straight to the checkout, so each customer will require different needs in your website.
• Step 2 – understand and monitor your analytics, it is super important to monitor your analytics, most importantly, conversion. By monitoring, you can see what’s working and what’s not, meaning you can improve on things that aren’t working as well or ‘holes’ in your funnel, resulting in visitors leaving without purchases. There are different settings and different analytics you will need to observe to maximize your website.
• Step 3 – ensuring your website is interesting and will captivate your audience, this is one of the most essential steps to keeping the visitors on the site and ensuring they make a purchase. This could be by advertising up to date styles, having a promotion, and uploading new stock or/photos for returning customers. You need to keep the visitor interested to get them to want to make a purchase.
• Step 4 – identifying leaks in your sales funnel, once your website is going and you have had customers and visitors, you can see what’s helping to make purchases and where people are leaving your site. Once you know what’s causing them not to make a purchase, you can work on that to create a better, more effective sales funnel.
• Step 5 – optimizing the visitors and turning them into customers, you can do this by advertising other offers throughout the sales funnel, and throughout the website experience. By doing this, you will convince visitors that were on the edge of purchasing or leaving into making that purchase. Whether it’s by advertising ‘limited stock,’ free delivery, or merely showing cheaper items.
• Step 6 – emailing lists are super important in the sales funnel process; this is because if the visitor decides to come back later to buy something, they might forget or decide against it. Whereas if you have their email, you can contact them, reminding them, and encouraging them to make that purchase, and future purchases. This is a crucial step in optimizing sales as you have opportunities to call customers back when you have a sale or new products. Chances are if a customer has bought from you once, they will come back to buy more, so it’s essential to keep your website in their mind and encourage them to return. It is vital to have more than one path for the customers to reach the final purchasing stage, emailing lists are one of the best ways of getting customers to return to your site and are more likely to make a purchase.

There are lots of other ways to optimize your sales funnel, but these six steps are the most effective and important steps to secure purchases and maximize customers returning to your site.

Final words.

By creating the best, most effective, and varied sales funnel, incorporating conversion rate optimization strategies, you are giving your website the best chance to optimize sales. Not every visitor reaches the checkout in the same path, so it’s essential to create a sales funnel that will work with all aspects of shoppers, to maximize your sales.

You need to learn your audience to build your website to the best it can be and ensure you have the best sales funnel for your website.

The post Why a sales funnel needs implementing on your website appeared first on Yoshiro Digital.

What questions should you ask during the first meeting

At the first meeting, it is very important to understand the client’s needs so you need to ask the right questions. Some of the most important questions that you should ask are:

• What does your business do?
• What’s the domain that you would like to use for your new website? Do you already own this domain or would you want us to purchase this domain for you?
• Would you like a redesign of your existing website or do you not have a website at all?
• What special features would you like to have on your website?
  • Contact Forms / Lead Forms
  • Booking systems
  • E-commerce
  • Integration with 3^rd party tools
• What languages would you like to include on your new website?
• Who are your major competitors?
• What’s your timeline for completion?

Create the audit and the quotation for your client

Now that you know your client’s basic needs, it’s time to create an audit that you’ll include with the quotation.  It’s important to explain to your client what you are going to do regarding his website and why your strategy will improve the website’s performance, and in-turn conversions. This is your chance to prove to the client why they should hire you instead of other potential developers that he already has spoken to. Bonus tip: send a free homepage mock-up for FREE in order to prove your design skills and get the trust of your potential client.

A simple audit for web design & development should include:

• An Explanation of how your Web Design will provide a massive improvement to User Experience and User Interface.
• Your top Action items briefly outlined in a few sentences.
• Explain how important fast site speed is and how your company can help the client’s website achieve this.
• Point out mistakes that the client’s website has (if any) and recommendations regarding how you can fix those issues. Though make sure to avoid giving away all your tricks in great detail.
• Proposed Web Design Templates – Which pages are you going to keep and what new pages are you planning to develop
• Set up milestones

Now you are ready to get the client to sign your offer. Be very careful with your quotation in order to avoid any misunderstandings that may lead to legal ramifications down the road.

Wireframes & Web Design Creation

If everything has gone well and you now have the job then it’s time for your design team to start working on the project.

It’s very important to organize your resources at the beginning of the project. Assign the project to your best available Web Designer. Your Web Designer should start working on the wireframes first and then proceed onto the actual Web Design drafts using their preferred tool.

Try to keep up with deadlines in order to proceed with the Web Development at a comfortable and agreed pace. Once you have the drafts done it’s better to set up another meeting with the client. It’s important for us to know if the client approves of the drafts prior to proceeding with the web development. This will make everyone’s life easier.

Web development implementation

Now that the client has approved the designs of the project, your development team can get started. Set up new hosting for the current project and then we are ready to go. My suggestion is to use VPS hosting for all your upcoming projects for enhanced performance.

Make sure to develop the new website on the new hosting that you have already purchased without messing up the client’s existing website (if any). The new development will be considered as your staging site and once your development team completes the project you can push this website live.

TestingTesting Testing

Launching a website isn’t that simple. If you launch the client’s website in a hurry and miss important factors, then you will definitely have a hard time fixing things while the website is live. Don’t worry, I have prepared a list with everything that you need to test before you launch a website.

• Set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console. If the client had already implemented GA & GSC on the old site then make sure to connect the new website with the existing account. This is very important in order to continue to collect data. Also, it’s the best way to check if traffic & goal conversion is increased and this will prove to the client that you have done a good job!
• Make sure that the client’s emails are working. If the client is using emails from his registrar, for example, [email protected] and you have changed the hosting then you will probably need to transfer the CNAME records from the registrant to your new hosting provider.
• Check that the contact forms are working properly. Also, check if the client receives the emails in the spam folder. This issue is very common in WordPress sites. To avoid this, you will have to setup SMTP configuration. There is a WordPress plugin for this.
• Test different mobile devices and different browsers. Your website might not look the same on different mobile devices or varying web browsers. Unfortunately, code elements are not supported universally so you will have to check for any issues and try to fix them accordingly. You can use the BrowserStack application to perform these tests. It will save you time instead of doing this manually.
• Site speed test. Check the website’s performance by doing a site speed test. Use GtMetrix or Pingdom Tools for this. Check the recommendations and try to optimize the website as much as you can. Site speed is one of the most important things for User Experience and SEO.
• Schedule backups. Don’t forget to make a backup of your website. You might also schedule backups if your website updates more frequently.

Good luck and happy developing!

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