I feel like I lied to you.
You clicked on this post to read yet another one of the amazing case studies. One of those case studies, that you know, feature a fantastic conversion rate and make it look super easy to get the same results.
This is not one of those case studies. This is an in-the-trenches, straight up data and facts.
The redesign of this website produced a 170% increase in sales, which makes for an epic blog post title. In this post, I’ll cover how I got there and why this is not the data you want to be looking at.
This post is the second in a case study series on Design for Founders website’s redesign. The new site produced some amazing quantifiable results, taught me a lot about measuring design, and even won an award.
Clap clap. Let’s get to the point.
How to instantly increase your ebook sales
The flagship product on this website right now is the Design for Founders ebook. It’s currently selling for $29, with the exception of a few promotions that ran it for as low as $10 for a very limited time period.
The two purposes of this products are (1.) to monetise the website and (2.) to gain good quality feedback on the content. With this feedback, I will be able to develop higher-value product in the future. I’ll return to this point later in this article, but first—
Enter Tripwires
Does your thank you page only say “thanks for signing up”? If so, you’re probably leaving money on the table.
Consider for a moment the mindset of a brand new subscriber. Since they just signed up, they’re in a very positive mindset regarding your brand.
They read some of your content and liked it. You probably promised them a content upgrade and a ton of great extra stuff.
This a great time to make a sale.
I’ve first heard of tripwires from Authority Hackers. A tripwire is a no-brainer purchase that converts people who just subscribed to your list into customers.
This is how it works. When you sign up to my newsletter, you’ll be sent a confirmation email with a link that you need to click. This is fairly standard.
After you click the link in the email, you’re redirected to a thank you page. On this page, there will be an option to buy the Design for Founders ebook for a heavily discounted price. I’m talking 60% off.
This worked like magic. Just in the first week, I’ve sold — extra books, all on autopilot.
If you want to know more about tripwires, head over to the excellent article on Authority Hackers for a detailed guide on exactly how to set one up and have it fit into your overall strategy.
If you have an email list and a product, you don’t have an excuse not to implement it. All you need to do is change your thank you page into a short offer.
Why it doesn’t mater
The tripwire worked extremely well. Why am I complaining then?
Here’s why … the revenue increase was $0.
Since I lowered the price so much, even the extra sales barely made up for the revenue I was seeing before implementing the tripwire.
Sure, I could test different pricing points but with the number of sales I have, the tests wouldn’t reach statistical significance.
However! I’m not particularly upset with the revenue stagnating.
Why it’s still great
Given the choice between more customers of your product and more revenue, what do you pick?
Both have their upsides. More revenue with fewer customers means fewer people to support.
On the other hand, more customers give you a larger pool of potential feedback.
Here’s the thing with opinions. We all have them, all the time, about everything. This makes our job as marketers / content producers / CEOs a lot harder. Who do we listen to?
The answer is quite simple: we should always listen to our actual customers. These are the people who already bought something from us.
I can tell you that your website on British sausages looks terrible— and to be fair, it probably does. But I’m vegetarian. I’ll never buy your product. The only feedback that matters is from your actual customers.
Your list subscribers are your tribe. They may buy, but the vast majority won’t.
To get the most valuable information, you’ll need to focus on the high-value customers. These are the people who actually parted with their money to get your product. Actually, the more they paid you, the more their opinion counts.
In this sense, increasing your sales means a lot in terms of expanding your customer base.
Would you like to the full case study of this website redesign? Then register for the free “behind the scenes” webinar below:
Design, but simple.
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