EP 420: Website Design & Conversion 201: Effective Copywriting, Colors, Forms, Testing & More

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:16:04

Motivated Leads

When somebody comes to your website, initially people are put off by really long forms. It just looks looks like too much. It’s like, I don’t want to fill out 15 things. It’s going to take me too long. So you can break the form into two or three steps and just ask like the crucial things you need phone number and address.

00:00:17:00 – 00:00:37:00

Motivated Leads

Get that up front. Now, you captured that. After they do that, ask all the additional questions. So it looks like it’s easy. And then that second, second step is going to ask like, why do you want to sell? How fast do you want to sell? How much work does your property need? The people that aren’t serious and aren’t motivated are going to leave.

00:00:41:15 – 00:00:58:21

Brady Winder

Hey friends, you’re listening to the CarrotCast Podcast by Carrot.com will help investors and agents like yourself build businesses of freedom and impact. I’m your host, Brady Winder, and today have returning guests, triple, quadruple returning guests Brian and Chad of Motivated Leads. Please welcome back to the podcast guys.

00:00:59:06 – 00:01:01:23

Motivated Leads

And thanks for having us, man. We appreciate you. Yeah, thanks.

00:01:01:23 – 00:01:20:04

Brady Winder

BRADY Yeah, Thanks for coming on. We appreciate you just as much. If you want to hear more about what Brian and Chad do, essentially they help over 400 investors get more motivated seller leads and they do it through SEO and paid ads and they do it really well. We go back and listen to part one of the podcast from last week.

00:01:20:06 – 00:01:37:13

Brady Winder

This episode is going to be a sort of a deeper dive into website design and conversion. So we’re going to talk about some of the tests of Brian and Chad around to see if we move this form, if we change this color, if we do this, if we modify the page, is it going to convert better? Is it going to get us more quality, more?

00:01:37:13 – 00:02:00:17

Brady Winder

Besides where to talk about some of the psychology of copy and what needs to be on your website to attract motivated seller? But if this is too much for you, go back and listen to part one and then part three later this month is going to be all about testimonials. So anyways, it’s designing conversion month. Go to care.com slash convert to get all the content that we’re talking about and let’s dive in in this episode.

00:02:00:17 – 00:02:34:16

Brady Winder

So kind of picking up where we left off, we talked about online sub. So the three things you need to do, you need a personalized website, you need localization, you need credibility on your website. Let’s talk about kind of first the structure of the website. How do you maintain a cohesive look and feel? You know, we talked about Cara out of the box, but I wanted to ask you, is is there anything you’re doing your website to make sure it is still has a cohesive look and feel while keeping a high converting like earlier design principles you guys follow in building websites in general?

00:02:34:16 – 00:02:52:03

Motivated Leads

Yeah, like some on the structure side, you want to you want to make it easy for people to navigate your website. For example, if you’re if people are coming to your website through your blog, that’s an informational piece, they’re looking for info, they come there. But the whole objective is you want to push them back into the core site, like to convert.

00:02:52:11 – 00:03:11:15

Motivated Leads

So in your blog you want to have calls the action Z Learn more, sell your house fast and push them into your website versus if somebody comes to your homepage, you want to just push them straight to the call to actions. Or for example, one structure. Like I like to look at a website like a Christmas tree, write home pages at the top, and then next step out it branches and goes the whole way out.

00:03:11:21 – 00:03:30:00

Motivated Leads

So home page, you’re targeting like Saga House fast in Pittsburgh and then you have city pages so like I’d like to structure like in areas you serve section it could be state things like that so it could be if you’re doing a national website, you have set your house fast. First, first click in your website would be areas we serve.

00:03:30:00 – 00:03:45:16

Motivated Leads

That’s all the state you serve. Second, click into the cities underneath those states. So you want to make it real easy for people to navigate. More importantly, though, then it helps you rank for all those different phrases as well. But the whole whole objective for every single thing on your website should be to build credibility and get leads.

00:03:46:23 – 00:04:04:22

Brady Winder

Okay. So that’s that’s a that’s how you need to structure website. The second thing we talked about was these stories. Is your website telling the right story. This is a this is the key thing that a lot of people sometimes miss. They want to just talk about themselves. They want to talk about their company. Care already does a lot of this out of the box.

00:04:04:22 – 00:04:19:06

Brady Winder

But what are you keeping in mind as far as a story your website is telling, whether that’s true to the design or the copy? But but mostly the copy. What are you keeping in mind when you’re trying to speak to a motivated seller?

00:04:19:18 – 00:04:35:06

Motivated Leads

I think their pain points that mostly you got to think in their manner why they look looking to sell most of the time and letting them know things like you can sell your house as is. You don’t need any repairs done. You need a quick cash off. Or have you just inherited a home where you gone through a rough financial time?

00:04:36:08 – 00:04:53:04

Motivated Leads

They don’t really. The more you talk about them, the better. Yeah, I would put that upfront. More so than putting this is who I am, this is what I can do. This is me, me, me. You know, like any conversation or anything, when you go meet new people, you don’t want to just sit there and talk about yourself.

00:04:53:18 – 00:05:06:04

Motivated Leads

You really want to like, take in and digest that and like, let them know you’re there, like trying to help them solve their needs. So really thinking within that mindset and structuring content around that can be really helpful.

00:05:07:02 – 00:05:25:19

Brady Winder

Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, that’s a I think that’s probably the best, simplest way to put it is have the focus, be on them, their questions, their pain points, their desires instead of yourself. You’re yourself should be the afterthought. Oh, by the way, here’s what we do. Here’s how we can help. But you first need to make that connection with the the seller in their head.

00:05:27:05 – 00:05:50:11

Brady Winder

So you got structure, structure, story and then speed. We’ll go through this really quick page. Speed really does matter as far as one, just a good user experience. A lot of it in nobody likes to use a clunky, slow website. If you’re waiting a few seconds for it to load, the person’s probably going to bounce. I know I’m going to browse the next website that showed up in Google if it’s too slow so it doesn’t matter.

00:05:50:11 – 00:06:00:19

Brady Winder

But it also matters in the eyes of Google. Google doesn’t like to rank slow websites as much as festivals. Anything you are doing to make sure you’re not slowing down your pages.

00:06:01:21 – 00:06:17:09

Motivated Leads

Yet, make sure you’re not uploading huge, huge images, things like that, like size them down, just you can even click on the right whenever the pictures on your computer right click it and click properties, see how big it is, and then shrink it down before you stick it on a website. That’s one of the biggest tips I could give.

00:06:17:09 – 00:06:20:19

Motivated Leads

Just don’t upload massive files to your site. Hmm.

00:06:21:17 – 00:06:42:09

Brady Winder

Nice. Yep. I care. It actually does this for you as well. It’ll shrink down your your photos and as well as if you’re uploading videos. It will. We have features in there to make sure the video doesn’t load the entire video before and until it needs to, basically. So we’ll run through that real quick. The websites are fast, but you need to make sure that you’re not slowing down your website.

00:06:44:00 – 00:07:01:22

Brady Winder

As far as let’s talk about forms and some of the tests you guys have around, because I think this is where some of the really interesting stuff comes in. Take me through like what’s I guess what’s most important for the forum on your website? What does it need to have and in what order does it need to be in?

00:07:02:10 – 00:07:22:09

Motivated Leads

So there’s there’s two different things, like when somebody comes to your website initially people are put off by really long forms. It just looks looks like too much and it’s like, I don’t want to fill out 15 things. It’s going to take me too long so you can break the form into two or three steps and just ask like the crucial things you need phone number and address.

00:07:23:06 – 00:07:44:15

Motivated Leads

Get that up front. Now, you captured that. After they do that, ask all the additional questions. So it looks like it’s easy. And then that second, second step is going to ask like, why do you want to sell? How fast do you want to sell? How much work does your property need? The people that aren’t serious and aren’t motivated are going to leave, but the people that are, you’re getting more information there too.

00:07:44:15 – 00:08:03:08

Motivated Leads

So the second step kind of gets your leads and takes a quality up higher. Yeah, we’ve seen we’ve seen forms actually convert hire. If you call out like kind of how long they’re going to take, hey, this is going to take 30 seconds to fill out this form or one minute or whatever it may be. Sometimes that can take some of that fear away, even if they do see a longer form.

00:08:03:15 – 00:08:10:05

Motivated Leads

Just calling that out to them like it only takes X or whatever it may be merely helps with that conversion a little bit.

00:08:11:03 – 00:08:27:13

Brady Winder

Yeah, that makes sense. Kind of like when you’re reading through a blog post or some of across a blog post like, oh, on a read this. Oh, it’s only 7 minutes. I’m read. Okay, I got time for that. Right. Let’s go to anything else. What have you guys been doing as far as tests on forms, as far as placement or how you’re wording, the questions, things like that.

00:08:28:17 – 00:08:47:12

Motivated Leads

Test on forms are like we’ve seen if you have a form and a top right hand side of your website or right in the center, they convert really well. You have to have strong calls to action right beside that and telling you have to tell people what to do, like fill out this form to get a cash off or fill out this form to get a call today, things like that versus just having it.

00:08:47:12 – 00:09:01:11

Motivated Leads

You don’t want to learn more section it. It’s going to be very direct. You do this, here’s a result you’re getting in. Tell them to fill out the form and then maybe put like a red arrow or something to it and just be keep it super simple.

00:09:01:23 – 00:09:21:18

Brady Winder

Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that. The arrows we’ve actually tested like images of like a, you know, a nice professional headshot of a real estate investor agent versus having a crudely drawn arrow pointing to the form. You know, he maps on those and far and away, you know, the arrow the very obvious thing it works better than having the professional look, if you will.

00:09:22:04 – 00:09:41:22

Motivated Leads

Right and we tested some some lenders too because we did multiple carat tests in some of them we had one that had the call to action on the left hand side and then the form on the right. We had one that the call to action was in the center and then we had one that had a call to action with a button that led to the form in the one with the call to action on it.

00:09:41:22 – 00:09:44:04

Motivated Leads

Right Converted the best.

00:09:44:04 – 00:10:10:03

Brady Winder

Interesting. Okay, so we talked about length of the form it needs to be. It needs to be simpler. So the less resistance, the better. Which, you know, sometimes as marketers we can think like all the information possible for follow up and for this, for that, but less resistance the better. We talked about placement. Anything else add as far as questions on form, you know, we’ve mentioned be direct, you know, air on the obvious side.

00:10:10:03 – 00:10:14:15

Brady Winder

Anything else as far as questions you might want to ask her if you found anything that works really well in forms.

00:10:14:20 – 00:10:46:10

Motivated Leads

To ask you, the more I go ahead, Chad, I would say the more you can auto populate, obviously, the better. And the more like bottled style stuff you can do is better because it takes away like that. Just them having to type things in it. We’ve just seen higher conversion that way. Another thing, another way to think around it too, is if you are in a super competitive market where your lead cost is pretty high, whether that be from paid ads, SEO, whatever it may be, you need to probably minimize that form to be as short as possible and be happy with the shortest form prose you can get.

00:10:46:15 – 00:11:05:18

Motivated Leads

As I push more volume. If you’re in a market where you have a lot of leads coming through and you’re fortunate to be in that situation, so you kind of have more leeway to play with those questions, add questions to it, let it do some of the preventive for you more and more that way. So think about your market when you’re thinking about your form as well.

00:11:06:14 – 00:11:29:19

Brady Winder

Hmm. Interesting. One thing I want to touch on before I move away from forums is on the last episode we were talking about the differences in your website. When you’re talking about SEO versus website, you’re running page traffic to like a landing page. In the landing page needs to be more simplified, more direct anything as far as forms in that regard.

00:11:30:05 – 00:11:45:12

Motivated Leads

It’s worth testing to run page traffic, just a step two of it versus the home page. I know the home page. You capture short information, all that, but sometimes like there’s a lot of click outs and a lot of things to just distract on their where. Step two, it’s like kind of like, Hey, right here, this is what we have.

00:11:45:12 – 00:12:02:22

Motivated Leads

Just fill this out, let’s go and gives them like that, correct? Like just seeing that in that manner. Sometimes it’s like basically make something. Okay, I got philosophical to go into it versus having to read on the website. Hey, let’s give you a cash offer. Now, fill out this form here. Kind of just make them think in a different manner.

00:12:04:03 – 00:12:27:03

Motivated Leads

We have success with landing pages. The more click outs to that, you can take away from it at times on page traffic in general. Like sometimes it’s not good to have a hero menu or something on a landing page. It’s just again, straight form or straight call to action and form. It’s worth testing everything to see how it reacts and how it converts such ads.

00:12:27:03 – 00:12:40:21

Motivated Leads

Chad’s talking about. For anybody listening that doesn’t know what a click out is, if somebody goes to your website, usually have home page about us, things like that, paid traffic, take all those links away so you send them the page. There’s nowhere to go. They either have to fill out the form or leave.

00:12:41:10 – 00:12:58:09

Brady Winder

Right? You want them to capture the lead? Yeah. Yeah. We actually do that with a lot of our pages. Internal care. You’ll notice if you, you know, going to get a resource or official to a webinar or something, we’ll, we will have simplified those, will take it away those options because we want you to be focused on the thing that you should be doing.

00:12:58:12 – 00:13:19:12

Brady Winder

The Internet’s a very noisy place. There’s a million places to go. And so when you’re trying to get a lead, give yourself the best chance of capturing that lead. It’s not time for browsing. Yep. Awesome. Okay, so we talked about forms, we talked about page speed structure, we talked about story. Let’s talk about branding before we’re going to wrap this up in a few minutes.

00:13:19:23 – 00:13:34:09

Brady Winder

Any other spots besides your website you’re paying attention to how to keep your branding consistent because we’re talking about conversion like website conversion. But holistically, if you like, that brand matters can use. Talk about that.

00:13:35:01 – 00:13:57:20

Motivated Leads

Yeah, you want to keep your brand consistent everywhere. So all your social media profiles, your business cards, your email signature, your website, YouTube videos, you want to keep the colors, logos. Look, as you can see, like I were, I’m wearing a yellow shirt, black shirt, like we’re even keep this kind of brand thing going. So keep everything because you want people to see when they see you.

00:13:57:20 – 00:14:32:13

Motivated Leads

Oh yeah, that’s that’s for one two houses or that’s whoever it is versus having a billboard with one logo and one brand and then your website doesn’t match it. You’re losing the connection there. And brand brand isn’t just colors and logo. Like that’s not brand. Brand is tone as well and how people perceive you. So even like tone and font and everything of how that comes off, how that feel, how that look is whether you have you want to be a more direct brand with capitalized font straight to the point type style brand or softer lowercase fonts, really talking in a different way.

00:14:32:19 – 00:14:53:05

Motivated Leads

So you got to, if you establish it one way to always be that way, you shouldn’t go this way and that way because if you come off as a softer brand and then you shout at them through an ad that’s all capitalized and everything, it’s kind of just doesn’t go together. And they look at you different ways and it’s more forgettable versus where if it’s all in the same tone, it’s more memorable.

00:14:53:09 – 00:14:56:08

Motivated Leads

It’s a company that makes me feel like X or makes me feel like this.

00:14:56:17 – 00:15:06:08

Brady Winder

And when you’re saying tone, I’m assuming you’re meaning it’s interesting. I would have thought of that first, your font, your text, but you’re also saying the message, the message itself for it.

00:15:06:19 – 00:15:28:15

Motivated Leads

Yeah, the message itself that you using more direct statement based method messages are you doing sophomore round just like compound sentences saying like, hey, we can help you do X, Y and Z, we’re here to make you do this? Or is it just more of your cash offer today? Or is it, Hey, we’re here to help you get the best value out of your home, whatever it may be.

00:15:28:15 – 00:15:39:04

Motivated Leads

Those are awful examples. But just when you’re talking in that manner, how direct do you want to be? How soft do you want to be? That should be held throughout the whole entire brand, everything that you do.

00:15:40:01 – 00:16:04:12

Brady Winder

Mm hmm. Okay. That makes sense. I feel like, you know, myself and a lot of us would be so much better off to make a dead simple checklist of, like, Hey, I updated my logo are updated. A key part of our messaging are hey, updated this thing. Okay. Website social media. Not even just social media. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube email signature is usually like email.

00:16:04:12 – 00:16:20:19

Brady Winder

Signature is the thing we all forget. It’s like, Oh crap, You know, they got a logo in there that’s four years old, you know? And it it all adds up. And it makes for this really just like, off inconsistent experience. And so just a simple checklist of update all of these things. So it’s a cohesive look and feel would be probably pretty beneficial.

00:16:21:06 – 00:16:21:18

Motivated Leads

I agree.

00:16:22:08 – 00:16:49:02

Brady Winder

Yeah. Let’s see any I was going to ask Josh we’ll cut of there until I regain my thought. Oh there was. Okay. Okay. So as we started to wrap it up, one other question for you is we kind of touch on this in the first episode, but as far as a a a great company logo, what makes a great logo and how much does it matter.

00:16:50:16 – 00:17:13:13

Motivated Leads

Logo or I don’t know necessarily what makes a great logo, but how much it matters. I think it matters four out of ten like the design of it. I think the message on your website and everything else we’ve been talking about matters way more than the logo because you can get a logo made like our for one two houses logo probably costs five bucks or something like cheap.

00:17:13:15 – 00:17:42:19

Motivated Leads

It’s super simple, but the whole brand behind it and the messaging is what? What I believe matters way more. Yeah. Yeah. And it also like if you think about it as like again what’s your goal? Is this like get leads, get deals, make money, that’s what you want to do. Then like, it doesn’t matter at all if you’re building a whole legit real estate company behind all this and building out long term culture, all of that, then okay, it might make sense to put more thought into that, have some meaning into that logo.

00:17:43:12 – 00:17:59:20

Motivated Leads

But if at the end of the day, like you’re just, Hey, we want leads, we want deals, and that’s what our culture is and we’re just driven like that, then it really doesn’t matter. Yeah, you know what? Yeah, that’s a good point you bring up too. So maybe I’ll take a step back on what I said on a four out of ten.

00:18:00:03 – 00:18:16:08

Motivated Leads

It matters for lead Gen low, but if you’re building a company with a team and like Chad, say culture, it matters a lot then. So there’s two different things. Like you have to keep everything in sync with What is the message you’re putting out to your team on how to behave? A What are core values, things like that.

00:18:16:15 – 00:18:40:11

Motivated Leads

And if your goal is to build a company and make this full time, big time real estate company, it’s fine also to just start with the basics. Start with something cheap, basic as it is, get some deals underneath your belt with that, take some profits, reinvest, build out a whole brand. Then once it starts to get more serious so it’s not something that you should overthink upfront.

00:18:40:11 – 00:18:56:08

Motivated Leads

But as you build and if you’re building culture and internal team, all of that, then you can go more into that. Now, you don’t want the analysis paralysis because you’ll focus on your logo for months and never get to the next stage. So just get the logo, go get deals and then yeah, you can continually refine.

00:18:57:02 – 00:19:18:12

Brady Winder

That’s probably the best piece of advice in this entire month of podcasts, because I know that so many of us can just get stuck in overcomplicated analysis paralysis. You know, I think about the home buying guys, their clients of ours. They’ve been I’m multiple podcasts, but they started out it was simple. We need leads, we need deals. But if you look at them now in the context of like, does a logo matter to them?

00:19:18:12 – 00:19:38:13

Brady Winder

It really does, because they’re building this long term brand. They’re a staple in their community. They’re working with nonprofits, they’re hybrids, so they’re agents as well. So there’s more of a public image that they are displaying. And so it started out really simple, but now they get the home buying guys logo and, you know, the whole website’s branded.

00:19:38:13 – 00:19:54:14

Brady Winder

They got the little characters like of them, you know, animated faces. And it’s a really cool, cohesive look and feel. But it started out like we just need leads in deals. So I guess that’s good context. It does depend on, you know, is this a long term play or is this a just a gig that I’m doing right now, or are you just starting out?

00:19:54:17 – 00:19:55:21

Brady Winder

But start out simple.

00:19:56:03 – 00:20:08:14

Motivated Leads

That’s a great example of brands like we were talking about looking like a bank versus local, like the home buying guys they make you. It just feels like, yeah, I’d want to I want to see what these guys are doing versus X, Y, Z Corp franchise.

00:20:08:23 – 00:20:29:13

Brady Winder

You know? Yeah, it’s, it’s a fun brand, which is I mean, we could go all day on the sort of stuff, but and we won’t. But it’s, you know, I think that’s something you need to decide. Like Chad mentioned, your brand isn’t your colors and your logos. It’s that tone. And so you got to decide, am I is the company me or is the company something else?

00:20:29:13 – 00:20:51:13

Brady Winder

Is it fun? Is it serious? Is it aggressive? You know, I assume that it matters what your market cares about. What does your market expect? So we’re about at time here. Anything else you want to add on design and conversion? What’s the the one magic secret everybody needs to know to get a million leads and make sure their website converts better than anything else?

00:20:52:04 – 00:21:03:11

Motivated Leads

That’s it. Do it like anybody focusing on this stuff, get your website live and start sending traffic to it first. And always be testing, always test no matter what you do and make sure you measure those tests.

00:21:05:02 – 00:21:24:03

Brady Winder

Always be testing, always be closing. They say for sales, always be testing for marketing. That’s true. Always be testing. Always be testing is your website. Well, thank you guys so much for hopping on. It’s been a pleasure. It’s always, you know, I say, hey, we’re going to keep it short. We’re going to keep it 20 minutes. There’s always like a million directions we could go because you guys are just full of so much knowledge and value.

00:21:24:03 – 00:21:26:21

Brady Winder

So I appreciate you sharing for sure you happen on the podcast.

00:21:27:03 – 00:21:29:19

Motivated Leads

Hey, thanks for having us. Definitely. Brady, appreciate you, too.

00:21:30:10 – 00:21:46:21

Brady Winder

Absolutely. All right. Well, if you guys want to work with Brian and Chad, go to Marketplace Dot Care.com and look for motivator leads or just Google and motivator leads and you can work with them if you’re looking for more of a done with the option, want to get more involved with the care team, go to care.com, slash authority, check out our thought leader plan.

00:21:47:19 – 00:22:22:12

Brady Winder

And also don’t forget to go to care.com slash convert. If you really want to dive deep into design and conversion and look at all the other content we have so you can optimize your website faster and easier. That’s all we have for today. Thanks for joining us and we will see you all next week.