Increase Conversion Rate by Telling a Story and Having a Plan

November 13, 2009 By Jackie Lee 39 Comments

If you want to increase your conversion rate and create a really great lens today’s post is going to give you a couple keys to the process.

1. Create a plan.

2. Tell a story.

Sounds simple ~ and it is. Before you EVER put one word on paper (screen) you need to have a plan, and you need to have a story. Let’s see what those look like.

Create a plan:

You want to make sure you know a couple things for your plan.

1. Your most desired action. What is the one thing you want people that hit this page to do? For our purposes here and now it’s probably “click through to amazon”. However in the future it may be something different. You may want them to subscribe to your newsletter, you may want them to bookmark the page, you may want them to click an adsense ad. Whatever it is a page can really ONLY do one thing at a time.

2. What is the keyword you’re targeting? Really ~ what exactly is the keyword you are targeting for the page? You want to make sure you know it so you can use it.

3. Is your product relevant to the keyword? I’ve talked in another post about how important everything being relevant is to make things really click together and work on your lens.

This brings us to the story. I’ve mentioned many times how important it is to speak conversationally in your lenses. This is very true. I find it much easier to do this when I’ve created a story to tell.

How do you create a story?

1. Think about your keywords. Who do you think is on the other end of the keyboard typing those words in? What do you think they want from typing those words?

2. Get creative and make it up.

Let’s take a look at the inversion table lens I did ~ who did I think was looking up that keyword? People who are having back pain, have tried everything else, are tired of spending money on chiro that doesn’t work, people who are frustrated and just want to be free of back pain.

Are those the only people looking for inversion tables?

NO probably not. ~ however ~ those are the people I’m going to talk to in this lens. When you try to talk to everyone you end up talking to no one. Make your story and stick to it.

What did they want when they got there? Information about how an inversion table will help their back pain, a good inversion table to buy, a little ecouragment that this isn’t the dumbest idea they’ve ever had.

Writing a lens is much like writing a story from this point on. You want to have a beginning a middle and an end.

The beginning is where you make your introductions ~ you tell them what you’re going to talk about, and make them feel comfortable on your page. YOU DO NOT SELL in your introduction.

This is NOT to say you don’t link to your product in your intro module, because you should. In a post over at SquidooCool Lewis is talking about the green links in intro modules and what Squidoo found out when they took them out of the intro modules.

In a forum post about these ads Megan from Squidoo HQ posted the following message: “We tried excluding the links from the Intro module, and that made revenue from these ads nosedive. Really nosedive. So we put them back in”.

So, good news!

Squidoo can see from their stats on over one million lenses that text links in intro modules get LOTS of clicks.

The Best:

Forget the text link ads – it’s time to go through all your lenses and add a relevant affiliate link to the intro module!

What squidoo learned from that test really shows us that having a link in the intro module seriously increases conversion. So put them in there ~ but don’t sell it.

The middle ~ this is where the meat of your content is going to be. This is where you’re going to give them the information, the links to buy, and let them know this is a good decision that has been made by many other happy people.

The end ~ this is where you want to tell them exactly what to do next (complete your most desired action). We call this a call to action. You also want to let them know ~ from your content this is the end of the lens, thanks for coming and make them feel good for being there.

How do we accomplish ALL this on a Squidoo lens?

Seems like a mighty task, but it’s really pretty simple.

The beginning ~ say hi ~ not literally, but tell them what you’re going to be talking about, let them know it’s THEM you are talking to. So for the inversion table I’m talking to people with back pain who are frustrated and looking for a solution. Here’s what I said to them:

If you have or know someone that is experiencing back pain you can give them a great gift this holiday season. You can give them the gift of relief. The Ironman Gravity 4000 inversion table will help relieve back pain and improve posture.

This let’s them know I’m speaking to them, and their problem. I’ve got a link to the solution right there, but I’m not selling it ~ I”m just saying it might be something that can help.

The middle ~ where we give them information, links, and make them feel comfortable about the buying decision.

features module: talk about the features, let them get a feeling if this might be the solution for them.

videos: give them more information about the product/what it does/if it will help them.

polls: let’s them get involved

testimonials: let’s them know other people have made the same decision and were happy they did.

call to action: give them a way to get to the product and a savings is always a bonus.

The end ~ Where you get them to take your most desired action, help them feel good about being on your page.

Call to action: the big arrow module is super for this.

Guestbook: great way to say a little “thank you for stopping by” and make then feel like you really are glad they were there.

It’s all about how you approach it.

All of these elements are truly dependant on what you write. For example:

The beginning: If you start your lens off with”save 70% on this item now” That doesn’t really help you introduce yourself or let them know you are going to help solve their problem ~ that many times may lead to them having the opposite feeling ~ “oh they’re just trying to sell me something”. While savings are great ~ and 70% rocks ~ you don’t ask someone to marry you on the first date and you shouldn’t start off your lens relationship with buy this now.

In the middle you can have features modules and it can go one of two ways ~ you can copy info off the amazon page or you can talk to people, like you were really talking to them, trying to solve their problem. The latter will definitely work better toward improving your conversion rate.

The testimonials, videos etc you have to keep talking to people. Sure you can just post a video ~ but really. If you found a great video you thought would help a friend would you really send them a video without any explanation of why you’re sending it or why they should watch it? You shouldn’t on your lens either.

You can just post testimonials, but again ~ would you just send a friend a testimonial if you all were talking about maybe buying a product? No you’d probably say ~ hey a bunch of people have bought this and looks like they’re pretty happy about it, check out these testimonials I found about it. Right?

The end: The big arrow module pretty much speaks for itself, but when it comes to making people feel glad they hit your page ~ you have a lot to do with that. Do you just leave the default title on your guestbook or do you ask them a question about what they’ve been reading about? Do you leave the default content in the guestbook module or do you talk to them, ask them a question get them involved. When you’ve been hanging out with a friend do you just get up and walk to your car without even a goodbye or maybe a hug? That’s what your guestbook is. Even though you may not say those exact words ~ that’s the feeling you can provide with the guestbook.

Final thoughts:

Even though you are trying to sell stuff on these lenses remember there is a person trying to solve a problem at the other end. Whether it’s what to get for Uncle Fred for Christmas or how to alleviate this unbearable back pain. If you can give the person what they came for, and make them feel glad they found YOU the sale will be the easiest part of the lens.