Optimize your CR asap (CXL personal review)
As my journey with CXL progresses, the harder it gets (and we’re only in the 4th week!).
In this article, I want to focus on the third module of the Growth Marketing mini degree by CXL Institute about conversion.
About me
Hello, my name is Michele Rosa, I’m from Italy, and I’m a young growth marketer, who is interested in innovation, marketing, and technology!
About this series of reviews
This series of reviews (12 articles) will be focused on the Growth Marketing Minidegree of the CXL Institute, where I will write about my opinions about the mini degree and my weekly learning.
I learned about the CXL Institute through a search on Google and when I came across the number of well-qualified professionals that studied and teach there, I was very excited to start my studies there too!
I’m super excited to be sharing my learnings, and this week, I had the privilege to learn from two men I’ve admired so much through their works and writings. They are Peep Laja and Ton Wesseling.
About CXL Institute
If you’re zapping within the Digital Marketing world for a while, chances are that you’ve heard of CXL Institute. They offer marketing training courses taught by the top industry practitioners in CRO & UX, Analytics, and Marketing. Their in-depth programs are true gold for those who’ve grown tired of poor quality marketing content out there.
Successful businesses work with CXL Agency to identify growth opportunities, understand their customers, and keep increasing their revenue, thanks to the different services they offer, such as Revenue optimization, Customer research, Analytics Implementation, and Digital Intelligence.
But let’s not get lost in small talk, and go back to talking about the mini-degree.
So, this was the third week of the program and I want to explain to you what I learned.
Ready? Let’s start.
The topic: Landing page optimization
This course is one of the most interesting courses for me so far because it focuses heavily on one of my favorite subjects: psychology.
It seems in fact that behavioral psychology has a lot to do with landing page optimization strategies. Thinking, fast and slow by Nobel prize-winning Daniel Kahneman is the fundamental book that is referenced since the first videos.
I’ve tried to read it a couple of times, but it’s not a book that you can read in one night. So here is a video that goes over the main ideas of the book:
The instructor for this course is Michael Aagaard, a former optimizer at Unbounce, and a worldwide speaker. If you’ve ever attended Conversion Jam or any other CRO conference, you probably have heard him on the stage.
Once again, user research is one of the most important steps in optimizing your landing page.
Aagaard talks a lot about how the human brain works, and he references Daniel Kahneman’s principles of fast and slow thinking.
Basically, your brain has two modes:
- Fast, intuitive thinking (i.e. “what is 2+2”)
- Slow, analytical thinking (i.e. “how many zeros are there in 10 billion?”)
This plays a huge role in optimizing for the web.
Because if your landing page uses the wrong language, or has an illogical structure of the information, you will increase the cognitive load. This basically means you force your visitors to search and find the value, while you should be the one making it effortless for them.
If we don’t understand something, and unless we have a gun to our head, most of us would just hit the back button without any regrets. Overloading the analytical part of our brain is mentally exhausting.
Aagaard also talks about cognitive biases, and how to use them when building your landing page.
Let’s talk about biases
Here are the 4 different concepts within the cognitive bias-section:
Priming
Exposure to one stimulus influences response to a subsequent stimulus.
Example 1: Ad says “Free 30 day free trial” — but you need to add your credit card.
We’re priming our audience it’s free, but then it’s not. This will backfire.
Example 2: One ad experience, a completely different landing page experience.
Framing
The way you deliver a message has a direct impact on how it is perceived.
Example 1:
“Tonight we’re having cold, dead fish with old seaweed” vs “Tonight we’re having delicious sushi with wakame salad”
Example 2:
Which is healthier? 80% lean meat vs 20% fat
Example 3: “Order information and prices” vs “Get information and prices”
Very powerful. The word “get” insinuates that there is something in it for me
WYSIATI
What you see is all there is. Our reality is what we have in front of us.
If there are gaps in the story, you’re going to fill the gaps out automatically for yourself.
A focus on copywriting
Each science has a method, so in order to get it, I just need to understand how to use information hierarchy, prioritize elements, and structure your copy:
- Headline: Message match. Capture attention. Trigger dopamine.
- Benefits/features: Present important information. Emphasize the value of your offer. Trigger dopamine.
- Credibility: Make the content trustworthy. Answer questions. Mitigate cortisol.
- Expectation manager: Ensure users know what to expect. Mitigate ambiguity. Avoid disappointment / negative reward prediction errors.
- Call-to-action Make users click.
These are similar elements used in the landing page design chapter and it makes sense right. These two are not separate, they need to tell the same story.
Conclusion
The content is incredibly thorough and in-depth, and the value of the course highly compensates for the rushed pace. The lessons are highly practical and applicable in the real world, as the instructors are top-notch leaders in their respective fields, having a lot of real-life examples to share. The curriculum looks extremely diverse and I’m looking forward to diving deep into areas I may not be an expert in.
As a way to stay accountable, weekly, I’ll be sharing key takeaways from the program here on my blog on Medium.
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