Matthew Capala
the six-step WebsitePSY Formula covered in this book will take you on a guided journey to: - Build instant trust and minimize friction - Reduce your bounce rates by learning how to overcome common objections - Encourage small commitments pulling the user towards your offer - Frame your offer using effective design and copywriting for the Web - Reassure with social proof to close more sales - Build conversion funnels to create a repeatable source of new customers (Location 129)
The currency of social media is measured in likes, time spent, and engagements. The currency of a website is measured in dollars. (Location 159)
#2: Your website is your first impression. Make it count. (Location 382)
According to a recent study, it takes less than 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion about your website.[15] So you better have an outstanding online presence that invokes trust and credibility. (Location 386)
#4 Social proof closes sales. Always be closing. (Location 401)
One of the reasons so many people buy from Amazon is because they trust the collective wisdom of the crowds in the form of its millions of seller ratings and product reviews accumulated over time. (Location 407)
Successful websites go over-the-top in displaying social proof. (Location 415)
the Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, or the law of the vital few and trivial many) is “a popular prioritization method used in process improvement, to focus the limited resources on the problems with the most potential impact.”[24] (Location 443)
- 20% of web pages account for 80% of site traffic - 20% of products bring in 80% of sales - 20% of forms bring in 80% of leads - 20% of keywords bring in 80% of SEO results (Location 447)
Building a winner website is not about how much you do, but what you do and how fast you can do it. When you leverage the 80/20 rule, you focus on the critical 20% of actions that produce 80% of the results. (Location 456)
Start by optimizing the 20% of content that is currently driving 80% of your results. The homepage top slider and the navigation are usually the most clicked elements on a website, so I always recommended to my clients to feature their best-sellers and social proof in these areas of the website. (Location 459)
I often see marketers spending countless hours optimizing less popular pages on their sites or fixing old broken links from their last SEO audit, but the truth is that there will be very little upside from these minute optimizations. You need a massive action to get massive results ― optimize your homepage, top navigation and headers that can impact your ROI in a more major way. (Location 464)
Tools such as SimilarWeb.com and SEMRush.com can give you a quick, free snapshot of any website. By comparing metrics from various domains, you’ll be able to determine who is winning and determine benchmarks across the key website metrics in your niche. (Location 471)
The “Pareto Principles of the Website” can be organized into three categories: 1. Cognitive biases 2. Conversion triggers 3. Modern SEO (Location 480)
Conversion triggers are stimuli placed throughout the decision-making process to activate certain fixed-action patterns occurring in the same fashion or order. Stating the reason behind your request is a conversion trigger because it stimulates the decision-maker to consider your offer more favorably. (Location 567)
The High Value Assets (HVAs) are the most critical factors to your website business success. The HVAs should essentially define the purpose of your website. What are the visitors to do after they land on one of your web pages? (Location 586)
The top four metrics showing the highest correlation to top rankings on Google are all user-generated signals, including direct traffic (popularity), time spent (trust), page views per session (quality), and bounce rates (relevance), followed by more traditional authority signals measured by the number and quality of backlinks from other websites to your content. Backlinks, representing popularity, continue to play a major role in the game of modern SEO. Source: SEMrush Ranking Factors 2.0. (Location 667)
The WebsitePSY Formula stands for Persuasion, Science, and Yield. Persuasion represents your ability to keep your website visitor engaged and motivated to take actions in response to triggers. (Location 696)
Science represents the various data-driven techniques and strategies you can deploy, test, and optimize to improve your website traffic and conversion rates. (Location 701)
Yield is defined as the value generated from your website over time. (Location 705)
The six stages of the WebsitePSY Formula include: 1. Establishing trust 2. Removing objections 3. Getting small commitments 4. Framing your offer 5. Reassuring with social proof 6. Building conversion funnels (Location 709)
“If people like you they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.” - Zig Ziglar (Location 739)
From PageRank trust score in the early days of Google to the latest E-A-T (Expertise-Authority-Trust) ratings, the SEO practitioners were among the first who deliberately optimized for online trustworthiness since the early days of the Internet. (Location 781)
"When you say it, it's marketing. When your customer says it, it's social proof." - Andy Crestodina, Orbit Media (Location 791)
Consider the example below from Basecamp, a leading project management software. The headline reads “2,826 businesses signed up last week to get results like these…” (Location 816)
When I work with my ecommerce clients, I spend a lot of time on how to get more User Generated Content (UGC) (Location 849)
Google generally rewards websites with high amounts of UGC, reviews, and ratings. (Location 856)
Basecamp went above and beyond in signaling social proof to prospective customers on their homepage. In the below screenshot, you can see that Basecamp included several five-star testimonials at the very top of their homepage. The fact that they put this social proof above-the-fold, on top of everything else, means that their marketing team values social proof. (Location 895)
sales. But is it possible to apply these authority principles to a website? Absolutely. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of online tools at your disposal to signal authority in your field: as seen on, featured in, awards, certifications, expertise, education, authorship, public speaking, membership in associations, and endorsements, just to name a few. (Location 978)
If you’d like to geek out, you can study the 175 pages of Google's Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, which can be found online. (Location 1006)
Take the below screenshot from Alliant’s homepage. If the website visitor has never heard of their brand before, they make sure to build their authority and establish trust by listing the various awards and recognitions they’ve received from notable institutions. (Location 1036)
Whoever you are and whatever you do, your number one job is to build your credibility on the Internet through native content. The Internet — search engines, blogs, and social media — have democratized marketing. (Location 1081)
Your content signals your worth. Content communicates what you have to offer, what makes you unique, and gives a reason for others to be interested in you, your product and your website. (Location 1092)
“If you want to be treated like a king, act like one” reads the famous adage. Similarly, if you want to be treated as an expert, start acting like one. (Location 1101)
Content marketing and content strategy are two different animals, yet the terms are often confused and used interchangeably. Content marketing is the actual creation and promotion of content to attract and engage a defined audience, while content strategy is the planning and creation of a scalable and repeatable content process with a built-in audience. (Location 1113)
Have you heard about Buffer? It’s a social media tool that allows content sharing automation, like HootSuite. Buffer got hot on the Internet when it launched, growing from 0 to 100K users in nine months. (Location 1188)
The answer is smart guest blogging. Buffer’s Co-Founder, Leo Wildrich, used this strategy, writing and posting insightful blog posts on relevant authoritative websites. Both the readers and the search engine bots followed these backlinks to Buffer's website, boosting its SEO traffic. (Location 1191)
Google ‘buffer guest blogging’ to learn more about specific tactics Leo used to get such excellent results. (Location 1194)
When it comes to guest blogging, it’s essential to build relationships with other bloggers and editors. Once you’re pitching and contributing guest posts, you want to create content that’s of value to the audience that typically reads the content on the website you’re targeting. Do your research first because it’s important to match the style and guidelines of the blog you’re contributing to. (Location 1204)
You can use tools such as BuzzSumo to analyze the best-performing content of a blog you want to write for. This tool lets you identify the most shared blog posts. (Location 1208)
I found an interesting tool from Portent’s Idea Generator (http://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker) helpful in directing how you can structure a headline for an article. (Location 1221)
Brand Featured is one of my favorite tools to get your As-Seen-In mentions quickly and affordably. For a few hundred bucks, the Brand Featured team will get you paid placements on the affiliates of NBC, FOX, CBS, MarketWatch, and 100+ other websites. (Location 1247)
I like Moz’s Link Explorer (https://moz.com/link-explorer) tool. I also find MozBar, a browser plug-in, very useful because it lets me check the competitive SEO environment for ranking opportunities when I search Google or browse websites. (Location 1382)
Risk-Free Trials Ask any car salesperson how to close a deal and they’ll point you to a test drive. Experiencing the product or service before buying is one of the most powerful closing techniques. (Location 1571)
A conversion benchmark study of over 100 SaaS companies found that websites that didn’t require a credit card as part of the free trial sign up had 2x more end-to-end conversions.[53] (Location 1604)
Aside from motivating visitors to complete the entire form, multi-step forms also help you remarket by seeing where the user drops off. (Location 1732)
Google Analytics allows you to create four types of Goals listed below: (Location 1744)
On average, users who logged in via Social Login spent 30% more time on the site versus the older method. Those Social Login users also generate 15 percent more page views than others.” (Location 1764)
Nir Eyal, author of “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products,” observes that habit-forming companies can link their services or products to the users’ daily routines and emotions, instead of relying on expensive marketing. (Location 1786)
Incentives and rewards are among the most understood principles in the field of psychology. “Incentives are those stimuli in the environment, both positive or negative, that motivate our behavior. These things pull us to behave in certain ways (as opposed to drive which pushes us from within).”[61] For example, if you are offered a reward (such as money) to perform a certain action, the money is the incentive to perform that action. A pretty powerful incentive indeed. (Location 1825)
Ariely hypothesized that The Economist could get more readers to choose the target, web + print option if there was a third, less attractive subscription plan present as a decoy. (Location 1883)
I’m a firm believer in investing in the creation of these competitive comparisons in the form of tables, widgets, or graphics in your web content strategy. The competitive comparisons are great not only for product positioning and conversion rates, but also for SEO. (Location 1946)
Search for “Your brand VS” on Google to see if your customers are already actively comparing your product to other options available on the Internet. For Asana, a popular project management software, it was critical to develop comparison content because a lot of their potential customers search for keywords such as “asana vs monday” or “asana vs trello.” When such a crucial query is entered into Google’s search box, would you rather the searcher find the comparison chart on your website (so you can control it) or on the website of one of your competitors? (Location 1948)
When someone searches for the “versus keywords” they are usually ready to buy, so don't miss out during this crucial moment in the buyer’s journey. Stay relevant by offering your own comparison charts. (Location 1959)
Persona Mapping Your conversion funnel isn’t one-size-fits-all: depending on your buyer personas, you may have multiple conversion funnels acting simultaneously on your website. Persona mapping is the first step in your conversion funnel, followed by keyword, content, and conversion mapping. At Alphametic, we’ve had the pleasure of working with several worldwide resorts that target multiple buyer personas. We can use the example of casino buyer personas to illustrate how to map content and conversions based on the industry personas. In general, casino resorts attract four types of buyer personas: the Gamer, the Entertainment Seeker, the Vacationer, and the Business Executive. These four types of buyers have different motives for visiting a resort and are on the website for different reasons. (Location 2778)
Based on your buyer personas, your keyword, content, and conversion mapping strategy will look different. We’ll refer to the above chart when we explain each of these methods in subsequent chapters. (Location 2789)