Neil Patel’s 6 Unorthodox Conversion Tactics #SEJSummit Liveblog

Neil Patel is the co-founder of CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics, analytics and conversion optimization tools and platforms. He’s been doing business online for 11 years and he does at least four new A/B tests a month. He’s a CRO master and he’s sharing his insights this morning at the Search Engine Journal Summit in Santa Monica.

A lot of businesses aim for one thing: driving traffic. Long-term ethical traffic driving tactics costs a lot of money. If you can optimize your conversions, you’re going to make more from the traffic you have.

1. How to think about conversion optimization the right way. This will help you get more wins.
2. How to come up with tests. Create tests based on what you see as problems, not based on what you want. Tests have to be data driven.
3. Suggestions on tests you can run that should help boost your conversion rate.

Here are six CRO tactics.

Idea 1: Flip around your funnel.

CRO is like dating. Don’t ask them to marry you first. Get to know them. Instead of asking for their name and email in form, ask for their URL and give them some info about what you can do for that site.

Idea 2: Give a reason to stick around.

Leave some mystery, evoke curiosity. This gives people a reason to follow through, increasing your sales.

Idea 3: Stay top of mind.

Here’s an idea: give homework assignments. Then your potential customers will be thinking of you outside the time you have with them. They’ll be drawn back to you to get the homework answers.

Idea 4: Quiz your visitors.

Tips on quizzes:

• Start with five questions
• Use images when possible
• Limit your choices per question to four

Revolution Golf makes $20 million a year on quizzes, quizzing people to improve their golf game.

Idea 5: Make signing up easy.

You’ve probably signed up for 200 accounts in your lifetime. But don’t ask people to sign up for another account for your site. That’s an unnecessary hurdle. Instead have them log in with an account they already have. Authentication via Twitter, Google+ and Facebook is common today.

Idea 6: Get personal.

People want to feel special. Dating sites serve this desire well. Use geo-based data throughout your messaging and people will feel like you’re talking to them.

Q & A

• What’s the ROI from social media? Collect emails.
• Do you have any favorite platforms for interactive quizzes? Patel has a developer code it up into XML and CSS. The sole purpose of the quiz is to collect leads so you want the XML to collect it straight into your CRM and a platform can make that data transfer more complicated.
• Do you recommend any pop-up lead generation tools? He suggests some expensive ones and then says that OptinMonster WordPress plugin is pennies on the dollar.

We’re reporting live all day from the SEJ Summit in Santa Monica! Read more liveblog coverage here.

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.