If your company had only one user, would he or she be happy? With some types of business the answer is a definite no. No one would want to join a dating site that had only one member. The same is true for many types of business, including * Sites that put members in touch with other members, like auction sites, trading platforms, job sites and classifieds sites. * Sites that depend on user-generated content, like YouTube, Flickr, IMDb and StackOverflow. This talk describes winning strategies for such companies, and gives tools and techniques that are effective in scaling them. It includes a case study of how Conversion Rate Experts helped to grow the conversion rate of Voices.com by 400%. The talk was given to the members of ICMA, the International Classified Media Assocation (http://www.icmaonline.org/). You can watch the video of this talk at http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/matchmaker/

1. Conversion rate optimization for
companies that put people in touch
with each other
(like classifieds sites, trading platforms,
job sites, dating sites, social networks
and communities)
Dr Karl Blanks, Chairman

2. How we became
“conversion obsessed”

3. Google took notice

4. Our clients
Our results

7. “There is a nearexplosion, followed by a
few short years of
tremendous excitement, tremendous
startup activity,
tremendous publicity.
Five years later comes a
‘shakeout’, which few
survive.”
Peter Drucker, 1985

9. URL
=
Ubiquity first,
Revenue Later

10. Demand-side economies of scale
n=2
2 connections
n=5
20 connections
n = 12
132 connections

11. To your users…
…the value of your business ∝ n2

12. Demand-side economies of scale
Buying-and-selling platforms (eBay, Voices.com, job sites, car sites)
Software (users want compatibility)
Communications (e.g., Skype)
User-generated content (e.g., Wikipedia, Amazon, IMDb)
Social networks (e.g., Facebook, dating sites)
Ad networks (e.g., AdSense)
Note: Perception and expectation are important
“Single-player and multi-player modes”—Zach Klein

13. Supply-side economies of scale
Fixed costs are divided among a larger number of users, so you can afford to
spend more on…
Marketing
Product design
Operations
Everything
As sales increase, variable costs decrease due to bulk buying

15. How do we get such amazing results?
1
Gaining a deep understanding of what makes buyers buy
2
Determining what makes some qualified visitors not buy

16. O/CO
Objection
Counter-Objection
A more sophisticated approach.

17. Tools we use to find out what visitors…
…do…
…think…
…say

18. How we increased the conversion
rate of Voices.com by over 400%

19. Our in-depth analysis of Voices.com
1
We studied Voices.com’s sales funnel to find the biggest
opportunities for improvement.
2
We analyzed 510 visitor surveys to understand the mindset of
those who arrived to the site but didn’t ultimately subscribe.
3
We studied all of Voices.com’s sales literature and interviewed the
company’s CEO to identify all of the company’s “persuasion assets.”
4
We analyzed Voices.com’s competitors’ websites to understand the
strategies and opportunities.
Once we understood the prospects’ main objections, and what could be done
to overcome them, we created new test pages.

20. We achieved the 400% increase by
doing eleven experiments, which
we carried out at five different
stages of the conversion funnel.

21. Here are a few things that might
apply to your business.

22. Finding and communicating proof
Adding proof to the homepage had a significant effect:
Voices.com had some impressive “claims to fame” that could really
influence prospective customers but that weren’t clearly
communicated on the website.

23. Segmenting
(by visitor type or by visitor intention)
The site had two distinct types of visitor: voice-over artists and
companies looking for voice-over artists.
There was a great benefit from immediately and clearly segmenting
these types of visitor into separate conversion funnels.

24. Demonstration videos
Often, the biggest obstacle facing prospects is that they don’t
understand what they are about to sign up for. Voices.com overcame
this obstacle by adding clearly communicated demonstration videos.

25. Hidden opportunities in the sales funnel
Once we had increased the
conversion rate of
Voices.com’s sales funnel,
we identified that there
was a big opportunity for
email marketing. We then
designed a hugely
successful email marketing
campaign for increasing its
lifetime customer value.

26. Don’t copy the pages
—copy our process

27. Important things to remember…
§ URL: Ubiquity first, Revenue Later
§ Shakeout: “Few will survive”
§ Be aware of established strategies and phenomena
§ Economies of scale
§ Satisfy all visitor intentions

29. Great, no-fluff conversion
resources:
http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/learning-zone/