15 07 sean johnson

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO
FUNNEL OPTIMIZATION
sean johnson @intentionally
http://www.sean-johnson.com

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO FUNNEL OPTIMIZATION
Partner at Digital Intent and Founder Equity
Professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg school of Management
Product, UI/UX, Development, Traction
www.digintent.com
Seed stage technology investors.
www.founderequity.com

“TODAY’S PRESENTATION BY @INTENTIONALLY
WAS THE BEST I’VE EVER HEARD.”

“TODAY’S PRESENTATION BY @INTENTIONALLY
WAS THE WORST I’VE EVER HEARD.”

“Most startups don't fail at building a product.  
They fail at acquiring customers.”
gabriel weinberg
http://intly.me/XFf69t

“Growth is about taking your product and optimizing it to produce
compound interest. There are very few (if any) silver bullets when it
comes to growth. But there are many micro optimizations.”
andy johns
http://intly.me/WNGdDF

How to do experiments.
1. Identify an area for improvement (homepage to email conversion, etc.)
2. Create a hypothesis (if we simplify the form we’ll improve conversion.)
3. Deploy as an A/B test.
4. If the change improves the metric you’re measuring, roll it out.
5. Rinse and repeat.

“A great deal of perseverance is required. There are a huge
number of failed experiments before success. There is a ﬁne line
between failure and success.”
michael birch
http://intly.me/Vw1xin

Your ﬁrst thousand users are an extension of
customer development. Focus on learning and
getting to product/market ﬁt.
hiten shah
http://intly.me/W0kpAJ

You don’t need more features. Spend 80% of
your time on reﬁning existing features, and
only 20% on new development.
dave mcclure
http://intly.me/XWdGcF

Use surveys to home in on product/market ﬁt. When you
get 40% of users telling you they’d be very disappointed,
it’s likely you’re on to something.
sean ellis
http://intly.me/ZhXBCZ

ADS BY 19%
HOMEPAGE BY 19%
PRICING PAGE BY 19%
SIGNUP FORM BY 19%
=
100% CONVERSION INCREASE
18

Segment your users and survey them. Identify their objections.
Use Quaraloo to ask questions.
Use Olark or another live chat tool to capture users who might leave.
20

Value Proposition: The promise you make to customers. The most important factor.
!
Relevance: Is this what the visitor thought they were going to see?
!
Clarity: Is it clear what action you want them to take?
!
Urgency: Is there a reason they should take action now?
!
Anxiety: Are you doing anything to give the user pause about taking the next step?
!
Distraction: Are you doing anything to divert the user’s attention from the action you want them to take?

The LIFT Model lets you look at your pages from each lens, identifying ways to
remove conversion blockers and leverage conversion drivers more eﬀectively.
45.5% IMPROVEMENT

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USE ANCHORING.
35

USE ANCHORING.
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Provide an offer to get emails (whitepapers, etc.)
Identify the window when they’re most likely to convert and focus your energy
there. If there’s < 1% chance of conversion after 7 days, focus your energy before
7 days.
A/B test every email - focus on the subject line.
Add a call to action to every email.
Segment your subscribers based on the call to action that caused them to sign
up.
Create auto-triggered emails using customer.io to follow up with people who bail
out of your signup process.
EMAIL CONVERSION IN 90 SECONDS

Provide a simple walkthrough of your core experience.
Have your demo assist the user in the creation of their initial content.
Use gamiﬁcation (LinkedIn’s % complete, etc.) to incentivize users to complete
next steps.
If connecting with Facebook, consider auto-following friends already on the
service. http://intly.me/Uq4xet
Auto-follow inﬂuential users to get over the cold start problem.
Don’t create friction in the user experience with heavy moderation tools, etc.
Particularly early on. You can address spam later. http://intly.me/Uq4xet
Send a series of email autoresponders over 1 week teaching users how to get the
most out of your service.
ONBOARDING IN 90 SECONDS

Get users to the Aha moment as fast as possible.
For Facebook that’s 10 friends in 7 days.
For Twitter it’s following 30 people.
chamath palihapitiya
http://intly.me/12T1saz

Backﬁll data

Strongly consider using web views 
while ﬁguring out activation.

Bucket and track the retention rate of speciﬁc sets of users using cohorts. This allows
you to see how product enhancements impact retention for new groups of users vs. old.
http://intly.me/Urou4B
!

Your best tool for retention is email.
You’ve been outbid (eBay)
Year in Review (LinkedIn)
You have a new friend/follower (Facebook, Twitter)
You’ve been ousted as the mayor (Foursquare)
!

Pinterest auto-follows connections but staggered them, sending an email
notiﬁcation each time a “connection” was made to boost returning users.
http://intly.me/Uq4xet
!

Make heavy use of social artifacts. Ask for
automatic notiﬁcations during network connection.
Identify every meaningful sharable event.

Make it painless for users creating new content
to also spread the word via external networks.
http://intly.me/VWpJKQ

https://medium.com/getting-real-survey-
answers-out-of-smart-busy-people?

utm_content=buffer40dbb&utm_medium
=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_ca
mpaign=buffer

Allow users to embed widgets on their sites, with
text links to your site (SEO beneﬁt to boot!)

Address book importing is likely your best tool for
generating referrals.

Filter friends before suggesting invites.

Autoﬁll referral text.

Send your friends a gift.
!
vs.
!
You can only send 1 more gift today.

Create custom, personalized landing pages
http://intly.me/12PiTEz

Provide incentives - ideally ones that improve
the experience of using the product.

Make sure your site is crawlable, has good information architecture and loads
quickly. Eliminate duplicate content.
Do keyword research and target high volume, low competition, low cost phrases.
Create consistent, compelling, evergreen content targeting long tail keywords.
Link internally to other relevant content pages.
Optimize headlines and meta descriptions for clickthrough. Use video xml and
Google authorship to get thumbnails into results.
Find out who’s linking to your competitors and try to get links to you as well.
Build links through guest posts, product reviews, directory submissions, etc.
SEO IN 90 SECONDS
rand ﬁshkin
http://intly.me/YdXAsX

Write about the problem space, not your product.
Aim for 20 posts per month. http://intly.me/Ye1Atq
Create evergreen content that will still be relevant and searched for in 2 years.
People can’t get enough of lists. Use odd numbers.
Collect emails and send them new content - http://intly.me/XVagqJ
Interview people who would be inﬂuential to your customers. They’re likely to spread the
word about the interview, and the content will be well received.
Google likes longer content. http://intly.me/15jEusz
Do lots of guest posting. 1 for you, 2 for them. http://intly.me/W0vxxD
People love infographics.
Always include something for people to do when they ﬁnish reading. Suggest other
posts, include a call to action, etc.
!
CONTENT MARKETING IN 90 SECONDS

Target individual writers, not publications. Do your homework.
Start with small blogs and work your way up.
Be brief with your pitch.
Craft a compelling story. No one cares about product specs.
Build relationships before you need them. Send reporters tips.
Have 1-3 key points you want to get across during an interview. Hit those hard.
Follow up immediately with logos, headshots, product screens, etc. Make their
lives easier.
PR IN 90 SECONDS
sean blanda
http://intly.me/Yx3INN

You probably shouldn’t do it except for testing, or if your LTV is high.  
http://intly.me/Xb233s
But if you do...
Monitor conversion, not just clickthrough.
Use broad match initially to see what people search for, then narrow to increase CTR
Use negative keywords to avoid showing up on undesirable SERPs.
Create one ad group per keyword to increase quality score.
Match ads to highly relevant landing pages.
Kill off or rewrite anything with less than 2% CTR
Always be running variations.
!
ADWORDS IN 90 SECONDS

Use Followerwonk to research potential users to follow.
Engage - retweet, favorite, etc. to get on their radar.
Tweets have a half-life of 1 hour, Facebook 1 day. Set a posting schedule
accordingly.
Use social to warm up leads before sending an email. http://intly.me/XbcDHH
Hashtags are usually noise, but can be a great way to reach people at
conferences remotely. http://intly.me/VmdmFt
Images in Facebook have the highest clickthrough rate. Include link in the copy.
Answer highly visible questions on Quora.
Post presentations to Slideshare.
Submit relevant posts to Reddit, Hacker News, etc.
SOCIAL IN 90 SECONDS

Images are the most important factor. Test 50 images. Test orientation (looking right,
looking left.) Test color and shape of borders.
Use country targeting when testing conversion. US costs 5-10x other countries.
Use Canada, New Zealand, etc.
Focus on conversion, not just clickthrough rate. It’s not uncommon to have 40-60%
conversion rates if it’s targeted well.
News feed ads get 45x higher conversion than sidebar ads.
Use mobile app installs to acquire new users for iOS/Android apps
Leverage custom audiences.
Take advantage of retargeting.
FACEBOOK ADS IN 90 SECONDS
andy johns
http://intly.me/WNO2ct

HTTP://INTLY.ME/FUNNEL-NICE

http://www.sean-johnson.com

15 07 sean johnson

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