Discover the alchemy of homepage design that magnetizes and converts with JMarketing's wizard of the web, Josh Strawczynski. Prepare to be enlightened as Josh imparts the esoteric knowledge of crafting a homepage that doesn’t just catch the eye but clasps the visitor in a persuasive embrace within the first few seconds. Josh demystifies the crafting of headlines that serve as a siren call to your ideal customers and deconstructs the allure of a truly irresistible call to action. Forget about grandiose slogans—this episode is all about resonating with the heart of your audience, with straight-shooting advice that will leave business owners armed and ready to turn their websites into conversion cauldrons.
In our chat with Josh, we traverse the digital landscape, uncovering the strategic elements that make a website not just a pretty face, but a conversion powerhouse. From aligning your brand with the right client profile to leveraging media mentions, we cover it all. Videos that captivate, live chats that engage, and the subtle art of guiding visitors with clear CTAs—Josh’s insights are a treasure map to the goldmine of conversions. Plus, he reveals how flaunting your expertise isn't just about bragging rights; it's a strategic move that reassures clients and clears the path to commitment. Tune in, and transform your website from a mere digital footprint into a beacon of business success.
Discover the alchemy of homepage design that magnetizes and converts with JMarketing's wizard of the web, Josh Strawczynski. Prepare to be enlightened as Josh imparts the esoteric knowledge of crafting a homepage that doesn’t just catch the eye but clasps the visitor in a persuasive embrace within the first few seconds. Josh demystifies the crafting of headlines that serve as a siren call to your ideal customers and deconstructs the allure of a truly irresistible call to action. Forget about grandiose slogans—this episode is all about resonating with the heart of your audience, with straight-shooting advice that will leave business owners armed and ready to turn their websites into conversion cauldrons.
In our chat with Josh, we traverse the digital landscape, uncovering the strategic elements that make a website not just a pretty face, but a conversion powerhouse. From aligning your brand with the right client profile to leveraging media mentions, we cover it all. Videos that captivate, live chats that engage, and the subtle art of guiding visitors with clear CTAs—Josh’s insights are a treasure map to the goldmine of conversions. Plus, he reveals how flaunting your expertise isn't just about bragging rights; it's a strategic move that reassures clients and clears the path to commitment. Tune in, and transform your website from a mere digital footprint into a beacon of business success.
Business owners. Do you want an unfair advantage over your competitors? Do you want to dominate in your area of expertise? You are listening to Business Life Hacks. Learn to influence consumer psychology and shortcut your way to business success with tips, tricks and hacks from award-winning digital agency J Marketing. Award-winning digital agency.
Speaker 2:J Marketing. So it's a really common problem for companies to spend a lot of money on a website, spend a lot of money on advertising, driving people to this website, but not get conversions. So if you find yourself in this boat, you're not alone. But people don't usually know why traffic to the website is not converting. But at J Marketing we do know why and we know how to fix it. So here to talk about that today is J Marketing's Managing Director, josh Straczynski.
Speaker 3:I'm really excited for this episode. This is something that we have been studying and practicing for more than 15 years and, alex, I'm going to give you both barrels, everything you want to know in the most easy to understand way. What do you got for me today?
Speaker 2:Well, I was thinking. First thing, we should start talking about the homepage right away because, of course, as you know, the homepage is by far the most important part of your website. The page is going to get the most traffic, it's going to create the initial impression of your brand and everyone who visits your website. A lot of times, we'll initially just do one page for a company, and that's usually the homepage, because that's going to make the biggest impact. So, starting about the homepage, how do you ensure the design of a homepage immediately captures a visitor's attention and communicates the value proposition of a company?
Speaker 3:2.6 seconds. 2.6 seconds is how long you have to win the war. When people land on your website and this is really what you're asking here On average, when people are searching, they've got seven tabs open. Yours is one of them. Six other competitors and they are giving you 2.6 seconds before their brain makes the decision of whether they're in the right place.
Speaker 3:Now, I don't know how much you can do in 2.6 seconds, alex. I can probably reach for my coffee, but I can't quite get it up to my lips. So we are really battling the clock. So, for those listening, if there is one thing to do, it is to create a headline which you can read really easily and a few really good examples of websites. I would check out Buddy Healthcare and I would check out lateralcomau.
Speaker 3:These are headlines that when you go onto those websites, within 2.6 seconds you'll read the headline and go got it. They're about eight words each, they're the biggest text on the page and they have high, high, high contrast to the background. And if you got one more thing in you and I know, alex, you're going to ask me about how to know what headline to write I'm happy to talk about that. But if there's one other thing, then it's going to be after they've read the headline. One other thing, then it's going to be after they've read the headline. Is there an easy next step? Is there a button which kind of draws me into the next phase, not just inquire or learn more, but actually watch the video to know what we do? That's easy. Does that resonate with you, alex? If you, as a simple advice?
Speaker 2:I mean, I know this is your world of copywriting- yeah, I mean, I think what we're talking about how the headline needs to be large, needs to as far as some copywriting guidelines needs to start with a verb and then the easy next step, which is what we would call the CTA call to action should probably be a button right under the headline so people's eyes will automatically go to it after they read the headline, and it should be just a few words, big, bold copy and it should flow naturally off of the headline. So it's all one big, impactful message that people can internalize and, like you said, there's 2.6 seconds.
Speaker 3:One thing I want to touch on too, and your advice is great. Let's say you're not Nike or Adidas or one of these brands, right, you're not a big, globally known brand, Does a headline like just do it? Is that the right way to do a headline for a non-global brand?
Speaker 2:I mean no because I mean no one who hasn't heard of your brand before will even know what that means. I would argue that's not even really the right way to do a headline for Nike, because everyone who knows Nike knows that that's their slogan. It's not really going to grab people's attention and say you're on Nike's website and they're trying to get you to buy stuff through their online store. I don't think that's really going to drive action, so I don't think that's really the right sort of headline, no matter what company you're talking about.
Speaker 3:I would agree with you 1000%. It's. One of the things that really frustrates me at a university level is that all of the examples in the textbooks are all big companies and yet if you're listening to this, I would be very, very certain you are not the head of Nike. If you are, I'm absolutely flattered. But for everyone who's not, don't think about it in those terms. Think about it in terms of what does your customer want? And so Alex mentioned before start with a verb. A really good headline will solve your customer's problem, and one of our little I'll put up in inverted commas hacks is to start with a verb, because it is physically impossible to write about yourself, and this will be a rhetoric question for those listening. But which of these two headlines is more likely to get your attention. First one is the best language school available on the internet. The second one is learn Spanish in just 20 weeks. Shouldn't be particularly difficult to know which one you felt more drawn to, because one solves a problem and one talks about the company.
Speaker 2:Obviously we're talking about how does a homepage immediately capture attention? So we're talking about the first module, the header block, the hero module, whatever you want to call it. As far as the imagery, you definitely want to have some imagery that looks professional, looks beautiful, because that'll be, it'll help a good first impression. But you don't want it to, you know, distract attention from your actual message in the text, and you especially don't want it to make your text hard to read, like I know you and I, we both see a lot of websites that have, you know, not just videos behind the text in the hero module, but like sort of dark videos. So not only is it distracting, it's hard to read the text. Don't do that Like yep.
Speaker 3:Amazing point and there's fantastic research by Monash University and many, many, many other universities moving images and busy images. So lots of companies will have sliders because it means they can have like four different messages. Rotating through Makes perfect sense if you run a cake store and it's a rotating cake display. Makes no sense on the web. And the data is very, very clear If you overload the senses of the brain, the brain doesn't take in all those messages.
Speaker 3:It takes in none of them and that is the chief destroyer of conversion rate. So if you've got nothing else and you want to run one test, try just having a black or white or whatever background, just a plain, one color background with the same headline you have now, against what you currently have, and look for metric changes like time on site or change of bounce rate. I guarantee a plain background will outperform a busy one, even though it's uglier. Now I'm not saying go and that's your final solution, but run that as a test and you will see how important that visual clarity really is. Absolutely. That's your final solution. But run that as a test and you will see how important that visual clarity really is, absolutely.
Speaker 2:That's probably the single most impactful, at least quick, tip we can offer. I think we should move on to talking about testimonials, social proof. So can you talk a little bit about why that's so important for influencing action, josh?
Speaker 3:I think it's now very common practice to put companies we work with or as seen, on a website, but people don't really understand why. This is social proof and the research around how we make decisions says that people want to feel confident that they're making the right choice. So we're trying to reduce the risk that they have, and one of the big drivers of that is are there companies here's the important bit like mine that use this service? I'll give you an example, alex, and I'm really interested in your perspective. You might disagree with this. You're an amazing writer. If there was someone giving out writing tips, would you be more interested in the person who did corporate writing for McDonald's, which is a really big brand, or the guy who built an agency a writing agency from the ground up for high performance, whatever?
Speaker 2:I would say the guy who built a copywriting agency from the ground up.
Speaker 3:Right, and it's not nearly as big a brand, right that copywriting agency? Maybe they sold for a million bucks or 2 million bucks or something. It's not going to be a lot, not compared to McDonald's multi-billions. And so for you, the guy that runs the agency ground up, if he was pitching you or he was even one of the clients of some other third-party business, you're going to be more interested. This is basic psychology. But if we are going to put logos of companies that we represent there, that work with us, think about who your ideal client is and put logos like them on the website. Do not just go for McDonald's and Netflix and something else that you had a contract with 20 years ago for 50 bucks. It's not useful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, and I think another important point is that, like you said, you want to put the logos of the companies that represent your ideal customers, not necessarily the customers you have now. For example, we work with a lot of clients that are agency. Maybe they work mostly with individuals or small businesses, but they want to work with larger businesses. So they shouldn't put logos or testimonials from small businesses. They should feature the larger businesses because those are the clients they want to attract in the future 100%, 100%.
Speaker 3:And if you can't do that and sometimes you can't then as seen on as brilliant is a fantastic alternative to building trust, because you can leverage big media networks. Now, the fact that you were featured with a little byline about your opinion on Apple strudel it's not the best, but you were actually featured in that and that is enough to give people confidence that you must have something worthwhile to say and you can whack their logo on your site.
Speaker 2:It seems the way we have this podcast structured is, a lot of times, how we actually structure the homepages. So, a lot of times below these testimonials we were just talking about, we a video, often from you know, like the managing director or someone important with a client that we created the page for, and it'll be demonstrating their product or explaining how their product works. So why is it important to include video like this sort of video? How can it actually influence behavior of people who are visiting the website?
Speaker 3:This one's definitely. There will be people that are triggered right now because video is scary, and it's to me. Video seems one of two things Either I don't like being on camera Well, personally, I love being on camera, but most people don't and secondly, it's going to be expensive. Neither of those things are necessarily true, However. Let's talk about why we do it. In the last 15 years, humans have decreased their attention span 85%. We would love to think that we write this big block of content and people read it Not even close. I've spent time with some of the leading eye-tracking experts in the world. They have taught me People sample text all over the place. It's crazy, and so video is the new medium. It is the way that you can communicate in 60 seconds everything that you want them to take away. But, Alex, simple question for you Out of 100 explainer videos that we watch for companies, what percentage of them would you say are really well done, are very concise and to the point?
Speaker 2:10% max.
Speaker 3:That was exactly the number I had in my head, and the mistake that they make is always the same it's talking about themselves and taking forever to get to the point. They call it burying the lead. Well, video is no different to any other medium. The first 10 seconds is everything I used to teach public speaking 20-odd years ago, and the first rule that I had for people was walk into the room and destroy that first 10 seconds. Just make it the best 10 seconds. You can yell, you can shout, you can clap get their attention. You can yell, you can shout, you can clap get their attention. Well, why on earth that has been around for 100 years, that methodology, and yet for video we don't follow it is beyond me. If you want to see a really good example of video done well, look up Vice, any of the Vice documentaries Off the cuff, alex, I don't know. I've never asked you that before. Do you know how Vice always starts every video?
Speaker 2:Don't they usually start right in the middle of the action, grab people's attention and they go to the introduction to the story after the first clip.
Speaker 3:Exactly. They grab a really interesting quote or something from the middle which they will show again later. That pulls you in. You don't have to do it that way, but you do have to say be clear. So if we were doing a video to push this podcast, our first line would be something along the lines of websites do not convert if you do not understand how to X, Y and Z, and so you're really gripping the user, and then you can make it more boring and tell the whole story if you need to. To answer your question, though, Alex, and it was why it's because, in 60 seconds, what I'm hoping I can impart is how this is going to solve your problem, not how does it do it. The idea is, if you know that I can solve your problem and I've got a track history of it, you will then invest the time to find out how.
Speaker 2:So, on a live chat, a lot of our websites we create they'll have like a live chat, what we call the widget, a thing where you can start like a live chat, what we call the widget, a thing where you can start up a live chat with our client company. So why are these such a good idea to have? Why do we have these on so many of our websites we create?
Speaker 3:massively growing in importance. There are markets all around the world that already live chat or WhatsApp are the primary ways of communicating. But the reason is I talked about the drop of attention before. People demand instantaneous, instantaneous satisfaction. In fact, sales data going back to when I was at university showed that if you answer someone's question within five minutes, you are 100 times more likely to turn them into a sale. That makes sense, right? How good are you going to feel if you lodge an inquiry and I get back to you a day later or a week later? You're not. It's not in your consideration set anymore, and I've clearly identified that you're not important.
Speaker 3:So, whether it is B2C or B2B, live chat is so important to solve the customer's problem now. Get them involved in the process now and, as a bonus, subtly remove the risk of if I sign up, will I be able to get support when I need it? I could tell stories about products and services I've bought because the sales team were good and it turned out that the product support was actually really bad. But the fact that I knew I could speak to someone when I wanted to. Originally, that got me across the line, and I think that this is one of my number one tips for now we're coming into 2025 for anyone to put on their website.
Speaker 2:Definitely. It's like you're saying. It's massively impactful to be able to answer someone's question right away. A lot of businesses, especially small businesses, they are hesitant because they don't really have the manpower to do that. But you can get very realistic AI bots that can give someone the impression they're talking to a live human pretty convincingly, I think that segues really nicely into our next point.
Speaker 3:What is the number one question that live chat gets asked about a product?
Speaker 2:question that live chat gets asked about a product, I would say what's the price? The reason that's an underlined question is because a lot of businesses, especially B2B businesses, are very hesitant to put their pricing on their website. But I think that's a mistake and I'm pretty sure you agree with that, josh.
Speaker 3:A thousand percent and we've tested this. We know this to be true and I know it's another triggering one for business owners and marketing managers. We can't possibly put our price there. Competitors will see it and they'll undercut us. People will see it and it'll put them off. We've heard that all before. The only problem with that is that all of the data says that that's not correct. That is an emotional rationalization. But, alex, I'll put it to you. You get to look at a lot of websites that are going to help with copywriting, lots of AI that is going to help with X, y and Z. If you can't see the price and you have to inquire to get it, how does it make you feel and do you actually to inquire to get it? How does it make you feel and do you actually bother inquiring?
Speaker 2:It makes me feel annoyed, because I think it's obvious that anyone would want to know the price of a product they're considering and for the vast majority of the time, I would not bother inquiring 100% and in fact to me, I'm pretty certain you're not putting your pricing there because it's too expensive.
Speaker 3:But the funny thing about too expensive is that's not a thing. There is no number. I'm not going to pay a million dollars a year, but if you can show me that I'm going to get it on a value out of $1,000 a month, even though there is nothing that I pay for which is even near that price, I will pay it, so don't be fearful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially when you're talking about B2B products or services, where you know any money you spend from your budget is really an investment in your business. It is a bit different if you're talking about you know, whatever, buying something that you don't really need for yourself.
Speaker 2:So a lot of websites. They don't really have any sort of certifications or qualifications, but I think that really helps the legitimacy of the company and it doesn't even matter that much with the certification, qualification, accreditation, license, whatever it is. It helps the company look a lot more legitimate again, especially in a B2B context. So can you talk a little bit about why it's important to showcase that sort of thing?
Speaker 3:Expertise. This is what we're talking about. If you download our book on the nine frictions, it's available on the about three quarters of the way down jmarketingagency, wwwjmarketingagency, you'll see one of the very first frictions. The things that stops people from buying is they're fearful that they're not actually speaking to an expert. No one takes advice from their drunk uncle at Christmas. No one takes advice from just some random dude in a store.
Speaker 3:Show your expertise. This is whether it's certifications, qualifications or just a bio a really good bio about why you run this business and your expertise in the field. This is what motivational theorist Hertzberg calls a hygiene factor. It's not going to win you clients. It will stop you from losing clients. The way that human beings work is that we don't go looking for a reason to sign up to a service. We look for a reason not to sign up for a service because we're so scared of losing. So if you've got certifications, qualifications, expertise, experience, you want to show them off in a way which is going to very quickly let the customer go way, which is going to very quickly let the customer go. Oh yeah, yeah, there's no question this guy's going to be able to deliver on time, on budget and better than I was expecting.
Speaker 2:So we were talking about how people can tweak their header module according to what we were talking about earlier in the podcast. That's a pretty quick tip that'll be really impactful. Another thing in that line, I think, is people just tweaking their CTA call to action buttons. I think just making some relatively small, quick changes can make a massive difference. So can you talk about the best practices for CTA buttons and how to maximize conversions?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm going to use a fun metaphor why do people, when you go on holiday to I don't know, france, paris, why does the majority of people go to the same attractions the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe? Why?
Speaker 2:I would say they're scared of wasting their time and they know if they go to a really famous attraction that millions of people have enjoyed going to before, there's a very small risk of their time being wasted, of not having a good time.
Speaker 3:Nice, okay. And how about if it's a place where maybe it wasn't the best example? But they go into a new city and they end up going to all the big attractions there that they've never heard of. How did they know to go to those attractions?
Speaker 2:Well, if I put myself in the shoes of someone who's just arrived in a new city and they end up going to all the big attractions, I would say, because they see a lot of signs, maybe a lot of foot traffic, a lot of people telling them they should visit all the same attractions yeah, anytime you travel, all the guides say the same thing oh, you should go to this attraction, you should go to that attraction.
Speaker 3:I do a lot of travel and they are seldom good advice. Usually you lob up to the Eiffel Tower and you go yeah, it's a big steel structure. Tick, and then your best experience is actually sitting in some Bikini and Cafe randomly talking to a beat poet. Tick, and then your best experience is actually sitting in some barquinium cafe randomly talking to a beat poet. But they can't put that in the guide. This talks to human psychology. We love being told what to do, we love being led. So it doesn't take a lot of thought with those recommendations to lead people to do the right thing, the thing you want them to do. Going back to our travel example, if I said, if you were talking to me about travel, alex, and you said I was going to Paris, and I said, oh, arc de Triomphe, you should learn more here, would you? Does that sound very attractive?
Speaker 2:Not, really no.
Speaker 3:No, of course not. There's no context.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:What if I said hey, alex, see the top 10 attractions you should see in Paris here, I'll click here, or some sort of variation on that. Is that more attractive?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it makes more sense to give context. So yeah, definitely, Totally. I mean it makes more sense to give context.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, definitely, totally, and I mean, that's just a stupid little example I thought of on the fly, but that, to me, is what a good call to action does. It leads people to a next step which solves something for them, and our objective is really simple. We talked about winning the first 2.6 seconds. It is to get them to stay another 10 seconds. That's it. Why don't you, alex, too, talk about the difference between conversion points when we're talking about call to actions and the difference between soft and hard conversion points, because this is something else businesses mess up all the time.
Speaker 2:So a hard conversion point is usually what the business really wants you to do, such as purchasing a product or booking an appointment. The reason it's called a hard conversion point is because it's something that requires a bigger commitment from the user, so they're much less likely to do it. Because it's such a great thing for the business. If someone does actually go through the hard conversion point, it's still something they should feature on their website. The majority of people aren't going to be willing to say, book an appointment and spend an hour of their life with someone they've never met before. That's why it's important to have soft conversion points that are really quick, easy things. Especially when people go through the soft conversion points, they actually get something of value in return for what the business wants out of that soft conversion point, which is inevitably the person's contact info email, phone number, whatever so they can follow up with them and try and turn them into a sale eventually.
Speaker 3:We implemented one soft conversion point in a company called Sustainable Australia Fund and it was really simple. It was a see if you qualify for this deal. All you had to do is put in your postcode and then it would either send back hey, you qualified. Did you want us to send you an information pack? Give us your email, phone number and name and bang, we increased conversion rate 10,000% overnight without spending a dollar more on advertising. We have another customer who gives. He's a global expert in neuro-linguistic programming and we've put a first lesson free module on this page. Name and email, it's all you got to give and you get a free lesson. He gets at least one of these a day without running any spending any money on advertising, which is crazy. And those are simple things you're getting as the user value.
Speaker 3:In return, there's a reason to give us your contact details and in that last example, or actually in both examples, there's a what we call a contextually relevant or a socially acceptable reason for your sales team to then call that person. Hey, just wanted to know if you like the video. Hey, I sent you the info pack on the home. Did you want me to take you through anything? Now you've created a connection with the person without a hard conversion point like, hey, apply today, which very few people are going to do. So this is a long episode, alex, but as a little bit of a third party, I guess, even though you're driving this, what are you taking away as the real key lessons for today? If you were going to say, I guess, even though you're driving this, what are you taking away as the real key lessons for today? If you were going to say, all right, taking everything we've said and I'm going to knock it down into one, two or three tips for business owners and marketing managers, what would be your top ones?
Speaker 2:I guess my biggest tip would be make sure that you're thinking about the issues your customers have and that everything on your website communicates that you're providing the best solutions for those issues. Don't just talk about your company or your product, because the customers don't actually care about that when it comes down to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's a really, really good point. And the other one was if you really aren't getting a lot out of your website right now, then go and put focus on just the header block. Try to understand, try to write the headline in eight words to solve a problem. Even if you've got multiple problems you solve, try to choose the best one and try to make sure that there's no distractions away from that text and a really logical next click button. If you would like to know how we statistically work out what the best headlines are, shoot us an inquiry and we'll take you through our market surety testing. It is an amazing system that gives real clarity into what is the number one thing that catches people's attention. We'll be delighted to take you all through it and teach you the science behind it. I think that's probably all the information I can squeeze out into one episode today, Alex. I really hope it's been a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it has. I think we packed a massive amount of value into this episode. So thank you everyone for listening and thank you, josh, for coming on the podcast. See you again soon.