The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Optimization for CrossFit Boxes

Discovery

What are you trying to do?

You need to get crystal clear on what you’re trying to do. Do you want more people to go to your website? Do you want people to go to your landing page?  Do you want current members to like your Facebook Page?

Why are you trying to do it?

Discovery is the most important part of this process, because if you don’t know what you are doing or why you are doing it - you’ll end up with bad results and wasting your own time and money. Asking why is just as important as what.

Why do you want to get more visitors or why do you want to get more leads? What purpose does it serve? Don’t be blind here. Sometimes you might think you need more visitors, but if your website converts visitors to leads poorly, then it probably won’t matter how many visitors you get. You could also be getting 10 new members a month, but if you’re losing 10 as well, then it doesn’t matter. Your problem is not getting more customers. You need to be figuring out why you are losing them.

Set short-term and long-term action goals

Set realistic goals that you’re actually going to do. Don’t say, “uhhh….I want to make more money.” That’s not a goal, that’s just wishful thinking. But you’re not going to make that mistake, right?

Short-term goal example:

• What? - I want to obtain 5 new members for my box this month.
• How? - I will create a landing page and spend $10 a day on Google Ad words
• When? - In 30 days or less.

Long-term goal example:

• What? - I want to be able to coach more clients rather than spend most my time marketing and handling management.
• How? - Set up turnkey client getting systems to automate the process.
• When? - In 6 months from today, these systems will be setup and optimized.

It’s a lot easier to get somewhere if you know where your are going. Decide where your destination is going to be.

Craft your offer

It's absolutely crucial that you craft a strong service offering. This may be the make or break point for whether you get a lead or not. A visitor may want a free consultation instead of a free workout. They may want a free diet plan instead of a free eBook.

Find the benefits your customers want

When someone joins CrossFit, they aren't just buying a workout program. They might be buying it because it makes them more attractive to others or because it gives them more energy to play with their kids or to lower their  blood pressure or even just to feel like they're part of a community. Don't think for a second that CrossFit is just a workout. You can Google "workouts" and get about 18,100,000 results (Yes, I Googled it). You're selling the workout, the community and accountability it takes to help people reach the benefits they desire. It's your job to communicate this through your marketing and your sales.

Realize that most CrossFit boxes offer a free workout, but it's the experience that will determine whether or not they become a customer. You can test some ideas in your copywriting. Instead of saying, "Try a Free Workout" - you could say "Get the Body You've Always Dreamed Of. Start CrossFit Today". Or you could say something like "Never Be Winded Again. Start Your CrossFit Journey". These are just ideas to help communicate benefits to potential clients. Get inside their heads and figure out what they want. The best way to find out is to ask your current members.

What are the benefits of working with YOU? What is the YourCrossFit difference?

Not only are you selling a workout or a certain benefit, but you're selling yourself. Trainers are a dime-a-dozen, but what separates YOU from everyone else? Like anything, you'll get people who won't join your box just  because they don't like you. You'll also get people to join simply because they like you. You need to understand that business is about relationships. It's not a cold mechanical process and you need to remember that people will buy you. Think of some benefits that potential clients could get from working with you and no one else.

Crafting you service offering

There are many different things you could give away for free. You could give away a free workout, a free eBook, a fitness evaluation, a free diet plan, a free Skype session etc... Test some things out and see what gets you the most conversions. This all ties back to the discovery part. If you want someone to become a member, you'll probably want them to try a free workout. If you're trying to sell a book, you might want to give away something free like a sample chapter or a free consultation.

Tell people exactly what they're getting with your premium services. Don’t say “Get personal training sessions”.  Instead say, “Get 12 personal training sessions for $500”. Don’t let a vague offering scare potential customers away.

To sum it up, learn about the real benefits people are looking for, learn the benefits of working with you and be crystal clear with what people are getting with your offering.

Design & Content

There’s been a lot of debate over the years whether design is more important or content or layout or copywriting. They all have their benefits if they are used in the right way.

The number 1 rule to follow is: CLARITY

Clarity outweighs the importance of pretty design or clever copywriting or a fancy layout. The user needs to know exactly what you want them to do. Don’t confuse them or make them guess because you will lose their business to your competitors.

Copywriting

Your copywriting is going to be one of the most important aspects of converting visitors into leads. What sounds more interesting? “Start a business today” or “Get your FREE step-by-step guide  to starting a business without quitting your day job”. I’d pick the latter.

The headline will be the most important part of your copy. Make sure it grabs the readers attention and arouses enough interest so they’ll continue reading your page.

The body copy should contain all the mouth watering benefits they’ll receive from your product or service. It needs to generate enough desire so you will want to buy.

You need to direct the user with a call-to-action. Tell the user exactly what they need to do such as, “Enter your email for your FREE report” or “Fill out the form to get your personalized consultation”.

Take your copy seriously. It will have a major effect on your conversion rates.

Design

You should strive for your platforms to be clean. Clean design is different from pretty or clever designs. While some design might be visually incredible to look at, it won’t necessarily convert more visitors into paying customers. In fact, many time it might just confuse the visitor with what to do because the fonts are hard to read and it’s too graphically stimulating.

Top 6 Design Tips:

1. Use fonts that are easy to read such as Garamond, Century, Arial, Helvetica, Baskerville and Verdana.
2. Use only 1-2 fonts per design.
3. Use captions under pictures.
4. Use a three-color palette. Don’t muddy up your site with too many colors.
5. Use white space. White space is clean and can make it easier to read.
6. Break the rules. This isn’t an exact science. What works for one site might not for another. Be sure to test things to see if it makes a difference.

Layout

Layout is very important when it comes to conversion optimization. You want the page to flow nicely and be easy to understand. You don’t want to have an entire page of writing and then have your only lead generation form at the bottom the page.

Keep it above the fold. For the most part - you want to keep the important things on your website above the fold. The fold is everything you seen on the page without having to scroll down. Sometimes this principle is debunked, but it’s good to use it as a general guideline. Try keeping your headline, main picture/video and call-to-action above the fold.

Have a clear call-to-action. Your call-to-action should be easy to see and get to. Also make sure your forms are in a place where they stick out. Don’t make people struggle to get what they want. They’ll just leave.

Pictures and Video

If you are going to use imagery, do it with great photos and video. Make sure the photos or video are good quality and more importantly they must be relevant. Don’t use cheesy stock photos. It makes you look less trustworthy. You should utilize taking high quality pictures and video of your box in action and upload them to your site and social media pages. Video has been especially known to increase conversion rates on landing pages and websites. You become real to the user when they see a video of you.

Remember, Clarity over cleverness and beauty.

The Art of Testing

A/B Testing

Imagine, you are searching for a job. You could start sending out one version of a resume and see if you get results with it. The smart thing to do would be to make 2 or 3 variations of that resume and send all the versions out to an equal amount of companies. Measure which resume got the most interviews. Use that resume and discard the rest. That is the basic idea of A/B testing.

A/B testing is about testing multiple versions of something like a landing page, call-to-action, headlines, colors, layout etc. You need to learn to love testing because it will save a lot of time as well as make you more money. It’s also a transferrable skill into other areas of your life.

What to test:

• Headlines and copy
• Pictures
• Placement of forms and call-to-action buttons
• Layout
• Subject lines
• Service offerings
• Benefits
• And whatever you can dream up! Test it all.

Use a control group when testing. For example, you could setup up a landing page and name it “Control Group”. You could then make a copy of the control and change the headline. You could make another copy of the control group and change the main photo to a video. Then you could make another copy and change the headline and the main picture. See which of the 4 variations gets the best results.

ABT! Always Be Testing.

Think like a scientist

Time to connect with your inner Einstein...or Feynman.

For example:

• Question: Does size matter for a call-to-action button to get more leads?
• Research: Has this been tested before? What were the results?
• Hypothesis: If I put a big call-to-action button on my landing page then it will increase the amount of leads.
• Experiment: Upload a big button to your landing page and drive traffic. Create a second landing page and upload a small call-to-action button and drive the same amount of traffic.
• Analyze the results: Out of 1000 visitors, the big button generated 74 new leads. Out of 1000 visitors the small button generated 22 new leads.
• Conclusion: A big call-to-action button is more effective in generating leads on my landing page.

The obvious choice would be to upload the big call-to-action button to your landing page. I bet you didn’t think you’d learn about the scientific method today.

Conversion Optimization Tools and Resources

Welcome to the final part of the course. It wouldn’t be complete without a list of some of the best resources you can use for conversion optimization. This list should be plenty to get you started.

Landing Pages

• Unbounce
• Lander
• Instapage

Email Marketing

• Mailchimp
• Constant Contact
• Drip

A/B Testing

• Optimizely
• Visual Website Optimizer
• Subtinent

Online Advertising

• Google Adwords
• Google Keyword Planner
• Facebook Ads
• Bing Ads
• LinkedIn Ads

Analytics

• Google Analytics
• Kissmetrics

Social Media Management

• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• Tweetdeck

Ok, have you started your conversion optimization? If so, we’d love to hear how its going so that we can share back with the  community.

If not, CONTACT US and we’ll help you get started

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