Online Conversion Specialist, Antonio Rillera, examines some obvious and not so obvious reasons websites and landing pages can fail to generate leads and sales. Antonio explains why one size doesn’t fit all and that only by testing will you know what works best for your offer.
He is a web designer. He’s an entrepreneur. A conversion strategist, but I’ll go so far as to say a conversion specialist. And I would say an influencer in a very big way because he helps businesses influence their prospects. Influence their future customers to come into their funnel to allow sales to happen.
Now, I was talking before the break about the difference between lead generation website, landing pages and copy, specifically versus sales type of generation. And a lot of people don’t make that distinction, but Antonio’s very, very good at knowing when to use which types of copy.
But not just that. A lot of things that we may not think of. A lot of subtle things that can affect the success of a landing page in a big, big way.
Antonio, how are you doing? Welcome.
Antonio:Doing well. Doing well. Thank you. Thank you for having me on the show.
Jack:Well, a lot of people, one, the work that you do is seen a lot of different places and people may not realize that. I know that you have done work with the hugely popular Lead Pages, which I’m a big, big fan of. But also you do a lot of web and landing page design for some pretty big hitters in all types of different industries.
And what I want to find out is what is it that these folks know that are working with conversions that a lot of people that are just putting up their landing pages, just getting into lead generation, those mistakes that they are making.
So let’s start off with talking about why design. Why design of landing pages is so important for the success of a campaign.
Antonio:For sure. Yeah, design is so crucial to the success of a campaign or the conversion rate on landing pages mainly because there are subtle things that are happening on a page that influence someone to take action.
So that’s what we want them to do. We want them to convert to a lead. We want them to take action, whether it’s putting their email in, putting a phone and an email in, or simply moving into a purchase.
I know a lot of people usually do the email lead generation stuff first and then continue with the sales process afterwards. So building your email list, you want to make sure that you’re converting customers and cold traffic, or even warm traffic, email lists, anything like that. People hitting these landing pages.
And some mistakes that people make, you know, like when it comes to social proof is they’ll put Like buttons on their fan pages or pages that have zero Likes. Putting and showing that on your page kind of shows that you don’t really have a following or there’s no interaction on the page. It might actually hurt conversion.
So actually putting social proof on pages. And this is all about authority, too. If you have any kind of interview that you’ve done or you’ve been featured in any kind of magazine or anything like that, putting logos of association and things like that build credibility, as well.
With your business, with your products. There are all sorts of subtle things. The design is so crucial to that. It really, really helps with the whole conversion process. And building, it’s all about building trust, building authority with your audience. And your potential customers.
Jack:And not diluting that probably putting too much on these landing pages. There’s a great, I don’t know who came up with this saying. I had to write a long sales letter because I didn’t have time to write a short sales letter. Right?
And one of the things that I really see, some of the mistakes that I see a lot of folks that are making when they’re first putting it up is just this incredible brain dump of information that they think more is better, but it’s actually diluting the effectiveness and the conversion.
So let’s talk about what you’ve seen as far as when people start taking things away, versus adding, and how that can affect the conversion of lead generation pages.
Antonio:For sure, for sure. And just so you know, everything’s a test. You really have to test all this stuff out. Cause it can be different for your audience and anybody who’s doing. It all depends on the business, the niche and everything. You want to test all this stuff out. And that’s part of the whole conversion rate optimization strategy.
But for sure, if you’re, you know, sometimes people write really long sales copy and that might do better than short sales copy. Or someone will put a whole bunch of fancy graphics or things like on their pages that aren’t really necessary or crucial at all to the conversion process.
I’m sure you guys have seen, if you’re using Lead Pages, a lot of the pages may just be an opt-in form with an email and a background image. And that one converts pretty well.
And there’s really nothing there but some copy, an email form, a button and a background image. And it converts well because it’s simple and we have kind of this information overload in our world that we live in. So it kind of helps sometimes to have less. You know, less is more at certain times.
Jack:I noticed that. And I see that oftentimes, especially with people that are new or kind of going with no direction or no purpose, they think, well, let me add this and let me add this and let me add this.
And one of the industries that I really follow from a standpoint of curiosity and effectiveness is the insurance industry. When I do, when I look at insurance, like you would look for auto insurance online or something, you know, across the board, it looks like the Geicos and the Progressives and all those guys, when you go to their landing pages, a lot of them, it’s like just putting your zip code and that’s it.
Antonio:Yeah.
Jack:And their information is pretty much some bullet points that are very laser focused on the outcome that obviously the person that landed there wants to achieve. And it’s just that.
Now, I see landing pages that are generating leads and they have a form with ten boxes with everything from what’s your name to your phone number to your address to getting really detailed information. And people think, well, this is how I qualify. I need this information to really be able to take these people through my funnel.
What do you see the difference is between having ten different things on the site, from collecting names to phone number to all that, versus just having something there to collect an email?
Antonio: For sure. And the conversions are affected a lot when it comes to collecting information in lead forms. In a strategy session type situation, let’s say you’re a consultant and you need to collect all that information, then it may work. And usually you pre-qualify them with some type of webinar or something like that and then they’re hitting that form where they’re filling out the information.
But if you’re just getting traffic, people who are still new to what you’re offering, asking for all that type of information up front is kind of overwhelming. They don’t want to take the time to fill it out. If the dog runs by, they forget they’re filling out the form. Completely forget what they were doing. There are all kinds of distractions.
So you want to just get their information. Get an email. Something that you can continue to follow up with them and then have that email go into some type of email list provider, like Get Response or whatever you use. Infusionsoft. All those kind of softwares out there. And then you start building that relationship and following up.
But capturing the email alone is a great opportunity to do that. And, like you said, like Geico, it all depends on the industry, too. Geico, they’ll collect your zip code first and then they lead you to the other stuff with steps. They’ll break it down into steps where you put the zip code first. Then you start putting your email and information and you start filling out the form little by little. You know, instead of giving it to you all at once. Here, fill all this out.
Nobody likes forms. Nobody likes filling out paperwork.
Jack:Yeah, unless they want what you have on the other side of it, I guess. That’s what I guess, the offer, it has to be compelling enough on what’s on the other side to get them to take the time to do that.
You said something earlier that I don’t want to skate by. I really want to talk about. You talk about the social. You know, everybody, social media.
I often ask people what’s the main purpose of a squeeze page or a lead generation page. What’s the main purpose? And it’s really a trick question. There is no main purpose. There’s an only purpose, right? And that’s to generate a lead.
But there are people that have these pages that think, oh, I’ll also use this to get more Likes and get people to share my page. And you said something earlier about putting those social share buttons on when you don’t have any followers or there are no Likes. They’re all sitting there at zero.
What is the detrimental effect of that?
Antonio:Yeah, I mean it definitely can affect your conversion. That would be the detrimental effect, if you have no followers and no fans on the page or a Like button. Let’s say if you hit a page that had. I’ll give you a good example.
So let’s say I go to buy a product. I go to the page. And I see a Like button on there. It’s really big and it looks nice but it’s at zero Likes. You know, subconsciously, you’re saying, okay, nobody even tried this yet. Or nobody Likes this yet. So maybe I shouldn’t be the first one. You know?
And you do have people who are the first ones, who are willing to try that stuff. But it will affect your conversions. And you can test it and try it out. But that’s definitely going to be an issue for new people who are in there and seeing that.
A trick that you can probably do is, if you do have fans on your page but not on, like on your fan page, your Facebook fan page, but you don’t have Likes on a particular page. You can actually change the dynamic URL that comes from Facebook and put your fan page URL instead, so people are actually liking your fan page.
And later on when you actually have people that Like that specific page, you can always change that, but it helps to show actual social proof that people have been there before. They’ve gone through the process or they’ve Liked it. Even if they haven’t necessarily done this, people think that subconsciously and they don’t want to be the first ones to try something out, you know?
Jack:Yeah. That goes beyond the internet or pages. And it’s probably a psychological thing that a lot of people don’t take into consideration. There are a lot of people that put that on there thinking that this is a way to generate their Likes, but really the purpose of that is to show social proof and create those trust triggers to the people there that, oh, people have been here before.
It’s kind of like you know how you feel kind of awkward if you walk into a restaurant and nobody’s there. You know?
Antonio:Yeah, exactly. (laughter)
Jack:Do I really want to eat here? Here is it, it’s lunch time and the place is empty. It may look nice. It may look pretty. The food may smell great. But there’s still something in the back of your head saying what is wrong here? You know? What am I missing?
And so rather than thinking of that landing page as an opportunity to get more Likes, you’re saying do what you can to build up the Likes and have the social proof. Use that to encourage people to opt in or follow your funnel, versus using the opposite of having that landing page be a tool to generate your Likes for you.
Antonio:Correct. Yeah. Cause it’s going to help with the social proof and build that conversion. Those bumps for you in the conversion rate.
Jack:All right. Now, let’s talk a little bit real quickly about people that are overdoing it on these landing pages. Right? I often use, I think about Bob Dylan, the singer/songwriter. You know, Bob Dylan plays guitar. He can have the harmonica, play the harmonica while he’s playing the guitar and singing and you consider him a musical genius, right?
But you slap some cymbals between his knees, then, all of a sudden, he becomes a weirdo, right?
Antonio:(laughter)
Jack:It’s too much. What do you see as far as overkill, where people are, putting their logos on is one thing, but just going crazy with the graphics? And I know it’s hard sometimes for people that are really into aesthetics. I’ve talked to a lot of people that they want their website to look good, more than anything else.
And so just kind of touch on how having a really pretty and beautiful aesthetic, good looking website can actually hurt conversions as well.
Antonio:Yeah, for sure. You see this a lot in local businesses that are out there, and they hire designers and stuff, web designers, locally, to work on their site. And they’ve got all these fancy slideshows with sliders going across. Which sliders have been shown to decrease conversions, as well. Cause there’s too much. There’s no decision making process there. There are all kinds of things. Probably sliders are one of the biggest things. You know, especially in local businesses.
When it comes to the internet marketing space, you sometimes see it in sales pages where there’s too much going on. There’s almost too many graphics or colors and things like that.
You look at something like Apple. You know, they have this clean look where they have videos of the products and the information. And they have testimonials and things laid out in a great layout that actually provides support for the story that they’re trying to tell you.
Because the page tells a story and they provide the means to kind of go with that story throughout the page.
But yeah, a lot of local businesses I’ve seen are probably the biggest ones that have that issue of excess, just doing too much. You know, they’ll have the fancy dropdown boxes and all these other things. Not even testing it and finding out if that stuff converts or not.
Jack:Cause it looks good.
Antonio:Probably one of the biggest things that I’ve seen. Yeah, because it looks pretty or it’s the newest trend, the whole parallex. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it right but where you scroll and the images stay in the background and things like that.
You’ve got to test that stuff because you don’t know if it’s actually going to work or not for your business.
Jack:Some of those make me dizzy.
Antonio:Yeah, exactly. A lot of people go with the flow and they do it because it’s the latest trend or whatever. But you’ve got to test everything and make sure it’s actually converting for your business.
Jack:So that brings me to a point. You obviously influence a lot of folks with your designs. Influence a lot of businesses. Change the success of their leads and their sales funnels by making these design changes and oftentimes, removing things, rather than adding things.
I want to find out what influences the influencer. You know, what are the things that influence you around your designs and the way that you look at things and things that you like to experiment and test with? What is it out there that you look at and put back into your work that ends up helping so many others?
Antonio:For sure. Yeah, art definitely has a lot do with that. You know, I am an artist as well in the traditional sense. And just being an artist, seeing how art can be turned into design and then design can affect conversion. So I do a lot of studying when it comes to art. Anything related to designing.
There’s a ton of blogs out there when it comes to designing and conversion rate optimization and that sort of stuff. I follow a lot of that.
Neil Patel. His stuff is pretty good. All the conversion process behind Kissmetrics and all the data that they capture.
And for sure, Apple would be a huge one when it comes to design because they focus so much on design. They’re a multi-billion dollar company. And just the fact that they put so much emphasis on design in their products and their services and the stuff that they do really, really is a good example of what to do.
And then even guys like Kevin Nations, who teach sales strategy that has nothing to do with design. You take those strategies where you’re putting a problem first and then how you solve it. And implementing that into design is something I like to do. So like finding out what the problem is and then just providing a solution for that, all within a single page. Compressing everything so that someone can kind of consume the ad in a few seconds.
You know, there’s a lot of thought behind it but that’s kind of what goes behind the whole thought process of everything. So it’s pretty cool.
Jack:And like we talked about earlier, that’s one of the hardest things for people to do, is to remove things. You know, to make it shorter. We live in a microwave society, right? People want it now. And they want to get their information now. So it’s almost like you’ve got to whittle away all the extra fluff so that you get your point across very, very quickly.
And I think one thing that I’ve learned from listening to you and seeing what you do is everyone wants a definitive answer. What is going to generate the leads? What is the one thing that I should do? And I think from listening to you and watching what you do, the only definitive answer is, it depends, right?
Antonio:Yeah. That’s everything.
Jack:Yeah. With the testing. Because oftentimes people will go and they’ll read up on conversions or they’ll buy a course on conversions or something like that, and they’ll say, you must absolutely use this color button to do this. And you must absolutely use this kind of header and all this. And from what you’ve done with a lot of different industries and a lot of different businesses, is there is no one answer, is that right? There’s just no one answer for.
Antonio:Yeah. You’re right. I mean, there’s stuff that has been tested and proven to convert better. And you can use those as guidelines and move forward with things. The guys at Lead Pages, they do an awesome job of testing all kinds of stuff and giving that out to their audience and all that stuff.
There’s all kinds of different blogs that have proven different conversion testing strategies and all that stuff. But in the end, when it comes down to it, it’s sitting down and focusing on your business and testing out different things on your pages, your copy, your different offers. All these different things and finding out what’s going to convert best for you. It always goes down to that. Just testing it out and then figuring that out.
Jack:Yeah. Antonio, this is fascinating stuff and I always love listening and speaking with people that are passionate around what it is they do and you clearly are someone that has that kind of passion, that we can probably spend three days talking about this.
Antonio:(laughter) Absolutely.
Jack:How can folks find out more? How can they dig into some of these aspects and find out more about what you’re up to?
Antonio:For sure. You guys can check out RilleraDesign.com. That’s R-I-L-L-E-R-A-D-E-S-I-G-N.com. I’ll probably come up with a blog, too, or I’ll do some more posting and all that. But you can go there and just. If anything, you can hit me up on Facebook directly and that’ll work.
Jack:All right. Antonio, I want to thank you for coming on today. You truly are an influencer. And folks, look up, check out what Tony’s, Antonio’s doing. It’s really fascinating and his designs are stunningly simple, if you can say that. And you really should check them out.
And it’s scientific proof. Matter of fact. Whatever you want to call it. He knows his stuff on how to boost those conversions, so definitely check him out and take this opportunity to learn and work with an influencer so that you can influence your followers, your prospects, your customers.
Thank you very much, Antonio, for coming on today. Really, really opened up a lot of folks’ minds, I’m sure, on conversions and what it takes to change those, even subtly.
Antonio:Awesome. Thanks, Jack. It’s been a pleasure, man. Thank you for having me on the show.
Jack:All right. Fantastic. Folks, that’s it for today’s Influencers Radio. We will see you next time. Go out and influence.
