Earlier this week I received an email from Paul Okeeffe. I’m going to show why I think Paul will have a low conversion rate on this sales page.
For love nor money I cannot remember how I signed up to Paul’s email list. Paul calls himself the Global Marketing Ninja.
Paul is apparently based in Norway and what got me to open up the email, was the subject line [REMINDER] Your Weekly FREE Downloads Are Here.
I thought that was pretty attention grabbing, so if anything there is at least an example of a decent subject line.
I opened up the email and a really nice big single call to action stood out.
Check out the weekly downloads here.
The email I think is really well crafted. It’s clear there’s only one action to take. There would be some free content and it was clearly sent as a campaign rather than an automation series.
So I thought I’d give it a try and click through. And that’s where everything went wrong.
I’m not a fan of the term “ninja”, but I do quite like this email.
As you can see, the email is pretty basic. But it isn’t offensive, it’s clear what the value is and the call to action is pretty strong.
I could make the assumption that the first link and the second link are the same thing. They both use the words weekly, they’re both in red and they’re both highlighted.
However when I clicked through to the sales page I was overwhelmed with everything I had to do.
It was like a CTA assault. A barrage of sales and signup actions.
I mean, just watch this GIF.As soon I click on the link I come through to a “weekly offer page”. At first, upon immediate viewing I thought It looked quite clean. There was a sales post right at the top, which annoyed me a little bit because the email said it was a weekly free download.
However within one attosecond, I had 4 call to actions presented in front of me. Count them, 4.
It takes approximately 1 attosecond for a light particle to travel across two hydrogen atoms.
This immediate overload caused me to react and attempts to click off. Which meant that as I tried to exit the page, and exit intent optin popped up to try and offer me some video technology.
So within the space of 6 seconds, I had five call to actions placed in front of me.
So instead, I decided to stick around and take a look at all the call to actions that were placed immediately in front of me. And, perhaps try to demonstrate WHY having this many CTAs is such a bad idea.
If you want someone to do four things they are going to do none of them
First, the page is called Free Offers Page, however the first offer is in fact a discounted product. Now, I actually don’t have a huge problem with this. Were all in business to make money. But I do feel that I was expecting to click through to a free offer. Maybe some training or a video.
If we examine the call to actions, aside from the sales button of BUY NOW in green, the first notification that actually pops up is a browser notification.
Global Marketing Ninja Would Like To Send You FREE Software & Offers
You can turn off these notifications at anytime using your browser settings.
I loathe browser notifications anyway
Personally, I’ll click off these anyway. The idea that my browser telling me when someone is published a blog post driving out the wall. I can’t imagine anything more distracting and disruptive to my workflow.
So already, within the space of seconds we have been presented with a page call to action and a browser call to action.
The second pop-up, or third overall page CTA is a sliding at the top right for the Facebook notifications. So now I can also subscribe to Facebook notifications by Global Marketing Ninja.
I’m actually getting frustrated having to create this many screenshots of this many Calls to action
This is already overkill. The problem with this many calls to action, is that if you present people with too many options they’ll get action paralysis and they won’t do ANYTHING.
I’d be fascinated to see the conversion rates of these individual calls to action, as well as how they perform on this page and individually. I’d also be interested to see the conversion rate of this particular page.
Typically as businesses and marketers we are afraid that people will take no action on a page. Fear takes over and we try to overload people with notifications, thinking that we are more likely to capture at least ONE action if the option is there. Whereas in fact the more calls to action you have on a page the lower the conversion rate (UnBounce).
The third pop-up, And fourth call to action on the page is an Intercom style chat box by a company called OptinChat. The layout of the OptinChat Looks pretty good. It’s nice and clean and in fact has made me sign up for an OptinChat trial.
Interestingly, the only way to get started with OptinChat Is by visiting their page, and the only thing you can do is open up OptinChat and sign up. There was only one available call to action on their page.
However, instead on the Global Marketing Ninja page there are so many calls to action, that it’s impossible to choose. Human beings would rather ignore a choice and live their life without choosing than sort through array of available options when they are not sure on the benefits.
I’m actually quite excited to try out this technology, rather than any of the offers Paul has on this page
My main problem is that individually, all of these calls to action are actually quite effective. I quite like the idea of someone subscribing to my Facebook notifications via the post. I’m not a fan of browser notifications but I do know they work. Chat bots and messengers are a really powerful way of growing an email list. And of course a really bright clear sales button is bound to attract conversions.
However, all of these combined reduce the effectiveness of each other. It becomes harder and harder to get someone to convert to ONE call to action if you’re offering them four.
So with that, I decided I wasn’t going to hang around on the page and I decided to leave. I should have guessed that there would be an exit notification. Which is fair enough. Again, exit notifications work really well INDIVIDUALLY and by themselves.
Although exit intent work quite well, I felt this message and offer wasn’t particularly strong.
It was kind of like the straw that broke the camels back. It was an overload of actions and I had become blind to the overall message. There was absolutely no congruency or scent between all of the individual calls to action and offers.
I understand why people do this, but this is not the way to grow your list or convert any actions on your page. By creating too much choice, you narrow the chances that someone will convert on the action that you do want them to take.
So what have we learned? Well, calls to action can be really powerful and they can work. However they have to be individual to the page. You can’t just bombard people with course action hoping that they will sift through the individual buttons working out what is best for them.
I don’t doubt, that if someone was a raving maniac fan of Paul and Global Marketing Ninja that they would see past all of this. However as a first-time viewer on this particular page it turned me off.
If you want sales emails that work like Paul’s, you can download our sales email templates for free below. Just sign up and you’ll get 5 pre-written, fill in the blank sales email templates to use in your campaigns or your customer’s campaigns.
