How to Improve Your Conversion Rate Using Images | Ep. #259

Published Apr 16, 2017, 10:00 AM

In Episode #259, Eric and Neil discuss how to improve your conversion rate using images. Images can easily work for or against you—do they support your message or story? Do they evoke the right emotions? Tune in to learn why custom images convert better than stock photos and the importance of A/B testing your images to maximize on its performance.

Time Stamped Show Notes:
  • 00:27 – Today’s topic: How to Improve Your Conversion Rate Using Images
  • 00:45 – Eric has custom images for his website and custom gifs for his homepage
  • 01:06 – For custom images, you can repurpose them, unlike stock photos
    • 01:14 – Eric’s conversion rates went up on their A/B testing
    • 01:27 – Design is a priority for Eric
  • 01:36 – KlientBoost is an agency focused on design
  • 02:05 – A design that helps convey your message can increase conversion
  • 02:16 – Neil added a heat map in the header
  • 02:39 – Neil used animated gifs that was relevant to the product and service—that change showed a 15-16% increase in the conversion
  • 03:12 – Design Pickle is a good place for graphic designers to make your images
    • 03:22 – As per the founder, you can also request a specific design like an infographic
    • 03:35 – Flat fee is $370 a month for unlimited designs
  • 03:42 – Canva is a good tool for creating images for free
  • 04:04 – Infogram is a quick and easy way to make custom graphics
  • 04:10 – If you use images, make sure it shows a process—make sure it’s not too distracting or hard to visualize
    • 04:38 – If your images are too distracting, it might lessen the conversion rate
  • 04:53 – One digital marketer used the image of an iPhone battery draining when they sold tickets on Facebook
  • 05:19 – Think of how you can draw people’s emotions with your images
  • 05:59 – Test different variations of images
    • 05:52 – Test out different images in different ads tests
  • 06:04 – That’s it for today’s episode!
3 Key Points:
  1. Custom images convert more than stock images.
  2. If you don’t have a graphic designer, there are tons of tools you can use to create your own custom images.
  3. Make your images easy on the eye, make sure it depicts a process or story, and triggers the right emotions.

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Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Sue. All right, guys, before we start, we got a special message from our sponsor. If you want to rank higher on Google, you gotta look at your page speed time. The faster website loads, the better off you are with Google's Core Vital update. That makes it super super important to optimize your site for low time. And one easy way to do it is use the host that Eric and I use, dream Hosts. So just go to dream host or Google it, find it, check it out, and it's a great way to improve your low time. Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Sue and I'm Neil Batal, and today we are going to talk about how to improve your conversion rate using images. So for us, I can speak to this a little bit. Whenever we have better imagery or better design in general, your site is just more trustworthy. So for us, we have custom images across the board, and we even have custom gifts or gifts, however you want to say it on the homepage. And we found that when we started to have custom designs versus stock photography. And I know Neil uses a lot of stock stuff, so I don't want to get sued. Yeah, for us, I mean, so when we custom design it, we actually are able to double use these four ads as well, if they're like blog posts for example. And so when we do that, we find people, you know, people will even start to copy us sometimes. But we've done some ab tests and our conversion rates go up. We're talking for us, we're seeing you know, five to ten percent sometimes, So I mean, you know these little five to ten percent wins, you add them up across the board, they eventually add up to really big wins. So you know, we're always trying to mess around with design, and you know that's a big priority for us. I think one good example this also if you want to look at an agency out there, client Boost, it starts with the key. They are all focused on design. They're doing really well. They do I think about three hundred thousand dollars in recurring revenue a month right now. And you know, part of the reason why they get a lot of clients is because they stand out from other agencies. They do a great job with design, and for them it's paid dividends and you can search for them and look at some of the podcasts that they've done, but they've done a good job. That's the pay per click agency. Yep. So another thing to keep in mind with design is if your design helps and the images help explain your messaging, it should help increase your conversions. I know we did a test on Crazy we actually have them going right now where we put up a heat map in the header and funny end up, it decreased the conversions versus putting a tree in the background. I don't know why, but someone custom do a tree versus a custom heat map. But we thought that would help because it describes the image. Now. What did help though, because we're running a B tests and we're running multiple variations. One variation had beneath the fold explanation of the product using animated gifts through images, and they would show actually how to use Crazy in and what we can tell so far, that's helping those conversions by around like fifteen sixteen percent. It's not too shabby, right, It's just all using images to describe the part of the service, so that way, within a few seconds, people know like, hey, this is what we're gonna get great and some what are some ways I think if people don't have designers on board to you know, help them make images like you can or like we can. Where are some good places you think people can go? I mean, I can kick this off. I've talked about design Pickle quite a bit. That's a good starting point, you know, if you actually I actually talked to the founder at a conference a couple of weeks ago and I said, hey, like, if somebody wants to do like an infographic or something like that, that's a little more a bigger undertaking. Can people do it? And he said, yes, you just had be very specific, and you can. They can actually have their desires make an infographic for you. And you're basically paying a flat fee of three hundred and seventy dollars a month for unlimited designs. But you just have to be a really specific. And then the other tool that I recommend as a free version is Canva. And even doing just you know, quote unquote custom images using Canva, they are custom because you know, even if you take a stock image and you add some text to it, you're basically customizing it. So those are two recommendations I have on that front in terms of improving your conversion rates using images, and that's how you can go about doing it. Yeah, and we use infogram. It's a quick, easy way to make custom graphics and we found that to convert really well. Well, the biggest thing is if you're going to use images to boost your conversion rates, make sure the image describes a process. Don't make it too complicated. Make sure it's not too distracting, like the heat map above the header versus the trees in the background that we designed on Crazy. I know it's hard to visualize, but think of it this way. One was a really bright image that made the text harder to read. The other one was a simple image in the background, which most people ignore and they focus on the text. So if your image describes what you're doing, that's cool. But if it's too distracting, like well we did originally I'm Crazy, you'll probably see a decrease in conversion rates, right, because you don't want to make it harder for people to read texts when you're running ads as well, I mean with Facebook especially your image is the biggest factor out there. And a digital marketer did a test for their traffic Conversion summit. It showed that when their tickets were selling out or their their deal was expiring, our prices were going up. They basically showed a iPhone battery that was that showed red, which basically means that the batteries about to die. So most people can identify with that. It kind of hits like a nerve, like when you see your phone at red. It kind of you know, at least for me, I kind of spas out. So think about what you can do to to draw into you know, to draw on people's emotions with your images. So you know, if you're doing something around, if you're doing like a checklist for example, you know, maybe it's just a simple check or if something is running out, you do the battery image for example, but think about how you can maximize that and tie into people's emotions of what they understand, and test a few different variations. If you're running Facebook ads especially, you know, try going about running you know, anywhere from two to four variations of images when you're starting out, and then see how it goes. And then from there whatever performance is the best to scale it out, but I do recommend testing out your four different images in four different adsets. That way you can see a true kind of test there. But I don't want to dive too much into basebook ads. That's just a little image plus Facebook ads tip there. So I think that's it for this episode of Marketing School. We will see you tomorrow. This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of, and don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on Marketing School.