If you had to get someone to hand over $2,000 just by giving them a sheet of paper, what on earth would you put on that page?
That's basically what conundrum you're faced with when creating a sales page for a high priced item.
How do you craft a single sales page effective enough to get a visitor to hand over the big bucks?
With our latest landing page remake we'll tackle this dilemma by teaching you two powerful methods for increasing conversions on your high-ticket sales page.
More...
First, We Designed...
Here's a before & after of the sales page remake we did for antsle - a private cloud server solution - as part of our Thrive Suite customer only Christmas giveaway.
Antsle's Sales Page Before
Antsle's Sales Page After
You'll notice not much has changed besides the design.
The reason for this is because we've only half finished the sales page.
In order to really transform antsle's sales page we need more information.
The Buyer's Journey
Antsle is selling a complex, big-ticket item on their sales page. To do this effectively they need to guide their visitors through the buyer's journey.
In short, the buyer's journey is the process a potential customer goes through, from awareness of a problem, to deciding to purchase your product or service as the solution to that problem.
No matter what you are selling, the buyer's journey comes into play. In most cases, the more expensive the item, the longer and more complex the buyer's journey.
So how do you make sure your sales page effectively guides your visitor through the buyer's journey?
We'll for starters, you need to know a few things about a typical new visitor to your page. By knowing where your visitor is starting from, you'll be able to give them the exact information they need to make the decision to purchase.
A few great questions to help with this are:
In antsle's case: Has the visitor already decided they need a private hosting solution? Are they just searching for the best one? Or have they just found out private hosting is a thing and they want to know more about how it works?
In antsle's case: Are their visitors usually seasoned developers that can handle (or even relish in) technical talk about the product and it's specifications? Or are they beginners to the entire topic of self hosting and need to be guided through a non-techy breakdown about why antsle is better than other solutions.
In antsle's case: Is the burning question on most visitor's minds how many Virtual Servers can you host? Or are they more concerned with how long the whole thing takes to set up?
Get Inside Your Visitor's Head
If you're thinking: "Great, so I just need to develop mind reading powers..."
Don't worry, mind reading powers are just a few plugins away 😉
While it can seem like an incredibly daunting task to get this information from your visitors, by using the two techniques below you'll have visitor insights out the wazoo in no time.
Ask a Few Quick Questions
A great way to get a couple of flash insights from your visitors is to run a Thrive Quiz Builder quiz inside a Thrive Leads lightbox.
To do this you need to build your quiz in Thrive Quiz Builder first, then create a new lightbox in Thrive Leads.
To add a Thrive Quiz Builder quiz to a lightbox, you just need to drag a Quiz element into the lightbox and select the quiz you want to show.
The splash page (first page of the quiz) will show in the lightbox when it appears. On this first page it's a good idea to offer your visitor something of value in exchange for answering a few quick questions.
You can then set your lightbox to display on your sales page, either on exit intent or after a visitor has been on the page for a few seconds.
In the quiz make sure to ask questions that will give you information on your visitor's situation, what stage they are at, and what information is most important to them.
After the quiz has been running for a while you'll have easy to digest audience insights within the Thrive Quiz Builder reporting section.
Thrive Quiz Builder Reporting Suite (click to enlarge)
BONUS POINTS >> You can use this quiz to offer your visitors different opt in offers at the end based on their answers.
For example, in antsle's case, at the end of the quiz they could offer a beginner a Complete Step by Step Guide to Setting up Home Hosting, while offering developers a Techies Dream Guide to Servers Faster than Amazon's.
Inside the Thrive Quiz Builder editor - you can use dynamic content to change what the visitor sees on the results page. Here we are showing a 'Guide to Home Hosting' for those who answered they were a beginner.
This is an alternative results page for visitors that answer they are developers. It offers a more technical guide on how antsle works.
You can learn how to set this up by following Hanne's Thrive University course on using quizzes to boost conversions.
By capturing email addresses on the sales page you've got more of a chance of nurturing visitors though the buyer's journey. Rather than just having a sales page to get your message across, you can drip feed content through email as well.
DOUBLE EXTRA BONUS POINTS >> What if your quiz results showed more than just one type of typical visitor? Say there were around 50% beginners, and 50% developers? And say 50% clicked they were concerned with 'set up times', while the other 50% were more concerned with the 'technical details of the product'?
It becomes very difficult to create a clear targeted message when you have a few different groups in your audience. This is where segmenting your email list comes in.
Rather than trying to perfectly target all the different groups in your sales page, if you can get your visitors email address and segment them correctly, you can continue guiding them down the buyer's journey through more targeted email follow up sequences.
Using answer based tagging in Thrive Quiz Builder allows you to segment your visitors, sending tags back to your email service provider based on which answers they give in the quiz.
Send subscribers with a beginner tag only beginner level content, and send all the complex technical content out to subscribers with a developer tag. (For more details on how to use answer based tagging to deliver targeted content, watch 8.02mins of the video above.)
Take a look at this post for more information on how answer based tagging works, and how to set it up.
If Thrive Quiz Builder doesn't fit your needs, some great alternatives are Google Forms and Typeform.
Don't Always Trust What Visitors Say They Want
While having all these extra visitor insights is going to be invaluable when crafting your sales page content and copy, there's an elephant in the room that we need to address.
Research suggests that up to 95% of our decision to purchase is due to our subconscious mind. This means the majority of our decision making is done outside of our logic awareness, and is based more on subconscious triggers and reactions than on conscious thought.
Where does that leave us? Throwing all logic out of the window, that's where!
While you can develop theories on how your visitor is going to react to what you put on the page, the only real way to know is to test it. Testing which version of your sales page is most effective in practice will give you solid results that outweigh any opinion or theory.
With our new plugin Thrive Optimize you can test different versions of your sales page to narrow down on what really makes your audience click.
To start an A/B test, open your sales page in Thrive Architect and click the 'create new A/B test' button.
From here you can duplicate the original page or create an entirely new page.
Click Edit Variation to go into the new variation and change what ever element you want to test. Once you're done follow the prompts to start the test. It really is that simple.
Testing big levers - like your main value proposition, layout (long form vs short form) and price points - will give you the most impactful results.
Once you're got the big stuff optimized you can zone in on smaller and smaller elements, gradually perfecting your sales page.
Where the Journey Begins
Revamping your sales page to take advantage of the buyer's journey should lead to a major boost in conversions for your high-ticket item.
The sooner you do it, the longer you get to ride that boost for. Not to mention you'll be able to continue to improve the page with subsequent tests over time.
So what are you waiting for!
All these tools are available within Thrive Suite, and even if it only results in one extra sale for you - on high-ticket items access to Thrive Suite would have already paid for itself 😉
Thrive Themes is the best solution for conversion focused websites that generate succesfully new customers! I love it!!!
Short question: When can we expect the “new theme”? Will it be this month?
Excuse my impatience, but it’s important for me and my business to know (I’m a Web Designer) 🙂
Best regards from Germany,
David
Hi David, I can understand your eagerness, especially if you are a web designer. We’re a bit the same in the marketing department, we can’t wait to until it’s ready so we can start implementing all our grand marketing plans 🙂
So don’t worry the push to get it out is coming from all sides! Shouldn’t be too much longer, but I can’t give you an accurate ETA at the moment.
How did you guys do the multi color background in waves?
Hi Christopher,
You can do it using the page decoration options and two content boxes, bit it gets a little complicated to explain with the formatting. The simple solution is to create an image with a block color on it and the wave shape, making the top of the image (above the wave) transparent. The you just add it to the background section’s background as an image. We might release a tutorial on how to do it the content box way too.
Yes, it would be awesome if you can do a video on this. This is something I’ve seen other people do on their site and it looks amazing. To be able to do the same with TA would be killer.
Yes please.. we need it. Thanks stephanie
Noted 🙂
Nice! I also do have a quiz on my homepage but it’s not for collecting emails (as I want people to first read some of my articles) and redirects to a best fitting section of article archive.
It does indeed help to understand better what people read or are interested in my website! 🙂
This makes me very happy Danielius! It does really help. And as long as you have good opt-ins on the posts you send them to this sounds like a win-win.
Another great explanation and walkthrough of the power of the Thrive Suite.
From a personal perspective, and I would imagine from the perspective of many who are already familiar with Thrive, to see a complete step by step construction of a Dummy or Demo site that uses a Thrive Theme and brings together all available plugins to work as a team on that one Demo site would do wonders to help anyone visualising how it’s done and would certainly convert many more lurkers, single use members and experiences marketers alike.
You’re tutorials and those from Hanne and Shane are quite possibly the best demonstrated and explained I’ve seen so a full demonstration of a completed site with all of Thrive Themes bells and whistles would be awesome.
Any news on the new Theme? Perhaps that would be an opportunity to use as the Demo.
Hi Jonah,
Great idea! I’ll float this to the rest of the team!
Shane is also working on a new Website From Scratch course which will be a bit more comprehensive. That will be out once the new Theme Builder is released, and go through how to use the theme builder. No solid ETA I can give at the moment.
It’s a new ‘Theme Builder’…..not a typical Theme as we know it? Was that a Freudian slip Stephanie?
The buzz feels more like suspense. Interesting. Intriguing. You girls and guys are good, but so bad.
All I can say is… it was not a slip 😉
Thanks for this Stephanie. Love the idea of using Thrive Quiz Builder to gain more insight of where the prospects are in the buyers journey. I’m going to implement that this week. Great tip!
Great Ian, my mission is successful 😀 Honestly though, you’ll be so glad you did it. The insights you get are invaluable.
How did you do the curved sections on the new one?
Hi Christina,
You can do it using the page decoration options and two content boxes, bit it gets a little complicated to explain with the formatting. The simple solution is to create an image with a block color on it and the wave shape, making the top of the image (above the wave) transparent. The you just add it to the background section’s background as an image.
Am I the only one that is actually the opposite and would rather you guys make every plugin I use or think of? Haha! I wish you guys have Thrive Forums, and Thrives Knowledge Base for Thrive Members. Oh and Thrives Membership Software for Users. I could keep going on and on!
Hi Matthew,
Unfortunately we can’t please everyone! We tend to go with building the products that have to most demand from members and that have the most impact on pushing businesses forward.
Can you clarify for me though, what do you mean by ‘Knowledge Base for Thrive Members’? We already have the general knowledge base which covers all of our products. What extra information did you want in there for Members?
And the membership software is coming 😉 so at least we’ve got that one!
nice landing page remake.. can we get the copy of that? It looks lovely.. hehe
I wish we could add it to our templates Mohammad! But I don’t think antsle would appreciate it 🙂
Wow Stephaine you are amazing.
I really like the idea of using the quiz tag to separate beginners from tech savvy prospects. And then using A/B split testing features to boost conversions.
Thanks Anthony, this sort of segmentation can be incredible powerful (especially in conjunction with A/B testing).
Hi Stephanie
I am looking to start a small marketing company. Is there any pointers in the right direction where I can learn how to do such a thing.
I am based in London, UK. I want to use a quiz to find out what services my dream clients want and then provide the services they require.
Can the quiz be also use to deliver discounted coupon based on market segmentations and will coupon need to be delivered by a platform like shopify?
Hi Anthony, I wont be able to give you any accurate recommendations of marketing company training as I haven’t really tried any courses myself. Maybe just check out reviews of courses online.
As for the coupons it really depends what system you use to take payments. Some allow you to generate personalized coupon codes, others allow a single coupon code that you can send to all new subscribers, and others don’t allow coupon codes. If you can get a single text based coupon code for each market segment you can send this to your email follow up automations.
You can also use Thrive Ovation to get your leads to answer a few text based questions if you’re after more detailed feedback. Here’s a course on how you can set this up and keep track of leads based on their status.
Thank you very much for your response.
This is an excellent summary that make a lot of sense to me. Many thanks. I love the segmentation and testing logic. One thing…. how did you get those nice curves on the page sections!?
Hi Lewis, I think we’ll have to release a tutorial on this! You can do it using the page decoration options and two content boxes, bit it gets a little complicated to explain with the formatting. The simple solution is to create an image with a block color on it and the wave shape, making the top of the image (above the wave) transparent. The you just add it to the background section’s background as an image.
Thanks Stephanie. I figured out the second option, but that would be a great tutorial showing how you do it with the page decoration options. I am always looking for ways to make Thrive coding lighter and quicker, and I guess the fewer elements you load, the better and the less clunky with slow connections.
It’s built with speed in mind so using the decorations should add too much extra strain. We’ll definitely look into putting together a ‘cool things you can build with decorations’ post, thanks for the suggestion!
Great redesign! Love the use of the quiz – very helpful for getting this going on my sites!
Thanks RJ. I can’t stress the usefulness of the quiz enough. Once you’ve got it on your site you’ll be so glad you did it!
Thankyou.
This blog post spoke to me 🙂
Good to hear Gun!
Nice redesign. I really like the subtle waves in the section called “The Tech”, how did you put those in the background?
I’m going to have to up my game with Quiz Builder now. You made it so obvious to use a quiz as a key part of the buyers journey. Thanks for another helpful post and video.
Hi Scott, for the waves – you can do it using the page decoration options and two content boxes, bit it gets a little complicated to explain with the formatting. The simple solution is to create an image with a block color on it and the wave shape, making the top of the image (above the wave) transparent. The you just add it to the background section’s background as an image. We might release a tutorial on how to do it the content box way too.
Hi Stephanie,
Thank you for your tutorial.
Your videos are very good quality.
What are software and materials used to do it..!?
All my encouragements.
Fred
🙂
Hi Fred, I just use my Canon T2i camera (which is a bit dated now) but the secret is in the lens. It’s a Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 and it makes everything look amazing 🙂 For editing we have an in house editor who uses Premiere Pro and After Effects. For screen recording it’s Camtasia, but to get that presenter bubble effect we use the video editing software not Camtasia. Here’s a tutorial on how to do it.
Hi Stephanie, thank you very much for your very complete reply and for taking the time.
Best for the futur.
😉
Hi Stephanie, thanks for the post, very clear. Just one question, was the before page built using any Thrive template and then modified? Which template?
Or was it an original design that was modified for better?
Tks!
Hi Nick,
I’m not sure about the before page. I don’t recognize it as one of our templates (but I could be wrong). All our template can be previewed here if you want to take a look at what’s available.
About the segmentation part, it is also possible to display different headlines to different people using RightMessage (and I’m not affiliated with them in any way). I think it could combine nicely with Thrive quiz.
Hi Al,
I haven’t looked into RightMessage personally, but I do agree adding any sort of personalization is a positive for your website.
I have never encountered a company as committed to teaching its customers how to use its products effectively as Thrive Themes. You all exceed my expectations continuously. Stephanie, thank you for another reality-based example of how to use Thrive tools with impact. Priceless.
Thanks Brian!
Great post. This would provide great insights! Thanks, Stephanie!
Hey Steph, Great Post Again…
Question: How did you round the corners of the various page sections?
This is probably covered in a previous tutorial, if so please point me to the resource.
Thanks in advance for your reply and keep up the good work!
Hi Justin, You can do it using the page decoration options and two content boxes, bit it gets a little complicated to explain with the formatting. The simple solution is to create an image with a block color on it and the wave shape, making the top of the image (above the wave) transparent. Then you just add it to the background section’s background as an image.
Thank You Stephanie… I believe I can handle that.
Another great presentation, thanks Stephanie. I’m going to use some of these ideas on my high-ticket website.