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The Art of Selling Online Courses
The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses.
The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
12 Checkout Page Tricks To Get More Sales INSTANTLY
🔥 Get our checkout page resources and example: https://datadrivenmarketing.co/checkout-page
Most course creators are losing 90% of ready-to-buy customers on their checkout page (here's how to fix it)
Boris Mez shares the exact strategy that took a client from 10% to 48.5% checkout conversion rate - nearly 5X more sales from the same traffic.
Most people spend weeks perfecting their sales pages but completely ignore their checkout page. This is where people who are already sold decide whether to actually buy - and most checkout pages create doubt instead of eliminating it.
Boris breaks down the specific elements that eliminate buyer hesitation and shares real case studies, including one checkout page that hit 40-50% conversions on cold traffic.
So their old software. It had an average of 10% conversion rate. Ours had an average of 48.5% conversion rate.
Speaker 2:You are shitting me Really. That is the Boris Mez, an account manager here at Data Driven Marketing. He has been getting our clients incredible results by optimizing the one step that everybody ignores their checkout page. Boris has helped clients go from a 10% conversion rate to a 50% conversion rate. That's five times. That means literally five times more money. In this episode, you'll learn why your checkout page is secretly killing your sales.
Speaker 1:It could be the bottleneck to your business, because people would not buy, and they would not buy again and again after that.
Speaker 2:The psychology behind what people think when they hit your checkout page.
Speaker 1:By the time they're on the checkout page, they have a buyer intent. If they are there, they are thinking of buying. You sold them.
Speaker 2:The exact elements that can 5x your checkout page conversion rate.
Speaker 1:We're probably going to get to this in a second, but we can 5x the default checkout.
Speaker 2:And why 90 percent of people who reach your checkout page probably are abandoning it. They get to the checkout page, they're so close to buying and then, like 90 of them, leave. Boris, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Hey, thank you for having me, john. Always a wonderful intro.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it so all of it, completely honest. So what is it that makes a checkout page such a big deal for people, for businesses selling courses? Why is that such a big deal?
Speaker 1:Yeah right, well, it's a big deal because it's the bottleneck to your business. It could be the bottleneck to your business because it's the one thing that, if you do not optimize properly, people first of all would not buy and they would never see your upsell offers. And talking about upsells, there's another video about this with the two of us. We discussed it in our podcast a couple of weeks ago. But basically, the checkout page could become the worst enemy of your business because people would not buy and they would not buy again and again after that because of the page not being optimized.
Speaker 2:I think it's fascinating, right, because people don't even look at it, they don't even think about it, they just whatever the default checkout pages. People do bad sales pages, right, we know this, people have bad sales pages. But at least people think that maybe they should try and make it better and so they might be doing something with it. They're at least writing it and putting it together. Checkout page people just leave as whatever is the default. And it's mind bogglingling. And you look at some of them, like the teachable default one is so awful. I know that if teachable would let me, if they'd let me and you go in there and just change the default checkout page, we could make that business double in size. Like, do you think that's fair?
Speaker 1:you could double the default checkout conversion rate on teachable, right we're probably gonna get to this in a second, but we can exit the full check well, I don't know about the default, mate.
Speaker 2:We definitely could 5x, like any individual page. The default wow, that would be something. Wouldn't that teachable? If you're listening, we can make you a lot more money. Okay, so it's because it's this, it's this bottleneck. It's a step that everybody has to go through, but it most people convert really, really badly. What's like a typical conversion rate that a bad standard checkout page might have? Do you think?
Speaker 1:I mean it depends how bad it is, but 5%, 10%. I mean if the sales page is great and you have a list of people who really would go through anything to buy your product, they'll go through the worst checkout page ever. They would still buy 5%, 10%, maybe 15% if you're doing a great promo, but it's usually somewhere there Most people have no idea how bad this is.
Speaker 2:If you can go, look at your stats if you have stats for this somewhere in Teachable, in Google Analytics, whatever and try and see how many people got to the sales page, how many people got to the checkout page, and whatever and try and see, well, how many people got to the sales page, how many people got to the checkout page and how many actually bought, and compare the number that got to the checkout page and the number who bought, You're going to find it's probably really bad. It's probably under 12%, Like most people are under 12%. Okay, Now, it does depend slightly. Is it cold traffic? Is it people coming from ads? Is it people from an email promotion who are probably the warmest you know because they've already been on your email list a while, that kind of thing. But 10% is probably where a lot of people are at right now, which is depressing to hear right.
Speaker 2:It's like you've got all these people who they get to the checkout page. They're so close to buying and then, like 90% of them, leave.
Speaker 1:Well, that's something that almost every media buyer knows. Well, that's something that almost every media buyer knows Like a person who's running ads. They know that, after your repeated buyers and your buyers in general, the second best audience is people who initiate checkout. These are the best. People Like this is what you optimize if you don't have buyers, but marketers who don't run ads, for example, or never run ads, or just people who've never done this, they just think it's people clicking on the page. No, these are the second best audience after your buyers and you're missing them.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we've banged on about how bad it is. Let's start to talk about what. Is it that people need to be able to think about this? Are there any strategic mistakes that people make? Is there anything mindset-wise people need to think about?
Speaker 1:Yes, so high level. The checkout page Once a person lands on the checkout page, you need to understand where they're coming from by the time they're on a checkout page. You need to understand where they're coming from. By the time they're on the checkout page they have a buyer intent. If they are there, they are thinking of buying. You sold them. Another mistake that a lot of people do and that's what marketers usually do, especially people who are just starting out and they want to do everything on the checkout page is they build a second sales page. So, rather than pushing people to the next step, they do the opposite and they get them back into problems. They think about the problem, agitate, like all of this stuff. They try to, in a way, replicate the sales page, thinking that's a good thing because you're putting more.
Speaker 2:Probably not most of the people listening to this podcast, though, is it?
Speaker 1:That's more like marketers. Let's say, you hire a marketer who's not as experienced.
Speaker 2:Can't trust marketers. They spoil everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that's like 10% of the checkout pages. Let's say, the 10% of the checkout pages, 90% is just not optimized and 10% is over-optimized, which has the opposite effect. So the sweet spot is understanding why these people are there. They want to buy. What you want to do on the checkout page is make the very easy, very intuitive user experience and eliminate any risks for them, any second thoughts, any bias, remorse, even before buying. So really it's a risk reversal page in a way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, cool. So that's what we're trying to think through. We're like don't overdo this, don't make it a second sales page. But probably that's not the real issue. The real issue is people have reached this step and they're kind of sold right. They went to the sales page, they got through it, they decided, yes, I'm interested in buying, but they're not quite sure when it comes the time to actually put their credit card details in and part with their hard-earned cash. They're like, oh, oh, what if I'm making a mistake here? What if this isn't quite right? And we need to kind of address that and make sure people feel really comfortable. Okay, so what else do people need to? What stuff do we need to be doing on the checkout page then to deal with that?
Speaker 1:you should nudge them into the right direction to buy like they're there almost. They just need a slight bit of confirmation, clarity and security in what they're doing. So you should basically put all kinds of trust-building elements or clarity-building elements. What does that mean? What is trust-building element? Well, we can start from the top and just break down a good checkout page. We can start with, obviously, the top have the logo, or have what you're selling the business, the company, so people know who you are On. Have the logo, or have the what you're signing out business, the company, so people know who you are on the right side or on the left side. Just put the two things. One is the logo, the other is contact us. Ideally you have a contact us link, though with an email for an example, or phone number. Even evil now, would somebody contact you? Probably not. The point is they sit there. It gives them clarity and security that there is another person who they can reach very easy. They don't have to find your email somewhere on the internet. They don't want to search on Facebook. Right there, the email contact us.
Speaker 1:You should have this. Then on the page, you should have the product. They should be able to see what they're buying, like the mock-up of a product, mock-up of your course, for an example, or mock-up of your book, whatever you're selling course, for an example, or mock-up of your book, whatever you're selling. That should be there. Then you should have a breakdown of what they're going to get, very clear, straight to the point, what's inside. So this gives again clarity to know what they're going to get once they buy, like four modules, three bonuses, x, y, z. That's what they're going to get. Then you should have a money-back guarantee badge. If you have a money back guarantee whatever it is, 30 days, 90 days, five years have it there? Be super clear about it, do you?
Speaker 2:know anybody who has a five-year money back guarantee.
Speaker 1:I'll be crazy.
Speaker 2:I know somebody with a 365-day one.
Speaker 1:Trust your business that it's going to be there for five years.
Speaker 2:Oh, I heard about slight tangent. Right, I heard about this company. They sell leather bags and their guarantee is a hundred years, I think, and that what the guarantee page says is if you or any of your descendants have a problem with this bag, they can then bring it back to me or any of my descendants and we will replace it for you. That's a good offer. I'm like you are crazy, that's too much. I'm like would they really honor it? Like what if you go back in 60 years and that guy's dead? Like, but you kind of get the idea, like they're saying we really mean it, you know. But okay, so we've got logo, product mock-up. Contact us. Summary of what's inside modules, bonuses, money back, guarantee, badge. Okay, what else?
Speaker 1:I'm gonna open one of our pages that was so good. It was having, uh, 50 percent conversion rate on cold traffic. 40 to 50 percent, 50 percent best and that was on ads. So that's one thing. There you have it like a total value, regular price and the offer you're giving. So that should be there too. Money back guarantee, badgearantee, badge, testimonials, any kind of proof that you can put there, whether it's other people endorsing you. You've been featured somewhere. Testimonials obviously are a great one. There's a couple of apps that provide something called like proof where it pops up when somebody buys it. It just shows you like this was bought five hours ago by XYZ person from Arizona no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Arizona is a great marketing community, by the way. Shout out to them. You can have an exit pop-up. That's an important one. That's the thing that shows up when you try to exit the page. That can save up to 20% of your abandoned cards. That's another thing.
Speaker 2:That's not part of the card. I didn't know that how many is that Up to 20%.
Speaker 1:You can save it with a pop-up, Okay. And then what we like to recently we started doing this is putting especially for bigger course creators. If they have a lot of students, we put like 1,000 students already enrolled in this course, so it creates the idea that 1,500 people already joined, or over 1,500 people, then probably me joining won't be a bad decision. So I mean, it goes back to that book. You might have read it. I know you love marketing books. It's like by Robert Cialdini influence. It's one of the principles there, like having a group of people confirming that something is good.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be honest with you. I love that book and I've not read it, because what I did is I listened to him on a podcast talking about all the things and I didn't go through and read it and I really should, but it's so big and it's so much. There's only six points, right, which are reciprocity, urgency and scarcity. Building authority you have likability. What's the other two? Do you remember? Not really, even though.
Speaker 1:I read it. You probably know it better than I do. I mean, the book is full of stories and it's really the six. It's one of these books where you have a couple of principles and a bunch of stories that verify the principles.
Speaker 2:So you know them. That's good enough, just for anybody who doesn't know this. This dude, he wanted to go I think he's like an academic and he wanted to go find out why do people buy. And he went and like followed and studied all these people who are really good at sales and then kind of classified down what were the approaches that they used that were effective in terms of making sales, and he said basically there's these six different ones, which I've remembered just four of there, and what you need to do is you need to take advantage of whatever ones are relevant to you.
Speaker 2:So, like, if you are a massive authority in your space, then you use your authority. If you have urgency or you have scarcity which are two slightly different things, but they have the kind of the same effect on people psychologically then use that and, of course, you can go out of your way to try and build these up. And you know you build up your authority through the social proof, right? The testimonials showing this person just bought from arizona 1500 people are enrolled in this course all that stuff that boris is just explaining. Okay, cool, anything else that we need apart from what you, what you've said so far, anything else that's on that page you're, you're checking out well, you can do advanced tricks, like you can mimic some of the amazon way that.
Speaker 1:I mean how amazon are showing their reviews or like their stars, because people people trust Amazon and, subconsciously, if you have the similar design to them, obviously don't put Amazon there if you're not selling by Amazon, but having similar style of page or similar style of design of the icons could give the effect that people trust you because they trust Amazon. They bought from Amazon so many times. Seeing it there, it gives you the same idea and, yeah, overall, everything is geared towards making people feel comfortable to fill out the details. Now we can talk about the details in a second. One more thing for urgency and scarcity that you mentioned is you could, you should.
Speaker 1:If you're doing a promo, you should put the urgency there Like this is closing in X amount of time. What you could do, though, if you're not running a promo and that's something that you could do without having problems with any authorities is like putting we're reserving your card for 10 minutes and then, after 10 minutes, it could refresh back to the sales page, for an example, but basically, you're reserving the card and there is a timer for 10 minutes that gives them the idea that they need to buy within 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's a little dodgy't it, because it's like there's nothing's going to happen at the end of the 10 minutes is it could refresh the back of the page.
Speaker 1:You could increase the price potentially on if you want that, but it's one of these things you could do if you want.
Speaker 2:You talk about having a countdown timer on the checkout page, like if you've got a promotion going on and it's like going to end in two days or whatever. Like, yeah, countdown time on the checkout page every single single time. I don't think I knew that and that seems so obvious now that you say it, because I'm like we've run tests of having it on the sales page or not. Having on the sales page and having it on the sales page converts way better. We also ran tests of having it in the emails or not having it in the emails, and when you added it in the emails, it converted. I think it was 7% better. I don't know that. I realized about having it on the checkout page as well, but it's just like, of course, if someone's right at the last moment, of course you need to have that like, push them over the edge for it. Okay, cool, all right. So I'm going to summarize again, and what I want to do is I want to take do you think we'll be able to take a screenshot of the checkout page?
Speaker 1:that you've got from that client and, uh, we definitely could do one from one of our clients, couldn't we that's like, uh, that's that's converted well, and share that with people so they can see how this actually looks. You know that we can just share ours. That was absolutely crushing, I think has all the marketing principles.
Speaker 2:So we're going to share an example that you can actually see, because we're describing all of this and to me, I think if I was hearing this and I didn't know about it, I might think how on earth do I fit all of that on the page? This is going to be just enormous. But when we say testimonials, if you have a testimonial on a sales page, you have a video and you have a headline underneath and it takes up a whole bunch of space. When you have a testimonial on a checkout page, it's often just like 15 words or something like that, even maybe a little bit less. Could you read out one of the testimonials that's on the checkout page you're looking at now?
Speaker 1:It's exactly what you said. There's like a quote and there's like a bigger quote after that, but you can just focus on a small thing, so one could be within two months. We've made seven times how much I wanted to make, or I was finished my first over six-figure month ever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, super short. It's just we're not trying to sell people. They're already sold from the sales page. We're just trying to make sure that if they feel nervous, they're like oh no, no, no, it is okay. I remember I saw all those testimonials. This is a reminder. Yes, this is going to be fine, this is the product you wanted to buy. Yes, it's showing me a reminder of the product that I'm actually buying. So I know I'm in the right place. I haven't accidentally clicked the wrong link and gone to a different checkout page. I'm going to be buying something else by mistake.
Speaker 2:I've had that feeling before I go to a checkout page and it just doesn't show any other information. It's just the amount of money, and I'm like am I definitely getting the thing that I meant to be getting? Did I click the right link? Were there multiple links? Any doubts we want to get rid of. We want people to just be like. Be like oh, everything's fine. I've got a guarantee. I'm buying the product I meant to from the person that I meant to buy it from. It definitely achieves the thing that I am looking to achieve. Oh, yes, there is urgency. I do need to make a decision on this now and like just keep a little tiny bit from each of those sales page ideas. Okay, cool anything else besides that? That should be on someone's checkout page uh.
Speaker 1:One thing that people do not optimize as often as they could is having the right input fields, having them properly optimized and have the right uh button that converts for you. For the input fields this is where you put your name, put your address, put your phone number. Now, if you have these like phone number address and you don't need them, remove them oh my god, it's crazy, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it's like why do you need, why are you asking for this? Like, why does it miss it online? Why do you need to know where they live, unless maybe it's for tax reasons? But ideally, just like just delete anything that you don't need to get from people, exactly so I mean, if you're, I think it comes from.
Speaker 1:What you said initially was that a lot of these templates are made for in platforms and some of them are for e-commerce, and there that's where you need you need to address because you've got to send them a thing yeah, yes, but people don't think that my digital product don't need to be sent anywhere, like you can get it right now so having this there you want to make it for vertical, not horizontal, and the reason is that it's just easier to go through the fields.
Speaker 1:Like you don't want to have first name, last name, email address, like you just want to make it.
Speaker 2:See what boris is showing with his hands. Here is first name and then last name next to it. So you would want to have the first name is one line, the last name is the next line.
Speaker 1:Email address is the next line, like that exactly and ideally you just put full name. No need to first last and just put on full name. If you want to, yeah, make it one field, create card details, same thing, card number, date, cvv Like no need to make it, order it in a weird way, make it like just look fancy, make it as simple and straightforward as possible Right after putting the contact details. That's where you put something called order bumps. The order bump is between the card and the button. There, the order bump is between the cart and the button. There is a specific reason for this. You want the person to first type in their cart details and everything and then make a decision where they want to make an order bump purchase, like another small upsell, before buying. It's right before they click the button, but right after they type in their credit card details. Now this is a form of an upsell. Again, we have another podcast about upsells where we discuss similar things, but the order bumps are checkout page upsells smaller price, an add-on, in a way, to your main purchase. If you want to have some general rules, have an image, have some compelling copy that explains exactly what they're going to get, how it's going to help them. And, yeah, just make it look in a small text good add-on to their main purchase. Then you have the button.
Speaker 1:The call to action button is not supposed to be buy now. It's not supposed to be order now. It's supposed to be something slightly more compelling and bring some clarity. It could be get instant access now. It could be start learning Photoshop today. It could be anything else. But yeah, don't use the generic buy now, order now thing. It just feels like you haven't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not what people want, is it? The thing they want is not to buy it. The thing they want is to get the result. So you can put the result in just a few words. Like you say start learning Photoshop today. Okay, they're like oh yeah, that's what I wanted and it's all just like make that feel easy and seamless. What would be any more examples of what could go on that button? Because I think people will struggle a little bit with trying to think this through.
Speaker 1:what's the outcome of your course, like what they're gonna start doing, what they're gonna get if you really cannot come up with anything. I always go to get instant access now the four magic words we've talked about before but they just get instant access now. It also brings clarity that they're gonna get instant access to the course, so they feel calm that once they press this button, next thing they're gonna do is get the instant access to whatever they've purchased. But it can be any kind of an outcome Start learning today. If you're a course creator, obviously that's a good one and start learning whatever skill you're selling, or get access to the product they're buying. Anything along these lines would be a good fit for this call to action button. But order now or buy now, which, like john you said, nobody wants to buy. They want to get the outcome of the product nice, okay, cool.
Speaker 2:So if you want to get hold of these um templates that we mentioned the example of what a checkout page actually looks like then we're going to have the link in the description or the show notes and the pin comment below. So just look in, uh, in there, depending whether you listen to the audio or watching the video of this, and you're going to be able to download that, and we're also going to include a list of what we've just run through. So you've got a checklist of. This is everything that should be included there to make it really easy for you to set up your checkout page really nicely. If you are using Teachable, which I know that some of you are, conversion rates are going to be lower. I don't know, it's not just Teachable, is it? It's just that's the one that I just keep seeing the most, like Kajabi. I can't remember how good that is. I think it's a bit better. Sound card.
Speaker 1:They should all contact us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but ClickFunnels one is pretty good but that's like separate funnel software from your course hosting thing. But you can still do all of these things to an extent on Teachable or Kajabi or what have you. You can't do them amazingly, but you can do them to an extent. I wonder if we've got like an example of a Teachable one that we could share. If I can find one, I'll include that in the resources that you can download. I'm not promising on that one, but we have helped people improve their Teachable conversion rate dramatically, but the thing that allowed us to improve it the most was then using something like ClickFunnels and replacing Teachable for that step and then using Zapier to connect them behind the scenes. What's the kind of improvements people can expect to see? If they implemented all of this perfectly and they did it in funnel software and it looked exactly the way you were happy with, versus the standard default shitty one, what kind of improvement would people expect to see?
Speaker 1:actually, yesterday I was sending exactly this kind of report to someone that's working with us about their checkout page conversion, because we split tested them and I'm going to give you the exact numbers. So their old software which is, it's teachable, but it's a very similar software to it it had an average of 10% conversion rate. Ours yeah, ours had an average of 48.5% conversion rate. You are shitting me.
Speaker 2:Really 5,000. Actually was like nearly five times the conversion rate Just from. Was there other things that you've done that could have affected that, like the sales page was better or anything, or was this just like a true A-B test of it or whatever?
Speaker 1:It was better because it was done in a better software, but the elements themselves were implemented as best as we could. In the first software and then in our version of it. It was obviously implemented a lot better, everything that we could.
Speaker 2:Do you know the numbers for when we went from the original one to our version?
Speaker 1:in their software. Theirs was always 10%. That was consistent in the past.
Speaker 2:So we tried making the changes.
Speaker 1:We've done it. It was maybe we bumped it with a couple of percentages here and there. I need to see these numbers so I'm not giving you false numbers there. But yeah, after using the elements to the extent that we could, it was 10%. On our version it was 50%. Now you can imagine which of the two funnels had 90, 95% of the upsells.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, let's not get into upsells, that's too much, that's too far. But I get your point yeah. It's like have you got all those extra sales, but you're making extra sales of the upsell afterwards and you, because those people have bought, they're more likely to buy from you again, and you know there's like all of these other kind of improvements.
Speaker 1:And even they're more likely to see it, they won't even see the upsells if your checkout is bad, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. So this is pretty dramatic in terms of this kind of improvement before that, five times. I just wasn't expecting to see that Again. I thought that was like kind of a one-off, but we've had that before where we helped someone five times their checkout page conversion rate. I've seen it definitely a lot of times increase to about 50% from email promotions, like, if it's just the colder traffic, then not so much. So you said this one was quite cold traffic, though what was this?
Speaker 1:The cold traffic one was ours, the one that we really optimized to the point where we spent so much time there, and it was a very low ticket offer. It was running on paid ads. We were reaching 40 and 50%. 50% at some point was stabilizing somewhere around 40 average. But yeah, that was something that our team was working on Most of our team was working on it for an extended period of time to optimize it.
Speaker 2:Got it. Okay, cool, I think generally. Normally, if you can get to about 20%, then you actually could be pretty happy, because that's pretty decent. I don't know if you always can get to 50%, but you definitely, definitely, definitely can increase dramatically from whatever you've got at the moment. And I actually think this is probably one of the easiest improvements to make, because it's not like a sales page. It's like there's a lot of elements to put on there, the checkout page. There's like these lists of the things we've just run through and you can download that if you can't remember them all. But there's not. They don't take up that much space, not that. The problem with it sometimes is the software doesn't allow you to put them all in the way that we'd like, the way that actually works the best. But you can definitely make improvements relatively quickly by putting these elements in place. Cool, all right, great. Anything else that we need to leave people with? I think that we're good there. I'm just looking through the notes. I think that we've covered everything we needed to.
Speaker 1:I think if you implement these things you download the list, you go through the list, you implement everything I think you're in a good spot, yeah definitely All right.
Speaker 2:Cool, if you want that example. You want the list and maybe a teachable example as well. If we can find it, then we're going to put that. Just click the link in the description, the show notes or the pinned comment. Thank you so much, as always, for listening. And, Borisis, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom, appreciate it. Thank you for having me, but none of that stuff matters with improving the checkout page if you don't have a good sales page in the first place, because then nobody even gets to the checkout page. So if you want to see information about how to write a great sales page, then check out this video and that's going to take you through that.