Matt Inglot 3:49
Yeah, well, we help owners of membership websites, as you so nicely pointed out in the introduction. And really that is the business model that for reasons we could get into. We ended up just doing really well with so people that have online businesses that are specifically membership based. And that could be like selling access to information, we have a client that has a cool stock photo site that she sells monthly access to anything that sort of recurring payments, we just are able to do a lot with to help those businesses grow. So we’ve had a lot of clients that started out somewhere and low six figures, sometimes even less. And some of those now have seven figure business membership businesses and we’ve been along for the ride with and along the way, we’ve been able to help them a lot and we’ve also been able to see what works across a lot of different sites, which I feel has been our superpower. We don’t have just one data point ever. We have a lot of data points and that helps us quickly see the patterns of okay, this is an issue. This is working great We take those powers, and we use them to help more and more of our clients grow.
Jeremy Weisz 5:05
Yeah, and if people are watching the video, you can see on here, I Matt has not seen these, I pulled up a couple websites, because I figured it’d be really cool to have them do some breakdown of a couple websites. And so he has not looked at these ahead of time. So you’ll see I’m gonna be sharing screen and I’m sharing screen, you’ll see those sites in a second where I’m gonna pull them up, Matt’s gonna give his best practices and tips right on the fly with some of these sites. But I wanted to start off with there was a man, a site, a gym ology, um, and talk a little bit about what what are the things you did when you were helping this site in the gym ology industry, kind of a random niche?
Matt Inglot 5:49
Yeah, it is random. And that’s honestly like part of what I really love about the work that we do is there are so many different niches out there. And so many cool people just doing things that you when you wake up out of bed, you don’t even think is going to be a website, much less super successful and super interesting, and so on. So we always get to learn about all of these different topics. And it never feels like the same old thing. So we in that particular website, I mean, we’ve done a lot, we revamped the whole member’s area and did a lot of other things. But one of the things that I think is the coolest, was just getting a nice new email sequence in place. So when people do like lots of people were coming to the site. And whenever people are coming to your site, one of the things that you want to be doing is trying to create a longer term relationship with them, which inevitably, usually means trying to get their email address, that’s usually the first step. So that instead of them leaving the website, and losing touch with you, they provide their email, and you can continue to educate them create value for them. And you can start building a relationship that’s hopefully ultimately going to lead into a paying customer. And so they did have things like this in place, but none of it was quite following the sort of structures that we’re used to, and which we know work. So we’re able to turn this around and build in the type of email sequence that really delivers value first of all, and also gets people wanting to share their email address. So you never want a forum on your website that just says, sign up for our newsletter. We’ve all done it. But it’s not great. Because why? Why do I need another newsletter in my inbox? I don’t, but I want less newsletters in my inbox. So you have to give people something very specific. And so what’s unique about us and our approach is we’re serious about this. So we actually did a ton of audience research. We actually did phone interviews with existing customers like we dug deep. And we figured out what are the top problems in that space, people? What are people coming to this site trying to solve, and we picked something that resonated really well with that audience. And we made that the offer so if you put in your email address, we’ll teach you all about this. And they started by getting this just amazing educational PDF that basically addressed that problem. And that was followed by I don’t know, 10 to 12 emails that just built on that topic, educated them educated them about that website, and its offerings, and of course, ultimately, focused in on promoting the membership, and really connecting that membership as a way to learn even more on this topic. And it was very successful, which ultimately, is the goal. So in the end, now that this email sequence is there in live, it’s basically an automated salesperson, and it’s just continuously allowing more people to sign up and go through this educational process, and then ultimately join and because we measure everything, we saw the boost in sales that that created, and we can track exactly what that looks like before and after the sequence.
Jeremy Weisz 9:18
I love that because it’s really instructive for any business, no matter if it’s a membership site, or whatever, you know, talking to the customers figuring out the biggest pain points and creating a educational sequence around those pain points that eventually leads to the sale that’s gonna solve their biggest pain. So I love that because any business can employ that. And there was another one man what I love about all these sites and you’re this is kind of a superpower is like helping people zero in on their niche, right. I mean, you know what your niches you could see it’s clear in day if you’re looking at the you know, the screenshare here, it’s very clear what Matt does not like. Sometimes I go to a website like I don’t even know what this company does, and jargon. Yeah, you want to hit on what, what does this company do and Jemelle, just the sites you work with are super niched. Right. So the next one want you to talk about is, there’s a stock photo site. And you you were saying before we hit record about why it was so successful, one of the reasons why it was so successful.
Matt Inglot 10:23
Yeah, and this is another one where we’ve done a lot of work together. But the bit that I’m really proud of is the focus on the membership experience itself. So this is literally a stock photo website where you can sign up for a membership, and then get access to this awesome super premium collection of stock photos that gets added to every week along with all of this other amazing content. And it’s very difficult to build that like it genuinely is. And even if you go to big stock photo sites, there’s a lot that’s not amazing about the user interface. So one of the things that we did, and I’m really proud of is that we’ve taken we’ve taken this sort of niche membership site. And we built a stock photo experience that I really think rivals, what you see out there, right, it’s on par it, it loads quickly, which again, not all of them can say that it’s easy to search for photos, it’s easy to filter things. And just a ton of work and effort went into the user experience. And that again, goes back to you have to do to work. So we did the research, we looked at what works on stock sites, we looked at what doesn’t we collaborated closely with the clients. And we really figured out what is it that this site has to do in order to provide a really good experience. So I see you’ve got shatta, I
Jeremy Weisz 11:51
just, we’re not talking about by the way, we’re not talking about Shutterstock. But I just did a quick search up watching the video, just for stock photos just to see what comes up as far as because you know, when you’re comparing it, like the one you’re working with, is really niche. And this is obviously not niche. So I don’t know if you have any comments on on Shutterstock in general, but keep keep keep talking. I just want to pull Yeah,
Matt Inglot 12:14
I you know, I don’t want to, it’s hard for me to comment on Shutterstock, or some of these big ones without having their data. But it does strike me for example, that if I go to their homepage, the top thing I don’t see on it is any stock photos, I find that a little odd,
Jeremy Weisz 12:31
you have to scroll down to see like the if you’re looking at that as fun is kind of ironic, right? That at the top is just like text of the of the top searches.
Matt Inglot 12:43
Yeah, it doesn’t give me a flavor or sense of what is it that you’re providing? Or why should be excited. It’s just browse royalty free stock photos, yeah, and so
Jeremy Weisz 12:54
like around this, but maybe put a background of like a bunch of stock photos in this banner or somewhere to display what they do. I mean,
Matt Inglot 13:03
that would be a starting point. But I dive deeper into it. Like we like to go back to first principles. So I’m not as interested in what banner photo we use. I’m interested in well, who’s your audience in the first place? Right? And what is it that they’re trying to do? And what is it that they’re trying to solve, which is going back to that email sequence we’re talking about? It may sound like such simple advice, oh, put up an email sequence, right? We’ve heard this stuff 1000 times before, the thing is, you have to actually go and you have to do it. And you have to do it properly. And that always starts with research. So there’s probably a better solution to the Shutterstock website, then we see right now, but the thing that I’d be very curious about then is Who are their primary customers? And what are they struggling with? I see they’re trying to sell a membership. So what’s in it for me. And what I see is if I knew nothing else about Shutterstock, I didn’t know that they were a major player in the space, they would look like just yet another stock photo site to me, or like our client, for example, they targets a very specific audience. And it’s very clear whether you’re afraid or not very, very quickly. Whereas here, it’s like I could browse this site for stock photos or I could bros 10 other sites for stock photos, all offering me royalty free stock photography. So yeah, I’m not I’m not trying to be harsh on these guys. Again, Shutterstock you’re awesome. But you know, there’s probably a huge
Jeremy Weisz 14:35
business but yeah, there’s always room for improvement. It’s interesting because what you see here is top stock image searches. All right, now we’re in January. We’re past the holidays right now but it does have Christmas Christmas tree, Santa Claus Hanukkah ornaments. So it’s interesting that for some reason, this is what’s showing up in the prime real estate of this site.
Matt Inglot 14:58
And it’s so weird because If you think about the marketing cycle, people are searching for Christmas tree photos in November. Right? Like you’re doing your Christmas marketing, you know, October, November, you know, trying to get that in, as soon as Black Friday is done. So yeah, it’s really weird that we’re recording this in January. And it’s talking about Santa Claus and Christmas trees.
Jeremy Weisz 15:21
So you were saying so. But that stock photo site that you were worked with was, you were saying was super niche?
Matt Inglot 15:30
Yeah, exactly. It’s stock photos for a certain niche, a targeting a certain type of female business owner. But like, there’s a certain aesthetic, and there’s a certain imagery associated with that. And they just make the best possible like stock photos for that niche. It’s super cool.
Jeremy Weisz 15:54
And you know, what I want to talk about just in general, and then we’ll we’ll do a kind of a site breakdown, and some of these ones I pulled up here is just in generally some of the biggest mistakes people make with their membership sites. Yeah,
Matt Inglot 16:08
absolutely. Well, there’s a lot, so I’ll throw out. One that’s very common. And that’s only trying a monthly pricing plan. Right. And the problem with monthly is, we often see that that’s not the optimal choice. There’s always going to be exceptions. But what we’ve discovered is with monthly plans, it sounds like a good idea, because people only have to commit like 999 or 20 bucks a month for something. So you hook them in with this really low price. But the problem is, is that the two things happen. One is you see a lot of churn on the monthly plan. Like when we compare monthly to quarterly to annual or any other billing period other than monthly, monthly hands down has way more churn, and I’m talking like twice as much churn. So monthly, people tend to churn out really quickly. And part of it, of course, is that you sort of have to earn their business every single month, every single month, they have to reevaluate whether they’re getting value from you or not. And so if they got amazing value from you, in month one, like let’s say $500 worth of value, you gave them tons of good information, and tons of good things, but he only charged him $20, well, they got the bargain of a lifetime. But now month two comes around, and they’re getting a little less value, that little less information, you’ve helped them solve a lot of their problem, it’s now even though they got $500 worth of value in month one for what you help them with and month two, you have to earn their business all over again, they’re not looking at one fun, they’re looking at what they’re getting out of it now. And it’s last, and then you got a month three, now they’re getting even less and next, you know, they’re canceling. Whereas if you make, say, an annual membership, and it’s a good valuable membership, that means the minimum price that they have to pay to get all of that value is a lot more fair to you. But the flip side of it is they’re paying yearly, they’re actually way more likely to use the site, because they’ve actually paid you more upfront. And therefore, counter intuitively, they’re actually more likely to get all the value that you’re creating and make use of it and actually be a committed member. So we found many times over going to annual plan is one of the fastest way to just make your site more profitable. And again, it’s not just oh, we’re we’re going to make it annual so people can cancel less often it better aligns the value that they’re getting with the billing structure.
Jeremy Weisz 18:49
Yeah. So monthly versus you know, and including an annual plan, what else? What other mistakes do people make?
Matt Inglot 18:56
Yeah. So we’ve, we’ve already talked about this a little bit. But not, it’s not being clear what it is that your membership is solving for people, or solving something for people that isn’t a recurring problem. That’s a big one. Because not everything needs to be a membership site. And there was this wave of people kind of going jumping on the membership trend, and just basically converting courses into memberships. And if you’re just giving people access to the same content month after month, you’re not giving them anything new. They’re gonna churn out really fast. And I think rightfully so. Right. Why do I need to keep paying you for the same thing over and over? That’s why Netflix has such a big budget for producing content, right? They they know that once you’ve seen the shows, you want to see if they give you nothing else. It doesn’t matter how amazing those shows were that you watch, you’re not going to keep paying them. So you really want to pick a problem where producing more content or giving them something else, like a community actually makes sense. And it’s not that you can solve their problem in three months, and then you’re hoping you’re going to charge their credit card for the next two years. It really doesn’t work that way.
Jeremy Weisz 20:13
Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Yeah, there was another guy had on here and I’ll let you do the next one. I’m Ross Gordon, he ended up selling Craft Jack. And then he started mystery tackle box, which is a membership for bass fishermen to sell, you know, subscription boxes, and I think they, they rebranded it to, like bass CO or something like that, or like some, you know, the bass company, but, or catch co one of them. But anyways, you know, he he talked about actually customer acquisition, because he’s grown that to, I think they’re in, you know, huge retail stores, even to people get their membership boxes and the membership site. So, you know, what other mistakes do be I’m gonna is going to go to catch co see what they have there and see what, see what you think. But let’s see here. We have. So they have mystery tackle box, and you can get the subscription and they have different lewer. I mean, I’m not I would say I’m not much of a fisherman or anything like that. But I think during COVID I mean, it exploded me even more, because people could fish during COVID what else they do? Golf and fish. So anyway, yeah, socially isolated, socially isolated. Exactly. So they’re doing some cool things with with mystery Tackle Box. What other mistakes do people make? Yeah, um,
Matt Inglot 21:48
why don’t we say, another great one to jump into is just onboarding or lack thereof. There’s a surprising amount of membership sites where people put a lot of time and effort into the sales piece, right, we want to get people subscribing to our membership, and a membership site might be delivering on all of its promises. But we found that a lot of them are also very confusing. So you join in, you log in for the first time and just like, boom, you’re hit with everything, right? There’s like 12 different options that you can click on. And there’s like, no clear place to go. There might be some sort of wizard, like, encouraging you to sign up and edit your profile and join the community. But it’s all just like this whirlwind of do this, do this, do that. And what we found in practice is people get overwhelmed very, very quickly. And especially in that onboarding process, where there’s that giant learning curve, that’s sort of one of your biggest challenges is, yes, you’ve sold them on the membership, but you haven’t actually earned that member yet. And if you don’t earn that member, they’re going to turn. And so one of the biggest dangers here is they get all excited about your sales copy, they go, they give you their money, they sign up, and then suddenly, that like dopamine rush is satisfied, because they’ve hit that buy button, they think, Okay, this thing’s gonna solve all my problems, then they realize, oh, there’s work I have to do, I have to figure out this membership site, and then I have to actually commit to doing something in it, whatever is gonna solve my problem, whether it’s like learning things or interacting with people, and there’s usually like, virtually zero effective hand holding for that. And so they get overwhelmed, they put it in the to, to do later pile. And as soon as something goes in that pile, it’s over. That’s the to do never pile. We just don’t call it that in our heads. And then inevitably, they might let you build them for like a three months while a you know, just have good intentions of jumping in eventually, they never get around to it, and they finally cancel. And that’s sort of a perfect example of an incomplete sale, where you got some money out of, but because you never took that effort to really bring them home, get them using your product, get them having success with it, you ended up losing them. So that’s something else that we do a lot of is looking at that entire experience, and just trying to be a lot more creative with it and just a lot more just less overwhelming, right and a lot more guided and make it obvious, like what should you do now? What sort of stuff doesn’t matter right now, but you might want to get to later and just let them start feeling like they’re starting to solve their problem in some sort of bite sized increment that’s actually achievable and not as daunting Wallis stuff you have to do.
Jeremy Weisz 24:48
The amount when you’re talking about that it made me think I don’t know why my mind went to calendar software like when you subscribe now pull up Calendly and just see what it looked like. Because when you you sign up for something that’s there’s so much stuff If there’s not a clear onboarding, and then it’s just confusing, you have so much to set up, then you’ll just be like, forget it, it’s like, I’ll just use my Google Calendar and forget it. So it reminded me of this, like when you, if there’s not a clear onboarding, it’s, and you don’t let walk people through those processes, they’re not going to use it, and they’re not gonna be successful. And they are going to turn off of it. And I had a interview with Gavin who ran acuity scheduling, which then sold to, I think they sold to Squarespace and he was a master at making sure people were making that onboarding process, like you’re talking about, they’re not doing those small things to be successful. They’re just going to turn off the platform. So I love that advice on having a clear onboarding, so that people have more success. Yeah,
Matt Inglot 25:51
exactly. And that’s way more important than get them using everything in the kitchen sink is just getting started and getting some wins. It’s extra difficult with communities because you need people participating and discussing, and people tend to come in at come at super excited. And then very quickly, that excitement dies down. So there’s a lot of challenges of onboarding. And I think it’s definitely something that the whole membership space doesn’t pay nearly enough attention to it.
Jeremy Weisz 26:23
Um, I want to go to breaking down some of these sites that I pulled off, but are there any others that we should mention first about big mistakes? When people are thinking about their membership?
Matt Inglot 26:37
I mean, there’s so many, right. Like, basically, we could zoom out a little bit. And basically, when we look at a website, we are looking for the highest opportunity fixes or changes or implementation to stuffs where maybe your business is doing really well. But what’s that big blind spot that one weak spot that’s in your way? Because usually, that’s the low hanging fruit, the big opportunities to highest leverage things? Those are the things that if you make that change, because you’re doing so many other things, right, that change is holding you back, once you make it that translates to big, real money, right? It’s not like, Oh, I’ll make a few $1,000 more every year. It’s like, oh, wow, my sales went up 30%, because I was killing my sales, and I didn’t even know it. Right. And so the areas that we look at is first and foremost, the entire like sales process, including all the all the things that I thought I just told you about, looking at who the audience is, and making sure that the messaging and offer match up against the problems that the audience has, and that we’re actually educating them on how we’re solving them. And then once we get them over to the membership, then the next thing we look at is that member experience. And again, are we onboarding them? Are we delivering on our promises? Are we actually creating an experience that keeps them coming back? And then we look at things like churn and retention, and what’s happening there. And usually there’s things to solve. So actually, as I’m explaining this, that I realized, there’s one more tip I can give you that’s very tangible. When people are canceling that is probably your one and only chance to ask them why it’s very difficult to get any sort of response from someone after they’ve canceled and we’ve tried it so many times, we run so many surveys for clients. And anytime we try to run a survey that includes turned people past customers, they never respond, it just doesn’t happen. Like you’ll get a few responses. But it’s not enough to do anything with. Whereas if, if right on the page, where they have to hit that cancel button, you just have a text box that asks, Why are you canceling, we read every you know, please tell us we read every piece of feedback we receive, you’re gonna get like, you know, 50 times more replies, then you will try to email them later. And that’s really helpful. That’s something to pay really close attention to. Because that starts giving you an idea of what’s happening, especially if you parse that feedback correctly.
Jeremy Weisz 29:15
Love it. Um, okay, so I’m going to pull up some of these, you’ve not looked at these ahead of time. So I’m going to pull up the first one, which is pencil kings.com. And just, I’ll kind of let you navigate me around but just tell me what you’re noticing or make comments on whatever you’re saying.
Matt Inglot 29:37
Sure, yeah. So we’ll go through the homepage and whatever is involved in signing up. So right away I mean, I’m first impressions is a good one. It seems at least from the top of homepage. It’s a well designed site, and I love the headline at the top it says join 1000s of artists are ready using pencil kings online, online art training to level up their art and careers, it’s a little bit of a mouth. Having tried to read that, I might simplify that a little bit. But it’s good because right away, you know, it’s for artists, right? You know, you’re you’re not trying to use big complicated language to explain what you do like a lot of like corporate websites. This is this is for artists trying to level up. And since it’s called pencil kings, I assume it has something to do with drawings. And then there’s a video, we don’t have to watch it. But there’s a video that says here how Katie improved her pencil kings. Okay, so that’s really cool. And then there’s a button, join the community and find success as an artist. So what’s really good about this page is there’s an offer before you’ve even really scrolled. And it’s a very clear offer. Now, we’re not going to click that button yet. We’re just going to scroll down and we’re going to see what else is going on here. Oh, boy. This is a really good one. Because it says learn from artists that have worked at the world’s best studios. And they’ve got like the Marvel logo, the EA logo, DreamWorks, DC blue, I don’t know what blue sky is. But certainly the other four, I do recognize. So that’s a lot of social proof than they have, as seen. Imagine effects magazine. So that I assume is a big magazine for people in drying. So that’s really cool. And then we scroll down, and I think, Okay, so here we have some tutorials, I think these are basically blog posts. So we just kind of scroll down the offers. And now I think this is basically the free content that they’re providing. Um, it looks okay, I gotta admit, those thumbnails aren’t grabbing me as much as I hoped. So that’s something that makes me wonder, but it does seem that at least that they’re, they’re tackling some interesting problems, like how to draw a nose. I stopped drawing, here’s how to start making art again. So it seems like they’re they do understand their client, probably, and they are trying to speak to them. So that’s not bad. But I don’t know, the thumbnails weren’t really grabbing me. And it just, it makes me feel like there’s probably there’s probably opportunities there. Okay, so, yeah, they’ve got a podcast, they’ve got some testimonials. And then if we keep scrolling, they’ve got a button to join the community and find success as an artist. So I’m very curious what happens when I click that button, because now I think this is going to be a key point. Let’s have a question
Jeremy Weisz 32:26
about that. I’m gonna click the button we go to but I mean, at this point, would you put something like free I don’t know if it’s free if it’s paid? Also, you mentioned you know, don’t say sign up for the newsletter, join the community find success as artists, is that too broad? Like find success as artists? I don’t know. I mean, I guess we’d have to talk to their their customers and say, Do I think oh, I want to find out? Are they saying those phrases that’s gonna to hook them in?
Matt Inglot 32:53
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. That’s actually what I’m trying to find out. Because I don’t know where that button. So I’m gonna I don’t know if it’s a free offer. I don’t know if it’s a paid offer. And that’s I’m curious about says, so we’ve clicked on expats has become the artist you’ve always wanted to be. Okay, that’s cool. And it’s got a nice photo. The nice thing about a niche like drawing is they can make good art and make the website look pretty. So I always like that. Alright, so now we scroll down, it says learn from artists, we see. Okay. It might be losing me a little bit here. So we’ve gone from a lot of beauty and a lot of very simple messaging to the founder story, which isn’t bad on its own. But like suddenly, the text just became a lot more plain. It just felt kind of jarring. And just the way I look at it is I don’t want to read this wall of text. It’s not really grabbing me at all. So that that’s definitely a minus I would want to make sure that even if someone just scrolls for your sales page and doesn’t read everything that there is enough headlines and yeah, direction that you get what’s happening, even if you never get down into the nitty gritty,
Jeremy Weisz 34:08
right? Have some blind pop out maybe some imagery potentially here. Because at this point, I clicked it I go I just want to join the community. Right so um, I still am
Matt Inglot 34:24
yeah, we still don’t know what this is. Right? Which is to me like, again, a little bit confusing. And now it says after years of struggling alone, I finally established myself as a successful artists working at triple A games surrounded by other amazing artists and was loving it, I would find a way to work that much higher. Because if that’s the outcome that the audience is seeing, I think you could have put that way higher
Jeremy Weisz 34:48
with that. Like maybe it was before the founder story
Matt Inglot 34:51
exactly. And make me want to read that founder story because then I might read it even if it is a wall of text because you’re speaking to something I’m trying to do but there is disconnect, because we’re supposed to be joining this community. And now we’re talking about like the starving artists struggle and trying to get into the triple A. Alright. And finally, we’re at introducing the offer introducing pencil kings. Membership in the pencil kings community surrounds you with professional aspiring artists and gets you unlimited access to. So they have courses, live workshops, they have a lot of stuff. And then they get into some of the features. So they’re following. They’re following a general sales page formula that works. But I still feel a little uncomfortable from the homepage to the sales page. I didn’t realize I had to commit to buying something. And it does sound like that I have to I have to commit to $1 trial for three days, then 299 a year. So after having gone through all that, that’s probably the thing I’d be most curious about is how well is this converting from people coming from the homepage, assuming that’s even where they’re coming from, to this sales page? And are they signing up for that $1 trial, it’s possible that they’re absolutely killing it with it. But it’s also possible that they’re losing a lot of traffic to their site, because people have to whip out their credit card when they barely even know them. So it definitely experiment at least and see what can we do where we get their email address?
Jeremy Weisz 36:29
Yeah, that’s I was gonna say, because, um, I guess there’s two schools, they go right to the sales page with join the community, you know, would they have a free offer, like get a template or something, they can offer something like, get our face template that from, you know, from a Marvel comic and get an email like an opt in? Like, that will be alternative? Right?
Matt Inglot 36:52
Yeah, there, there are a lot of ways to spin it right, including, you could join the email list. And then after they sign up for the email list, on the next page, you could have some sort of limited time offer, right known as a tripwire. So like that dollar trial, could be there. So that way, you’ve got their email address, but for the people that are interested in signing up for a trial right away, you’ve got them, you can even change that button on the homepage, because that’s what you’re asking about this, this makes sense to say join the community and find success as an artist. That’s, that is kind of a wake up call to action is that really what people are trying to achieve? It doesn’t sounds like it doesn’t sound like it, like it sounds like they’re trying to become a better artist, not join the community. Right? And I’m kind of confused about where the community fits in versus where to courses fit in.
Jeremy Weisz 37:44
That’s a good one.
Matt Inglot 37:45
Like, what am I actually being sold here. And I think that’s where it might start falling apart a little bit. And again, this is probably a very successful site. So we’re not talking about a site that we’re just like, you know, kicking someone when they’re down, I think they’re doing pretty well. This is more like if, if we were looking at this and saying okay, what are some possible opportunities to make this even better? There’s an entire world of experimentation here where you’re, there’s very likely a better result hiding. Yeah, and I think with
Jeremy Weisz 38:19
any of this, it’s like it’s all a test right? And they probably tested a bunch of things and sometimes the ugliest sites we’ve seen perform the best so you just never know without looking at the metrics. So again, just not it not criticizing but just looking at it from the outside to see what else you know, what is kind of a just an observer coming in observing here so it does say in some of the benefits here are features classes there is a it looks like there’s a community here it looks like there’s for every skill level and then there is a trial but I am curious if it was tested to go to something specific vagrant opt in on and that like something like really pain point let’s say you know, talk to five customers and what’s the big pain point and give them that as like an opt in and then redirect them to the community page or the template in the community cage to capture the captured information right because how many people are going to go I mean it’s in anything I mean, the cart abandonment when someone you know in e-commerce in general someone puts in the shopping cart there’s a huge cart abandonment putting in the shopping cart, let alone having a page with the sales page, you know,
Matt Inglot 39:39
yeah, exactly. And now wiping out the credit card maybe that’s costing them sales maybe it’s not, but I would want to see that hard data because you know, yeah, like that’s that’s the cool thing about this is you can try so many different funnels. I do. I do like how it’s an annual membership. I think that again, spend two years Yeah, sticky. They were saying like they really promoted, they do have a monthly membership as well. And actually, if I were them, I would be considering making their yearly plan a bigger discount because they say you save 10% By signing up for a year like me one. I’m actually not sure that mouse correct, but I guess it would be no, I think it’s actually more than 10%. It is more than 10%. Yeah, yeah. So fix the math. But like, really, because annual plans are worth so much more than monthly, like I’d say discounted by 20, or even 30%. Right. Or you can even have a lot of fun and discounted by 40%, which just sounds like madness. But when you look into the data, and you realize how much more an annual subscribers worth on a monthly subscriber, you start to realize how much it makes sense to get oh, total annual.
Jeremy Weisz 40:52
I mean, if they did, again, they probably ran the metrics. But let’s say they’re on a monthly, right. They if people turn after four months, right? So that means it’s $120. So anything more than $120 could make sense for them. Right? If it’s 150 170, then why not just do that if you’re going to convert more people to a year plan?
Matt Inglot 41:17
Exactly. And that’s basically like a no brainer offer is what you’re trying to create, right? Where you sort of get them in the door with that monthly price. But like the annual is so low that you almost have to be crazy not to do it. Right.
Jeremy Weisz 41:31
I’ve been sucked into that all the time. I’m like, oh, boy, that annual or you know, or it’s like, the whole packet, like all the templates is, you know, 100, but one is 50. I’m like, What am I going to do? Right? They’ve already suckered me into buying all of them? Like, yes. Okay, I’ll just pay the $100.
Matt Inglot 41:51
Yeah, because you’d feel terrible. Like, just take the $50 one and then thinking, Oh, I could have gotten all this more for so much better. Like, we all want a good deal. Right? So a big one for them. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 42:02
So anyways, this is interesting. Again, like we never know the metrics. We don’t know the data they may have tested that, like you guys are totally wrong. We’ve tested that doesn’t work, but that it’s all a test. So that’s on pencil kings, and I pulled up the herbal Academy. Talk to talk me through this.
Matt Inglot 42:22
Yeah, and this is again, I have not looked at this site before so I’m kind of taking it in. So this appears to have something to do with herbal medicine, I guess or learning about herbs. That’s actually kind of my first thought. Is this like medical herbs or is this something that goes in my like spaghetti? Maybe people that are both you
Jeremy Weisz 42:45
you put the medical errors in the spaghetti
Matt Inglot 42:49
maybe you guys I see I don’t know I’d like rosemary or something in the background. I’m not sure. But I think
Jeremy Weisz 42:55
it’s legally Canada right.
Matt Inglot 43:00
Yeah, it is. So yeah, I I think people interested in this probably would connect with it more and know right away what this is, that’s not necessarily a strike against them. But yeah, I think this is more on the medical side. So pursue your herbal path by registering for a free program by becoming an herbalist courses back so this is interesting because they have a free offer right at the beginning of their website. So that’s probably very interesting and good. But there are a lot more vague about what you’re going to get out of it and when you compare it to like pencil things like yes, we pointed out issues where they could improve their offer, but I really don’t know what pursuing my herbal path means I really don’t know what this free program is. I don’t know what I’m going to get healing
Jeremy Weisz 43:46
your wife through herbs in the spaghetti that’s what it is no so we see this thing here are for barbarians barium I’m not sure very
Matt Inglot 43:57
I think so. Yeah. Okay. All right. So now that’s their membership. So want to study ARVs at an affordable price at $45 a year great addition, and you can visit it so they’re pitching the course. It says it they pitch it as the best membership for herbalists so and they need to have some social proof they show owl and us or is it Us Weekly or SP I think? I don’t know I don’t really need to brush up on my tabloids flow. First for women, Willow and sage. So like they’re they’re showing social proof. That’s awesome. But I still don’t get like a really big promise off of this website that’s missing from Yeah, it’s hard
Jeremy Weisz 44:36
to be like, let’s say you want to I mean, like let’s say you talk to like you going back to your advices talk to five or 10 customers, let’s say they did this because they want to help heal their sick relative. Right? And so we don’t know what the pain point is. Why do they why do they want to be an herbalist right? I don’t know. Exactly.
Matt Inglot 44:54
And and who are they? Is this someone that wants to be an herbalist professionally As someone babbling for the first time, there’s different segments of the market always. And you want to make sure people can identify with your messaging. And because we’re being being very vague on this website, I think we lose a lot of people who have a much stronger idea of what they want to learn and how and why. And none of us is communicating to them. Like for
Jeremy Weisz 45:24
me, like Matt, if they sold this to me, right, I love juicing, okay. And so if they said, you know, learn how to create the best immunity boosting, you know, juices you can through this course, you know, I may not even be their target market, but I’m just saying that speaks to me, like, oh, cool, I’m gonna sign up for this and see what I should be doing in my juicing. And who knows, I don’t know if that’s why they’re their customers are buying the free offer, like you said, the the free mini course, or what is the pain point that these people are trying to solve? You know,
Matt Inglot 45:59
right. And you mentioned immunity boosting just in case people didn’t quite catch that. That’s so key. It’s not just a juicing course, like it’s targeting, specifically, juicing as an immunity boosting,
Jeremy Weisz 46:12
especially during COVID, or whatever you want. I mean, like, because I see, you know, I do a lot of juicing with lemon, ginger, turmeric, and I just, that’s what reminded me because I see a lemon in the background of this picture, if you’re watching it, and how do I, you know, help with my immunity, my family’s immunity, and I see this big root cause I you know, the lemon, ginger, turmeric, lime juice, it’s got, you know, a lot of ginger in it. Ginger root, you know, so, yeah,
Matt Inglot 46:38
exactly. And that’s what we’re missing on this entire homepage, I don’t see a single benefit of why I should learn herbs, what herbs will do for me, we’re just missing that. And again, that doesn’t mean the business isn’t successful, they might be very successful. But I suspect if they focus that offer and make it more explicit, and like you said, like, actually take the time to really speak to their customers, there’s probably all sorts of opportunity to improve the conversion on that page and get more people wanting to look at those courses. And wanting to join the free course the fact that they have that free resource, front and center. I do love that, that makes me super happy. There’s there’s a, you’re scrolling and this, this homepage does go on for a very long time, it seems. Which also kind of makes me wonder because now we’re seeing other things like we’re seeing a video we’re seeing a sale, we’re seeing a lot of products. And now I’m actually getting a sense of overwhelmed. Which is another thing I tackle where like it’s so tempting to put everything in anything in front of someone’s face, hoping that something is going to be the right fit for them. But how often do we scroll to the bottom of a website? How often do we browse through like 20 different options, and then pick one, right? If you if I give you 20 options, that all sound like learning about herbs, there’s a chance that your solution will be to buy none of them and find somewhere else. So there is a danger of giving people too much choice as well. Totally.
Jeremy Weisz 48:11
I mean, I remember I interviewed Joe Sugarman, who started blue blockers, and he has a lot of direct response that he created, I think one was with watches, and he like offered six or seven different colors of watches. And then he just offered two and the one with two obviously, way out converted the the number of options because people are overwhelmed with the choices. I want to click on this to see what happens. Yeah, your take on this. So we in the top. Like you said it’s good. They have a free program offer right? And they’ve learned more than you know, you’re thinking maybe the include more details on why when I click on this, it gives someone more of a reason to do it. But so here’s what we get when we click on that free offer.
Matt Inglot 48:55
All right, so we got a page that looks like basically, I guess a store catalog. It’s a catalog of courses. So we have a becoming an herbalist mini course and it’s wonderful. It gives you this whole big description of what the course does. The copy says it’s from $0. So it’s free. Now it looks like I have to choose an option to sign up for it, I have to sign up the free course or course of printed planner. I assume the printed planner might cost me money. Maybe that’s why it’s from $0 and $40 with the $30 to the planner, so it’s kind of kind of an upsell, but okay, I’d say free course. And then let’s click Sign up now. Oh boy,
Jeremy Weisz 49:38
I’m just looking at the description here for a second. Yeah,
Matt Inglot 49:40
so this is huge. It basically built an entire sales page for a free course. It’s nice but it could really be backfiring on them because you don’t need to whip out your credit card here. So if you spend too much time selling me on this thing, instead of just giving me the Answer the solution. You’re just gonna lose me, right? Like you have to provide enough info that people want to give you their email. And oh, and this is again where we get into trouble. So Jeremy, just click Sign up now. Yeah, we basically got to checkout page even though it’s a free sign up. So clearly they’re leveraging their membership platform to do their free signups as well. So it’s actually I’m glad you brought this one up, Jeremy, because it’s a great example of what not to do. Because if you want this free course, you have to fill out a pretty intense looking form. And it’s a checkout for something
Jeremy Weisz 50:36
like why do I need my address for this free mini course? Yeah, you don’t
Matt Inglot 50:40
need my address, and you don’t need, you know, whatever else it’s collecting there. And you’re making me come up with a username and password and all this stuff. All of it should be one field, my email address. And that’s it. And you should be collecting that email as quickly as possible, because it’s in your best interest to get people into that store as quickly as possible. And I suspect this is a tech issue. I suspect that this was probably a really quick way for them to get this up and running. We see that a lot. But in terms of conversions, it’s probably hurting them a lot. Because you just have to go through so much to end up in this free course. Now, you could argue, okay, maybe the people that joined this course, I think shipping
Jeremy Weisz 51:23
our course. Okay, because it says like due to increased demand due to COVID shipping timeframes a bit extended. So I imagine this is this is a digital scoring
Matt Inglot 51:32
domain checkout. And that’s all I got. Right? Gotcha. And, and they do have that printed planner as an option. But what I would do is I would just get people to give me their email address, give them access to the course, ideally with as little fuss as possible. And then let’s say they’re making money on this printed planner, they want to send people that printed planner, you could do an upsell. So just like we were talking about much earlier in the conversation, you could have an offer, as soon as they’ve entered into your email, you fill it out,
Jeremy Weisz 52:02
you hit checkout, and then it redirects them to the planner or wherever.
Matt Inglot 52:08
Exactly, yeah, that’s commonly known as a tripwire offer something really low cost.
Jeremy Weisz 52:13
I mean, listen, like the airline’s do it all the time. They like redirect me like three different. Do you want to upgrade your seat? Do you want this is like, okay, no, no, no. But you know, even with GoDaddy, you’re on your seat. Right, exactly. So, I mean, lots of companies, I mean, mainstream and mainstream companies do it. And they give you options to upgrade, right?
Matt Inglot 52:38
Yeah, exactly. And, and it’s smart, because they like to close the sale, don’t make it too confusing, especially if you’re doing something free, and then worry about this other stuff. And yes, that makes your tack a little bit more complicated, because you’re not just going to be able to leverage your checkout system. But it does hurt me thinking about all the leads we’re losing. Because we’ve put up so many different walls and barriers to get people into this free course. And that also means there’s tons of people that even if they never become our customers, we’ve just stolen that value away from them, right? Because there, we could have been sharing all of this knowledge further and wider and having a bigger impact on people. If we made it easier to access. So there’s that as well. It’s not always just the money. It’s like you just want to get the stuff out there as well. And this is a barrier to that.
Jeremy Weisz 53:29
You know, I mean, I can see anytime that you can reduce friction is good. I don’t know if you have time, Matt for the next one. Or not. But good for as long as you are. Okay, one more pulled up here, which is we’re looking at the lighter side of real estate.com.
Matt Inglot 53:46
And I mean, sure to its name, I mean, I kind of chuckled as soon as I saw the website. It’s got this like, kind of fun, artsy, cartoony vibe. I gotta say, I’m not the biggest fan of cartoons versus photos of real people. But I think they’re, they’re probably making it work. And it’s like very artistically done. But what I really love about this is as soon as you open in the very first headline, nice big headline, by the way, is become the most memorable agent in town. And then it says the average person knows 417 Real estate agents will help you become the one they think of first, although then it says made up back probably not far off. kind of goofy about it. And obviously if they’re calling themselves lighter side of real estate, then I get it. And it’s got a nice Get Started button just $39 a month cancel anytime. So, so far, so good, right? It’s a paid offer, but real estate,
Jeremy Weisz 54:45
they’re probably hitting the pain point of their market. I mean, that’s what it seems like I’m not an agent, but I could see how that would be a pain point for sure. Yeah,
Matt Inglot 54:52
I’m sure it’s a huge pain point. And definitely now we’re talking now we’re really speaking to a business. Right like it people sign up for this, they’re going to hopefully get a return on investment. So, you know, having a paid offer there. It’s not the worst thing in the world, it probably does really well for them. And as you kind of scroll down it, I guess, I think explains the process of how you become an agent that stands out. Or how at least how it works if their platform I think it’s how it works if their platform Yeah, so it’s got a three step process, and then get started. So I think they’re doing some sort of content marketing for agents, or some sort of content marketing library for agents. Now, the problem for me is this, this has gone so far in the direction of speaking to the client’s problem that I actually don’t know what I’m getting so far. And we’re like, 1/3 of the way down the page. So yeah, I think I have to focus my brain if I want to understand what this does. So there’s some tweaking to do there. They’ve helped 1000s of agents from top brands. So that’s great. Everything’s really well professionally designed. Yeah, it’s it’s clearly a sales page, though. And that’s all it is. There’s so far we haven’t really scrolled through anything that’s not just selling the membership. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Jeremy Weisz 56:23
The cyanide content or something? Or what, what are you thinking?
Matt Inglot 56:28
Let’s say, I’m not sold on giving you $39 A month after having been on your website for five minutes, and you bounce, then a bounce? So there’s no, there’s no downsells to something else, right? Where, like, it’s great to get that offer at the top and again, become the most memorable agent. And it’s so good. I love that. I don’t love that. If I’m not interested in that offer, then my only option is to leave the site. Yeah, where to put it Oh, email, there’s not real, I don’t think we even saw any articles or anything that we can click on. There’s nothing that’s going to educate me more on what this is. There’s no video, even a video would do really well here because there was that three step process, but like, how many people are gonna read it right? And, like, understand it, right? Because people can read it, but doesn’t mean they’re gonna understand it and follow what you’re doing. And then how familiar are real estate agents with what you’re providing. And this is going to be a new concept to this to a lot of this audience. If you’re making too many assumptions about what they know already, then you might be losing them. Because as I said, I actually don’t know what you’re selling. And I think to do that, I’d actually have to like pause and read this page. And then I’d probably be able to tell you, yeah, it’s either. It’s something to do with real estate agents and content, but I don’t know 100%. Now, yeah. So again, there’s room for improvement there,
Jeremy Weisz 57:55
I think is a good point. Because like, you could have a some kind of box and get started next to it and just say, you know, get our, you know, I noticed below here, there’s like, they have agent scripts, video training vendor deals, I don’t know what if they talked to their customers, and like, Oh, I just want this one agent script. And they could offer something right next to it with or opt in and get the number one phone script that agents across America, you know, some kind of opt in, right? Is what you’re saying? Like give them an option, a free option, they can opt in for it, get some value, and then now you have their email, you can form a relationship with them, something like that.
Matt Inglot 58:35
Yeah, exactly. I think that’s just completely missing here. You also want to look at how people are coming to their site, a lot of membership sites, people are coming largely from online sources, right. Oftentimes, it’s Google that’s doing the heavy lifting of bringing in the traffic’s. So they probably have a lot of content published and people are probably landing on that content page, or one of their content pages first. So it does look like they for example, have a blog, you’ve got that pulled up right now. We could click on a specific blog article.
Jeremy Weisz 59:14
Let’s save the secret could Kardashian formula every real estate agent needs to learn Alright, well show that
Matt Inglot 59:19
like that. I’m actually not not the biggest fan of their blog thumbnails. I’m sure Kim is you know, grabs eyeballs, but like the thumbnails are kind of all over the place. But then we do have an article and you’re scrolling through the article. I don’t see too many images in the article itself. We finally came to one and I also don’t see you’re about halfway down the page. I don’t see anything yet that I can click on to learn more like put in my email address and like interact a few so unless I get Yeah, unless I get through the to the very bottom of this article. There’s not a single real Call to action to do something for free. And then what is at the bottom? Is there something for free you you don’t something? Oh, hey,
Jeremy Weisz 1:00:09
I think it is paid there says click here to get started. And then there’s also learn more. And I yeah, I’m imagining, I didn’t click on the I’m going to compare it to the get started here, the $30 to see the same thing or not. Now this is a chance
Matt Inglot 1:00:29
to check out so so so that’s very quick, you go to the homepage, and boom, you go to the checkout page. So if that homepage didn’t share with me, what I’m getting from this product that’s at the checkout itself is really nice, like everything about the site is aesthetically pleasing. But it’s just it’s missing some stops. And then
Jeremy Weisz 1:00:51
here’s what I clicked on the blog article. So this is a pop up, actually.
Matt Inglot 1:00:56
Okay, so finally, there’s a way to enter your email address and get their entire collection of Facebook covers for free. So it looks like they’re providing like media assets for real estate agents. I picked that up like like stock photos, memes, they specifically advertise like memes. And like here, it’s Facebook banners and things like that. So that’s cool. I could see
Jeremy Weisz 1:01:22
really extra that but but you’re saying they could offer that option somewhere on the homepage? Yeah,
Matt Inglot 1:01:27
absolutely. Or even if you don’t want to do it on your homepage, let’s see most of your traffic comes in through your blog, don’t leave it as a pop up. Right, like give me give me other ways that I can enter my email address, especially because that article is really long, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s probably helping them rank, but we just, we’re probably losing traffic left and right. And wouldn’t surprise me if they do well, from referrals from real estate agents, right? One real estate agent tells another about Yes. And they might be growing that way. If you’re coming to it cold turkey from a cold or just cold from the Google, you might just be like, Okay, what is this? And you might leave? Yeah, because it’s very nicely designed. But the messaging is very confusing.
Jeremy Weisz 1:02:17
Very cool. I love it, man. First of all, thank you. Thanks for sharing your expertise, your stories. And I think you know, no matter what business you’re in, you know, I think we can all use a refresh and thinking deeply about our customers and our website in the customer journey and everything like that. So I just want to be the first one to thank you. I think everyone should check out tilted pixel.com to learn more. Are there any other places online that we should point people towards?
Matt Inglot 1:02:46
Yeah, if you want to jump in and start learning how to improve your membership site, I’d suggest going to tiltedpixel.com/course There you will find the opportunity to put in your email address and just get a wealth of information about where you would want to start with improving your membership site. So it’s things that you can implement yourself and it’s things that we also think about when someone hires us and says, Okay, well let’s do analysis of our website and figure out where where the weak points are where we’re probably losing sales. How can we continue to grow these things these are areas that we look at as well we just look at them extremely extensively and again, we we get a little obsessive about it so we want to do surveys we want to talk to customers there’s a lot we want to do but you can get the basic formula for free just by going to Tilted Pixel comm slash course.
Jeremy Weisz 1:03:45
Check it out, check out more check out more episodes of inspiredinsider.com and Matt thank you so much.
Matt Inglot 1:03:52
Thanks so much Jeremy. It’s been great fun being on your show. Always.
