In this episode of Subscription Box Basics, Julie Ball discusses the essential elements that your subscription box website needs to convert visitors into customers. She emphasizes the importance of having a professional website and covers five key components: offering an incentive, clear call-to-action, professional photos, social proof, and ways to collect email addresses. Julie also suggests using accountability partners to get feedback on your website and offers resources for further learning. Tune in to ensure your website is optimized for maximum sales conversion.
In this episode of Subscription Box Basics, Julie Ball discusses the essential elements that your subscription box website needs to convert visitors into customers. She emphasizes the importance of having a professional website and covers five key components: offering an incentive, clear call-to-action, professional photos, social proof, and ways to collect email addresses. Julie also suggests using accountability partners to get feedback on your website and offers resources for further learning. Tune in to ensure your website is optimized for maximum sales conversion.
So you want to launch a subscription box and don't know where to start, girl, you are in the right place. I'm Julie ball and I'm Renee Gonzalez, your host here at subscription box basics, a podcast for new and aspiring subscription box entrepreneurs wanting to avoid overwhelm. So grab a coffee, some pen and paper, and let's have some fun. Hey everybody. And welcome back to subscription box basics. I'm Julie Ball, your head coach. And today I'm rolling solo and we're talking about websites. Guys websites are so important. Because they are the first impression with your brand and with your product. Now I'm going to first off say if this is something that you are going to D I Y. That can be risky. I know we can get a little scrappy as entrepreneurs, especially when the budget might be tight. But if there is any one place where you may want to outsource, let it be your website. You do not want to have an amateur website because it is going to drastically affect your sales. So today we're going to talk about websites and I'm going to focus on five things that are going to help you convert better. What I mean, when I say convert is when someone comes to your website. Do they ultimately convert to a customer? Do they press add to cart and go through checkout? So the higher your conversion rate, the better your website performs. And so I'm going to talk about five things today that I want to make sure you have on your website to help you convert visitors into customers. But this is not an all-inclusive list. There are so many things you need to have for your website. Things like. Is it mobile friendly because so many people are going to be visiting it on their cell phone. Does it have professional imagery? Does it have great copywriting? Does it have the actual legal things that you need, like the privacy policy and terms of use, accessibility and all those things. We're not going to talk about the full list. But grab your pen and paper, because I'm gonna talk about five things right now that you definitely need to have. And I want you to go check your website to revisit what your website looks like, does it have these things or grab an accountability buddy, and look at their website while they look at yours, that way you have an outsider's perspective on how could I improve my website because you want more sales, right? So let's dive in first things first, before we even go through my list of five things. You need to make sure that your website is professional, that it doesn't look like you just pieced it together. You need to make sure that people can see immediately what you're offering them, what your subscription box is. They need to know within seconds that you are a subscription box for X, Y, Z. I remember, man. It was probably like, 15 years ago when I was doing website design and development. I read a book called don't make me think by Steve Krug and. It was all about website usability. And one of the things that really stuck with me was the whole concept of the book of don't make me think, like when I get to your website, I need to know immediately what it is, you offer. So first of all, put that in your back pocket and don't make me think if I'm going to come to your website. All right now, to my list of five things, we're going to kind of go through these quickly. So jot them down and then head over to your website and see if you have them. Number one and offer. We've talked a lot about offers this year. I feel like we're in an economy where you can't just have a product out there, you have to give people an offer. An example of an offer would be a gift with purchase. That's my favorite. So maybe you're giving them something in addition to the actual subscription box they're going to receive, maybe you're giving them some sort of discount or maybe you're giving them some sort of extra thing, whether that is a product, a service, a experience, a discount, something to really convert them, make them go from Hmm. I'm thinking about buying to add to cart and converting. So do you have an offer? Beyond just saying, this is my subscription box, please subscribe. Do you have an offer? If not put it on your to-do list to brainstorm some offers. And if you go back in our podcast archives, we talked about this multiple times. So I will in the show notes link a couple of episodes where we discuss offers. Number two. Do you have a clear call to action? Another thing from that book that I read, what don't make me think was. Tell people what to do. You're going to get your desired response if you actually tell them what to do. An example of that in a call to action is. On a button subscribe today. Maybe you don't want to use the word subscribe because your customers might not like that word so much. Maybe it's joined today. And roll today. You know, tell them what to do with a clear call to action. Make sure you have that multiple places on your website, especially in the hero, which is that top, most section of your website, where they're going to land on and not have to scroll to get to. You want to make sure you have a call to action above the fold. That's kind of a outdated term, but you understand what I'm saying? They the above the fold section is think of like old school newspapers, whatever was above the fold was what was going to really catch people's attention. So on a website above the fold just means before you have to scroll. Make sure that you have a call to action above the fold. Number three. Photos. not just any photos, but you need to have professional photos. If you need some professional photos, we have some recommendations. I'll make sure to put them in the show notes. We love Becca bond from subscription box photography. And we also like Suna. If you don't have the budget for professional photography, that's okay. You can absolutely do some professional photographs on your cell phone. You just need to have some good light, maybe go buy some poster board. So you have a clean white background and play around with it. There's tons of free tutorials on YouTube that you can look at to get some great tips. It's actually easier than you think. But if you don't have that IFR design, again, this might be a place where you want to outsource and send to a professional photographer. So you want to make sure that you have photos of the actual box. Some of the packaging, they can see what they're going to get in the mail. You definitely want to have some photos of sample products. Now you could do that where it's an unboxing photo. And that just means that the box is open and the sample products are displayed sort of coming. Coming out of that box. Or you can do a flat lay of it where it, you have your products neatly laid out flat so you can see all of them. You can drop that type of photo in Canva and even add some text on top. We had one of those photos where I pointed to the different products and it would call out with text what the category was. So for example, I had a stationary category in my former box. And so I put a little arrow pointing to the journal and I wrote stationary. Another category I had was book. And so I put a sample book in there and using Canva. I put the text book with a little arrow pointing to it. So you can really make some great visuals with a flat lay photo. And the last photo that you want to consider is putting people in there. People experiencing the box. People exuding the emotion that your box is going to make them feel. Maybe it's, if you have a box for pets, then absolutely put pets and the box in there, making sure that whoever is the user of the products from the box, you can see them in that photo. Next on your website. I want to make sure that you have social proof, so that can be in the form of testimonials. That can be in the form of reviews or even as seen in. So if you have any media features, you can include that as part of your social proof. It is been shown to have a tremendous impact on the buying habits of people when they see social proof. Sometimes when people have a ton of buying decisions. They don't know which option to choose. That can lead into analysis paralysis where you're like overthinking it, and then you don't even take action as a consumer. So reading reviews and testimonials, they can help push people towards your product over another product. Or once they're on your website, it can push them towards that final buying decision. It's really going to make an impact. When you think about your own habits, when someone tells you how great a new restaurant is, doesn't that make you want to go try that new restaurant? Same concept. So make sure that you are collecting reviews and testimonials, and it's super simple to ask for them. A lot of times people don't post review unless they're upset about something. So make sure you're proactively asking for reviews. An easy way to do this is to send an automated email about 10 days after you've shipped your box. By that time it should have arrived and the consumer should have already been able to open it and experience it. And in that email, you could just send it as a followup and say, if you loved your box, we'd love to hear about it. Here's where you can leave a review and then you can link it to Facebook reviews or you're an online platform where you're collecting reviews, maybe Trustpilot or something like that. And then, oh, that same email. You can also do some proactive customer service and say if there was something missing or wrong with your box would love a chance to make it up to you, click reply and let us know how we can help. That way, you are asking them to come to you first, instead of.Going to social media, if they had a bad experience and you can really, really do some great customer service through those types of emails. Lastly, number five, you want a way to collect emails. Not everyone that comes to your website is going to be an immediate buyer. So, you know, like the story from the tortoise and the Hare. So think of your buyers like that. Some of them are going to be the tortoise and they're just going to run quick and they're going to make their quick buying decision. And that's great for a business owner like us, but some are going to be like the hair and they're gonna take their time. Now you need to nurture them. But if they get to your website, You don't want them to forget about you? So, one thing that you can do is build your email list by collecting their email address when they hit your website. There's so many different ways to do this, whether it's a pop-up or maybe you have a lead magnet A lead magnet is something that you were going to give them for free in exchange for their email address, like a PDF download. Maybe it's a coupon. Maybe it is. A recipe or a printable planner, something like that, whatever would draw your customer in. Whatever's going to help them along the way and show that you are a value. You can ask them for their email address in exchange for that. So you can use your email marketing service provider. For example, maybe it's MailChimp, maybe it's flow desk. You can create a form that you can embed on your website or create as a pop-up. No, we're not going to dive too deep on building your email list and how to collect those emails because that's a much larger topic. And every email marketing service provider is slightly different. But all you need to do is build a form promote that and when people come to your website, you can gather their email address. Now, once you gather their email address, Don't give them radio silence. You want to make sure that you are nurturing them by sending them emails. Inviting them back to your website with special offers and gift with purchase, you know, make them want to come back to your website because they've got to get to your website in order for them to convert. So be of value and continue to tell them what to do, like visit our website. Subscribe today. Join today and get this gift. But I just want to emphasize that an email list is going to be one of your most valuable marketing assets. It's going to convert more than social media. It's going to convert more than events. It's going to convert more than anything. And if you need someone to teach you about email list building, we highly recommend Amy Porterfield's program. She's got a program called list building society, and I will include the link in the show notes. It's a great place to learn from someone who really has perfected the art of email lists. Be sure to check the show notes for that. Now I know this was a really quick episode and now you probably have a small to-do list for your website. But it is really important that you have these things on your website in order to convert. So let's do a quick recap. Number one. An offer for your product, something like a gift with purchase or a discount. Number two, a clear call to action multiple times on your website. Number three compelling and professional looking photos of the box of products, of people experiencing your box, number four, social proof, things like reviews and testimonials, and number five, a way to collect emails to build that email list for marketing. Now it's time for you to take action, go to your website and see if you have these things. Or like I said, better yet. Grab an accountability, a box bestie and say, I would love to review your website. Will you review mine? It's such a great way to get a second set of eyes on there that knows what to look for. I hope you found this episode to be incredibly helpful. I want to see you get more sales. I want to make sure you are converting the people that you get to your website. Now. Make sure. Once you've gone through this list, you have all these things. Your step two of this would be to drive more traffic to your website. And that's a whole other podcast episode topic. So hopefully I'll be able to cover that in the future. Thanks for listening today. And we'll see you in the next episode. Bye.