How To Increase Your Conversions By Optimizing Your Checkout With Dama Jue

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Diane: Hey, Hey, today's guest Dama Jue is a funnel strategist who helps business owners build profitable and impactful online presence through funnels, automation, trainings, and templates, and one set of her templates sparked a conversation. About designing for conversion, but not on your sales page because that's where you'd expect it. But on the checkout page, hands up, if you also have boring checkout pages, Hey, Dama. Welcome to the show. [00:00:24] Dama: Hey, happy to be here. [00:00:26] Diane: let's kick things off with a quick intro to you and your business. [00:00:30] Dama: Sure. Yeah. I am an accountant by trade. I was bored forever bored as an accountant. And then my husband and I quit our corporate jobs moved abroad and started I, while I was there. We were volunteering. That was why we moved to central America, but while we were there, I wanted to stay longer. And I started looking for online. Side hustles work from home led me to Pinterest. From that, I started an online marketing business consultancy business with Pinterest organic, and then branching into ads, which I still do. I don't do organic so much anymore because I can't keep up. And then all that, once you start looking at ads, it's all about numbers, numbers, numbers, what's converting. And that really got me interested in. Webinar funnels, sales page, email funnels, evergreen funnels, summit funnels, all of it. And that's where it brought me today and where I get excited, because I just there's so much to learn so much to tweak. And I just love testing and seeing what. [00:01:27] Diane: and it actually kind of Hawks back. Your accounting numbers, spreadsheets, so of the accounting time was really wasted. [00:01:35] Dama: oh, a hundred percent. I just get to be more creative. Creative accounting is a bad thing, especially right. If you're I worked for a school district. And so can't be creative. You can't even add a little flare. No idea. And what I love about what I do now is yeah, I look at data and I'm still a data nerd that is never, ever gonna go away, but I get to take action on it and, and interpret the data and look beyond the numbers. And that's what, where I get excited. So yeah, a hundred percent accountant background still under the surface, it's just like an accountant's gone wild. [00:02:10] Diane: Yeah. So I can't decide if I'm excited about your templates for my thrive cart checkout that I have, or whether I'm kind of annoyed with you because for ages it's felt like we have all as an industry on the online space. Agreed. To have fairly ugly or just basic checkout pages, beautiful sales pages, but just utilitarian checkouts. And I feel like now you're coming along and being like, no, no, no, Diane, you need to care about checkout design as well. So tell me when. [00:02:45] Dama: Yeah. So as a funnel strategist, I have had my hands in a lot of funnels and every different kind. You can imagine the low ticket thing with the million upsells, the evergreen webinar, high ticket group, coaching summits, paid summits. Like I've had my hands in, all of them. And I started noticing a few things. And this one is the first thing that jumped out at me is not revolutionary. Right. Sales are going to be highest on your day one on your first day and your last day, right. Day one is because it's the most excited. Everyone's like, they'd been waiting for this though. Your wait-listers they're your buy everything. Diane has people and that's. And then the last day, because the FOMO has kicked in all of the subtle reminders and your marketing efforts are paying off all the emails, the reminders, the ads, the social media posts, the ID stories, the live streams, all of that has paid off. And now you've like, okay, they've worn me down. I'm going to buy it. And then the procrastinators who were in the whole time, but just get a cheap thrill off of waiting from, for the last minute I'm included in that guilty as charged. I'm a procrastinator. Yeah. When you look at your sales at the end of the launch, I noticed that it's always an inverted bell curve, right? It's like a wide you sales in the beginning, and then a lot at the end. And I started paying attention to what comes in at the end. And that last day can be as much as 50% of your total. If you were going to sell a hundred seats of your course, 50 of them are coming in the last day. And I noticed this across industries across. Models and formats and funnel types. It just kept seeing it again and again and again. And so I started thinking about one, how can we optimize for the middle, but more importantly, how can we even be, can we just kill it even stronger on that last day? And what are we missing? And what I noticed is, as I did funnel designs myself, yes, I've designed. I've also hired out the design is that people care about the sales page. They're happy to spend a thousand, $2,005,000 on a really beautiful sales page and they care about the Instagram graphics and they care about everything being branded AAF, except the. And I kept seeing if you ha, if you're a Thrivecart user already, you know, when you go to create a checkout, it's like this standard, teal green color, do you know how many checkouts Diane I've seen with that teal green color? And I'm like, Ooh, missed opportunity. That's not your brand color. Oops, missed opportunity. And I just, I started noticing this is a place where pretty much everybody, not everybody, but a lot of people are dropping the ball and they're even funnel. They're waiting all their effort, their energy to the checkout page. I mean, to the sales page and throwing almost no effort into the checkout. Very, very little, but I started thinking about how we could optimize that. And then I also started thinking about something that I'm guilty of and it's tub parking. Have you ever heard that phrase before? [00:05:53] Diane: Not from anyone, but you. [00:05:54] Dama: Okay, good. Because it's because I'm pretty sure I made it up. That I just keep worrying someday. Someone's going to like, yes, I invented that. I patented it. You owe me $8 million anyway. [00:06:05] Diane: Start putting your TM next to it. Every [00:06:07] Dama: TM is done as of today. Okay. Yes. Good idea. So I had this concept that came to me and I was probably out for a drive where I do this. How many of us have at least five tabs open at any given time 25, a hundred. I'll admit I am a chronic tab boarder. I always in my corporate life and in my personal life was like, oh, too many tabs. I used to make fun of my husband for it until I became a digital entrepreneur and online business owner. And now every thought I have essentially is a tab and I can have a hundred open at any given time. That's probably giving you chest pains, but it's my normal. But how I use all those tabs is I just leave things open in a tab for when I want to come back to it. It's sometimes I go through usually on Fridays and call my tabs and I'm like, what's in here. What is all this? You know, if I don't recognize the favicon, especially, I'm like, what's this trash, you know? And so I started noticing this opportunity in optimizing checkouts for conversion, but then also in my own personal behavior. And. That we have all these tabs open. We kind of don't know what's opening what's going on in them. And it all kind of crystallized in, I often will read the sales page, frankly, I'll skim it. And I think most of us do, we'll skim the sales page. If it's something that I'm like, y'all come back, I'm going to buy this, but probably not. Now I'm going to buy it Friday because it's the work week. It's Tuesday. I'm not doing this. I'll leave it open in a tab. And later when I come back to clear my tabs or I'm looking for that thing, oh, I have to buy Diane's thing. Cart closes today. I can't find it because it's this nondescript thing in a sea of tabs. And I know I'm not the only one that does this, where we have hundreds of tabs or dozens of tabs, and we kind of forget, what's what I've also come back to Blake checkouts. I was looking at it. Two weeks ago, beautifully designed sales page. Lots of good offers. I had clicked add to like purchase. It took me to a generic Thrivecart sales page with the standard Tio green, no bullet points, no nothing on it. And I was like, yeah, no, I don't even know what this says. Later when I came to the tab, I closed it because I couldn't remember what it was. And it was a very generic, generic name. Scale the scale package or something or whatever. So not very specific. So by having a beautiful checkout page, not only are you clenching that sale, helping people get crossed that finish line of like, do I want this thing? I'm going to come back to it. Do I, even if they're not coming back to it, but are you helping them cross that finish line? also if they have kind of left it open and. Do they even know what it is when they look at it. 20 minutes later, I might walk downstairs to get a glass of water and come back and land on that tab again and not know what the heck this checkouts for. So I just started noticing this all kind of crystallized in we're all falling short we're we're leaving money on the table by not optimizing our. [00:09:16] Diane: So what are the key elements? Of. Well-designed checkout page, [00:09:20] Dama: yes. Okay. [00:09:21] Diane: caught or not. Right? [00:09:23] Dama: Yes. It could be anything you're right. It doesn't have to be Thrivecart because pretty much any checkout, unless it's something really, really basic, like maybe send out, you can customize it. So for sure, the offer name loud and clear, and this is important, like typography and your hierarchy. It should not be in the same 12 point font as the rest of your here's your name. And here's the, you know, like all the other necessary parts. Have your checkout, your name should be the offer name should be loud and clear, make it jump out, make it the first thing that they see on the page, because they might not know what it is. If they've come back to it the price and the payment plan options. And this is another option the other time where I see like, yes, it's 4, 9, 7, they click this and it's 97, but what does that payment plan mean in real English? So I like to add that to my check. And I add payment plans. If the product is, you know, more of an, a couple of hundred dollars and then another big thing is making sure your checkout is mobile optimized. It needs to look good on phones. Cause when you're a data nerd and you look at the numbers, most transactions, 75% or more sometimes are happening on the phone. So. Does it, is it mobile optimized? Does it look good on, on the phone? Is everything jumping out where you need it to be so loud and clear the offer name? I like it in a bigger or bolder font. If you can, your, your price and your payment plan options, try and use real English there or what your language is and make sure it's mobile optimized. So those are the absolute barriers. [00:10:53] Diane: Okay. And then a. Design perspective. Are we adding images? All we tweaking fonts. Are we just changing to brand colors? I mean, even I know how to change to my brand colors and thrive God. [00:11:06] Dama: Yeah. So once you've made sure the offer name and the price are very clear. Good on mobile. Then I like to add one to three, trying to go crazy here, conversion boosters. And those are things like you mentioned an image, so a product mockup, visual reminders, always help, never about idea to have that. And if you can add out texts for those who are visually impaired one or two. Snappy testimonials do not put a big paragraph. Even if your client has written a gushing novel about how great your thing is. No one's going to read it. We're all skimming. So one, maybe two sentences, keep them very short and snappy and skimmable. And I like to use bold and underline and I Tallix to make the things that are most effective. Jump out. You could also add a clear summary of what's included bullet points again, try and keep this to one sentence. Each two, if they're little sentences really skimmable. And again, you can use bolding and underlining and italics with some restraint to make the biggest points jumped out. And then if you have a bonus, you can shout that out. And another option is a countdown timer. So I would not necessarily have all of those on a checkout page. I would pick one or two. So if it's something like, for example, one of my highest converting short form checkout templates has the, mock-up the name? Front and center and to snappy testimonials, like there, one sentence DAMA has, or these templates have really simple. And I included my customer's face on them because they gave me permission and that just makes it a little bit more real. But that's it. I don't have countdown timers. I don't have a huge long list of bonus benefits. This, that it's pretty simple and yet not having it was hurting. Sometimes we don't, most of the time we don't read sales pages, I don't really sit and read testimonials personally. I don't read the majority of the sales stage I skim and most other folks do. And they're going to skim your checkout as well. So when there's less info on the page, they're going to be inclined to read it. So there's that fine line, right? You don't want to add too much, but bare an empty checkout. Also can be hurting you. So it's a fine line of adding. I like to call them one or two conversion boosters. Yeah. And you mentioned colors. I can chat a little bit about that too. I often see pages or checkouts where like, if your brand color is purple, like everything's purple Evan's purple. The font is the same color purple. And this is that the boxes and the backgrounds and the, this and the that. I really liked buttons to be a contrasting. So if everything's purple, make your yellow or make it something else that's gonna stand out. Because I see sometimes the color being a singular color, being overused too much, and you really want your button to be a unique, your boldest color, and really be the only thing on the page. When you have multiple buttons on a sales page or just the one on your chest. The, it needs to be front and center clear. This is what I push when it's time to when it's time to buy. And I like to add a little copy, like, heck yes, send me my ebook. Or like I'm in, you know, that kind of thing purchase now or whatever. So I like to add sometimes like snappy copy on the button too, but when it comes to color, I see too much use of one color and the button doesn't stand out enough. So you really want to use color. Strategically, even if it's just, like you said, Diane, I have my brand color. What's your accent color. Can your button be that? Or can your button be the accent, color, your button, be your brand color and everything else. Be a complimentary shade, but in different hues and tones, not so bold. That's how I like to use color on there. [00:14:59] Diane: Yeah, and I think the color with the button. That's important for accessibility as well. If somebody is using a screen reader to make sure that it's clear, I've never really thought about it, but I guess you could. put your checkout URL into one of the accessibility checkers as well. the kind of website things that will read through and go this change, this tweak, this. [00:15:19] Dama: Yeah, you could. You can also optimize or, or make sure that it's accessible with contrast. that's a big pet peeve when it's like my brand font, my brand colors. Purple. So here's a lavender button with a purple. CA, you know, text color, and it's just not enough contrast to make it legible. Or my, I guess my least favorite thing is like, here's a soft purple with a light colored, like a white font. Like no, no, no buttons should be punchy. It's okay. For a button to be an almost raunchy color, like really brash that's. Okay. You want, if I blur my eyes as I'm scrolling through your checkout or yourself. And my eyes, like, I don't even need to read the words. I should know what the buy now or the jump to the bottom buttons are because the color is so attention grabbing. If it's not in your palette, I get it. But I think it's the, you can get really fast and loose with buttons so that the eye is instantly drawn there. [00:16:17] Diane: So let's say I'm swell. Super swamped or I have a budget lion checkout pages. so I'm going to go through and I'm going to make sure they've got those three essentials, three essentials, the big offer heading the payment plan and the price, [00:16:32] Dama: Yeah. And it's mobile optimized. [00:16:34] Diane: And it's mobile optimized. Sorry. I forgot the third one. Mobile optimized. Now I only have time to add one conversion base. What would be your go-to? What would be the one that like, if you only have time to do one thing, do this from a completely, fully DIY perspective. [00:16:48] Dama: Yes. If you have a mock-up at your product backup at a or if you have a logo for your course or something like that, Most people will have a mockup already made for their sales page or might even be a logo or something. Any visual element can break up the boring. Of a white checkout with one color button, you know, like that that's all the color that is on the page is just the button. That's fine. But I still think if you're going to add just the one thing you can spend one minute per checkout or less adding your mock-up, which is probably already saved to your SamCart or your Thrivecart or whatever, and it won't take you long to upgrade. So if you could do that, I would add the mock-up [00:17:34] Diane: awesome. So I want to detour. And I'm curious as to why you went one step further. So you went, let's optimize thrive cart as, as checkout, but you've gone one step further and gone. I pretty much going to do everything almost except email thrive. cart. Right? So page checkout, the whole works. [00:17:54] Dama: Right. so basically how I kind of stumbled on all of this was working in clients' launches. The designer did the sales page, they did this, they did that. And it was just me making the checkout template look better because I had this nagging feeling that we were missing an opportunity. Right. And so I started getting into what you could do with design and thrive. And then that turned into and birthed this whole other thing, I launched a thread card template shop, right? I have checkout templates. I have full sales pages. You wouldn't believe Diane, how many people have told me? I had no clue. You could make Thrivecart looks this good. I had no clue. You could do a full sales page. And that begged the question of like how right. Just be fuddled. The befuddled looks on people's faces like what doing. Especially when I would say actually I'm using Thrivecart as my full funnel solution, zeros, zaps, and just, you know, like picture the mind blown emoji, because a lot of people were like you, what, how are you running a business without zaps? And so I recorded a 15 minute training, like a BTS of my entire funnel from, from like lead to sales page to upsells down sells. All the native integrations that are already built in to thrive car, all the automations, how I'm doing it, how it works with my email service provider, how I'm delivering my course, my, every, everything I did this all in 15 minutes, I walked through my entire system. And then because people have asked me like, what are the downfalls? Like, what, what's the catch? What's the other shoe that hasn't dropped? I did at the end of that included in that 15 minutes, I went through my favorite things about Friday. And some things that I are not my favorite that I wished that they would change or fix. And it's funny cause I just recorded that. And within three weeks they released a fix. So yay for that. But yes. I go through in 15 minutes, the whole process, like how I'm doing it, where, how the zero zaps is happening. How I'm still using automation, cleverly and strategically, and what my least favorite parts are. Yeah. That, that training has been really popular. [00:20:01] Diane: Great. And you mentioned in that, you talk about upsells and down sells as well. Do you apply the same checkout conversion? These are the three essential. Pick a booster to your upsell down, sell pages as well. [00:20:16] Dama: My upside down page, my upsale pages are a little bit more down-sells. Yes. Down-sells are usually pretty minimal, but upsells are an opportunity because you're introducing a whole new class. Most of the time they never saw it coming. They didn't even, you don't even have to have a proper offer and sales page and funnel for the thing that's on your upsell page. That's I've done it with, with some of my own funnels. Like you might not even known this existed until you went through the funnel, love upsells. I'm wild about them. And yeah, so I think. Do a little bit more of an elaborate design on an up sell page on a down sell. It can be pretty simple. It doesn't, it can be kind of ugly what it does. It's kind of like, oh, do you want this instead? You know, it can be kind of like very casual, like here, grab some gum on your way out, but the upsell is like holding. do you want to do something fun with me? Do you want to grab this? Like, this is something that I am selling for twice as much somewhere else, or you can't get it anywhere else. So, yeah. [00:21:15] Diane: Yeah. [00:21:16] Dama: upsells as a pretty big opportunity and they've been a big income booster for me. [00:21:20] Diane: So a bit more like a bit more of a sales page for your app sell, [00:21:24] Dama: Yeah. They're half they're not even half the size of a sales page though. They're much shorter. I would say a full. Sales page that I like to use. I don't do the 20 million page long sales page or you're scrolling forever. I usually do, which are usually like 20 to 30 sections. sales pages are anywhere between eight and 12. My upsell page is usually three, so it's shorter. It's less than half. But not, not quite so bare bones as a down sell would be, or as it checks. [00:21:56] Diane: well, I'll be sure to link that training in the show notes so that everyone can go and see examples as well of what you're [00:22:02] Dama: Yeah, you can actually see the behind the scenes of my funnel that it's been really popular. [00:22:07] Diane: So to finish up, I always ask my guests the same two questions first up. What is your number one lifestyle boundary for your business? [00:22:16] Dama: The biggest, I would say that the law, the hard, no is anything that is out of integrity with my values, anything that is going to promote drug use anything that is like heavy on illegal activity or, yeah. I mean, just anything that is out of my personal conscience kind of comfort level. I don't care what you're willing to pay me. It's still a hard, no, there's just. Yeah, that would be it. I don't know if that was [00:22:45] Diane: a no, from a, like, I don't want to be involved in a bundle with you. I don't want to be like connected to you. I don't want to be affiliated with you. I don't want to work for you. [00:22:54] Dama: right. Anything out of it out of integrity for me means I don't want to be. Yeah. I won't be connected. We, I won't join your co-lab we'll likely decline your summit. You, you want to hire me? I'll say. Yeah, so [00:23:08] Diane: Wow. You're definitely getting by to, to way more exotic submits than me. [00:23:15] Dama: It hasn't come to that four summits. Except when I talk about with integrity, it's like, when people say gross things like you, you need to have this many and you know, you need to have this size of email list. I've declined summits based on that, because you're, you're basically treating a person like a number. So any collaboration where it's not about how can I feature and spotlight you? Well, Let's be honest, helping myself. Those are like, if, if that's your number one, aim is how can you use me then? It's a no, I don't care what the opportunities are. Mental health hiatus with all of the cancel culture that was happening in 2020. And that changed you know, and, and, and just with social media being so heavy for me [00:23:56] Diane: I think that's a great way to sum it up. Finally, what is the worst piece of cookie cutter advice you've been given as an entrepreneur? [00:24:04] Dama: you have to post every single day. [00:24:06] Diane: often do you post [00:24:08] Dama: Never, I never posts. My Instagram is a desert wasteland and it doesn't matter. I stopped being consistent. This is a lie because I'm not consistent on Instagram at oh, but I stopped trying or caring about being consistent. Last summer, I took us 30 days, social media. with black lives matter, it was really hard cause my husband's black and I kept having nightmares and anxiety. I had to just step away. And ever since then I had this reality reality that my business will grow. Even if I don't promote on social media. And then last summer, I just gave myself permission to just who cares. I don't care. I'm not going to bother. I'm not going to even allow myself to feel guilty about not posting. And my business has doubled, I dunno, maybe tripled since last summer. So I don't care. I don't, I don't hate Instagram, but I've just given myself all the permission in the world to just no guilt, no shame. No. K. I'm going to post what I want to and if I feel like it and yay, whatever, [00:25:15] Diane: And what do you use instead as a, a client generator, [00:25:19] Dama: Relationship marketing. So affiliates collaborations, bundles, summits podcasts. It says, when you say, what do you use, I guess you could say use, but really what do I. See the most benefit and reap the most ROI and joy from I'd rather spend 30 minutes talking to Diane Mayer than writing then spending an hour and a half designing a post. I just don't see it because I like talking to you. And I'm enjoying the conversation. It's more joyful for me, but also what's the reality. Who's going to hear this probably lots more people than would ever see my lame posts that I obsessed over in Canva for two and a half. So the ROI enjoy emotional exhaustion and actual financial ROI from participating in bundles and colabs and summits and networking and, and affiliate marketing, all those things, just relationship marketing is where it's at and the numbers have shown it. The more I relied on that, especially this year, the less I stopped thinking about what. At market market market advertise, advertise. I just started the, let me just reach out to people and CoLab with them. And my business has grown significantly for it. And these people are my friends now, and I care about them and it just made the online business space so much more enjoyable to me. [00:26:41] Diane: Amazing. thank you so much for sharing everything today. This is a little bit awkward, cause this is normally where I'd ask where people can find you on social media to carry on the conversation. So [00:26:54] Dama: So I hang out on Instagram. I just don't post, but I hang out. I'm a, I'm a scroller and a creeper and I will, I like to comment on people's stuff and I love to DM and make those connections, but I hang out in the DMS. I'm not really a poster, so yes I am on Instagram. Yes. I look at it all the time and I like to share ideas. But I just don't post. So that's what I mean by that. I don't, I took the pressure off myself of posting, like I said, posting every day. Not me, not this girl, but I do hang out there and I like to still take in content there and especially connect. So, yes. My Instagram handle is details.to the letters, Tio dot Dhamma. [00:27:34] Diane: Well, thank you so much for this. definitely an area that I have given very little thought to, one that I will clearly be spending some time with, along with your templates in the near future. [00:27:44] Dama: yeah. I don't know where they get little tweaks could have a big impact. [00:27:47] Diane: Thanks so much. [00:27:48] Dama: Thanks so much for having me, Diane.