Video transcript: The "Early Close" Call To Action & How To Use It To Boost Conversions (Simple, Not Obvious)
0:00What The Early Close Is
I have a video for you. I was having a conversation with a customer yesterday about the concept of the early close. This is something that falls in a bucket of techniques, tactics and strategies we call "simple, not obvious". They're so simple and so effective, but they're not obvious. Almost all websites we see have issues where they're not leveraging these tactics.
This one's called an early close, and it is very simple. In the first paragraph or couple of paragraphs on whatever web page it is on your website, have a call to action, or early close.
0:48Why It Works: The Mac Mini Story
The idea of this came to me in 2009 when I wanted to buy a Mac Mini and I went to the Apple store and I just wanted to buy it. I was on my way home from the office, it was 5:30, I'd been sitting in traffic and I just wanted to buy the thing. The sales guy just kept getting in my way, asking me if I wanted a keyboard, asking if I wanted the extended warranty. He was trying to run me through his whole sales process and funnel when I was ready to buy. I just wanted to give him money and take the thing.
That's the idea of the early close. You don't need to put the call to action at the bottom of the web page, because there are people hitting that page right now who just want to do whatever the thing is they need to do to buy your stuff or book the appointment.
1:35Examples: Medical Practices And Real Estate
A very common one we see, and probably one of the most effective examples of an early close, is for medical practices. A medical practice might have 10 or 20 different procedures or services they offer. Take a dentist, for example, offering teeth whitening. Someone Googles their local dentist, or they already have a dentist and they go to the website. They read about teeth whitening, or they just want teeth whitening and click on the page. Having just a simple line in the first couple of paragraphs, "If you want to book an appointment, call us on this number during business hours, or if you want to book online, you can do that 24/7 by clicking this link", can dramatically improve conversions.
The customer I was having the conversation with is a real estate agency, and they had all these pages on the website for different property locations and different types of properties. So, category pages essentially, and there was no call to action on there at all, which was a problem. On these pages there was a whole list of properties. They're a boutique real estate agency and these are expensive properties, 3.5 to 10 million dollar properties. The people who want to buy these properties don't want to be run through a sales funnel. They just want to make a call and speak to somebody who knows what they're talking about.
So again, in his case, I said, "You need to have an early close on all of these pages." Tell them what they need to do right now: if you want to speak to an agent, call this number, or schedule a time by clicking this link. Very, very simple and very, very effective.
3:05Where To Add Early Closes And What Is Next
That's what the early close is. You don't necessarily need to run customers through a full sales funnel or sales process in order for them to buy. Some proportion of your market is ready to buy now. They're hungry, they just want to do the thing. So add the early close to all the appropriate pages on your website. That might be the homepage, services and product pages.
We'll talk about some other related concepts in the next set of videos. One is the inverted pyramid and the other is the price list problem. I hope you found this one useful. You can read about this on our website, wpspeedfix.com/early-close. If you want help with your website, we offer a free site speed audit, or free site audit. We also have a bunch of free tools: a free audit, a Core Web Vitals report and a site speed test. Those are all free, take about 90 seconds and need no opt-in. If there's anything else you want, any questions, just post in the comments below. Cheers.
Some portion of people hitting a page are ready to buy, book, call or whatever RIGHT NOW. They don’t want to read a bunch of words, they just want to do the next thing they need to do to buy your stuff. They don’t need the story, they just want to know what to do.
Make sure early in your content you tell the visitor what they need to do and what the next step is. This could be as simple as a one line in the first 2 paragraphs of a page: “if you’re ready to book an appointment, call 555-55555 during business hours or click here to book online 24/7”
It’s a call to action that’s succinct, simple and directs the visitors as to EXACTLY what they need to do to take the next step or achieve whatever it is they want on your page.
If I’m looking for the best airfyer, tell me which one is the best and where I should buy it instead of wasting my time.
This is very closely related to the idea of the inverted pyramid which we’ll talk about on another post.
Action Plan:
- Get clear on what you want the customer to do once they’re on a particular page on your website -> it might be different on different pages. Do you want them to call? Or book an appointment? Or submit a form? It might be to get clear on their own needs or some sort of qualifying step.
- Write the early close – it MUST be extremely specific, step by step with no scope to misunderstand what needs to be done
- Add it to both the top and bottom of the page or content
