I missed last week’s update. Sorry.

A cool thing happened between now and last time I posted: a new prospect called my 800 number, started a trial, gave me her credit card info, and got fully onboarded into the product. She said she tried some of the other products and she liked how user-friendly Snip is. If she becomes a paying customer she’ll be customer #9 and the second out-of-state customer, the second customer who was “attracted” rather than “hunted”.

I also discovered that my Olark chat had been broken for a couple weeks. For some reason even though I knew I hadn’t been getting chats for a while, it didn’t occur to me to just try to chat with myself and see it it worked. It didn’t. That’s fixed now, and in the last few days I’ve gotten a few chatters.

I also had this really annoying problem where my Google Analytics goals were inexplicably not working. I thought I had run out of things to try, and then finally, I realized that my WordPress URLs have trailing slashes but my GA goals didn’t have trailing slashes. That was the problem. My goals work now. I’m now looking forward to being able to attribute conversions to channels, particularly AdWords vs. non-PPC channels. How much do I have to spend on AdWords in order to get a customer? If I can know this number, and get it down to at or below what I believe my customer LTV to be, then I can confidently pour more and more money into AdWords (provided the ROI continues to be there).

Paying for a professional redesign of my marketing site is looking like more of a remote possibility at this point in time. A number of forces came together to mostly wipe out the money I had saved up over the last several months. The only place substantially more money will come from is my consulting business, and I’m of course always trying to make as much money as possible in that area, so I don’t need to deviate from my current course to save up more money. It’s just a matter of time.

I want to review my most recent plan that I shared:

1. Pay for professional site redesign
2. Turn on Google AdWords (done)
3. Fuse the marketing site opt-in(s) together with the in-app onboarding process
4. Make the in-app onboarding process not embarassingly terrible
5. Get more traffic, optimize funnel, get more traffic, optimize funnel…

#1 is currently out of reach and #2 is done so that leaves:

1. Fuse the marketing site opt-in(s) together with the in-app onboarding process
2. Make the in-app onboarding process not embarassingly terrible
3. Get more traffic, optimize funnel, get more traffic, optimize funnel…

I’m actually re-thinking the steps of my funnel after experiencing some recent activity. Here’s how I was originally conceiving the funnel:

Home page -> enter email to view demo -> view pricing page -> sign up for a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> enter email to view demo -> read autoresponder emails -> sign up for a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> pricing page -> fill out pricing form -> receive phone call -> start a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> chat with me on Olark -> invited by me for a phone call -> start a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> call 800 number -> start a trial -> become a customer

My most promising prospects so far have involved a phone call. What if I just funnel everything into a phone call? I think a phone call is probably a higher-commitment action than filling out a form, but it’s much easier to build trust over the phone than over the web. If the difference is between closing, for example, 5% of 40% (2%) and closing 50% of 20% (10%), then the tradeoff could make sense. So maybe my funnels would look like this:

Home page -> enter email to view demo -> view pricing page -> call 800 number -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> enter email to view demo -> read autoresponder emails -> call 800 number -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> pricing page -> fill out pricing form -> receive phone call -> start a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> chat with me on Olark -> invited by me for a phone call -> start a trial -> become a customer

OR

Home page -> call 800 number -> start a trial -> become a customer

Let’s compare that now to the most recent plan:

1. Fuse the marketing site opt-in(s) together with the in-app onboarding process
2. Make the in-app onboarding process not embarassingly terrible
3. Get more traffic, optimize funnel, get more traffic, optimize funnel…

Funneling everything into a phone call would make #2 unnecessary because when I talk with a prospect on the phone, I can just set his or her trial account up “manually” on my end. It would also make #3 unnecessary because so far the onboarding pain points have not been problematic when I have the opportunity to answer questions and explain things over the phone. So that would leave:

1. Change “start trial” CTAs to “call for more information” CTAs
2. Get more traffic, optimize funnel, get more traffic, optimize funnel…

My level of activity/engagement over the last few months has felt pretty good, and I feel like if I can 10X my traffic and therefore engagement level, that might well put me in pretty good shape. Right now my traffic level (less than 800 uniques in the last 30 days) feels like it puts everything below the threshold of measurability/meaning. It’s of course easier said than done to 10X my traffic but I don’t think I’m asking for a lot as far as absolute numbers go. Eight thousand visitors a month is not a ridiculously huge amount.

So I’m changing my mind for the billionth time, which I feel pretty stupid about. I don’t know what all this mind-changing means. I wish I would stop changing my mind so much, but of course the only reason I change my mind is because I believe my new belief is right and my old one was wrong.