Transcription
Hey, this is Truck with Investor Carrot. Come dance with another whiteboard video. We have a lot of questions that people ask: Why do the Investor Carrot websites perform so well?
Now, we do lots of testing. That's number one. And we have a full team that does conversion testing, and we spin up new designs and new science and all kinds of stuff. So we have the resources and ability that most investors don't have. And one really cool thing, then we have, we're really fortunate to be able to leverage is, you guys, our customers, generate hundreds of thousands of leads per year. And we have all that data. And we can then leverage and test on to see what works great.
So, this video is going to be about what's the basic format of a website that would perform well. So it could be your motivated seller website, it could be a cash buyer, rent-to-own tenant, land seller, whatever the heck it is. We've followed the same format with all different types of leads, not even just in real estate. Okay? In other businesses that I run, we follow a very similar format as well. So it's just something that really works. And we're gonna dive in. By the end of this, I want you to have not really maybe, and I know what you do, and take this template and run with it. I want you to go, "Okay, why do certain things work? And what on my website do I need to adjust?" Okay? That's what we're really looking at here.
Is look at the big chunks, the big hunks of things. I've kind of numbered some of the things out here, and you'll notice on our Investor Carrot websites, we have a lot more elements and then than just the six or so. So I'm just kind of picking the six big hubs so you can focus on your website to make them perform better. And we're talking about a homepage, okay?
So one of the big things first of all is your homepage should be a lead generation page, okay? A lot of people make their homepage, when someone lands on it, says, "Welcome to X site," and "Welcome to my site." People don't want to be welcomed to your site. They have a problem or an opportunity in their mind that they need to solve. And you need to directly and immediately address that problem with how you can benefit them and solve it. That's one of the first things that they need to see. So right here, you can see we started off with the benefit. That's what's going to draw people in first, and they're going to go, "Okay, this speaks to me. They can solve my problem."
Now, from there, the visitor is going to be looking around other things. Okay? The first thing, like I said, they usually look at is up here in the upper left: your branding, your benefit statement. Okay? The benefit statement now, it's going to interest them, like I said, to get them to look at the rest. And from here, you want to go, "Okay, here's the benefit statement, but let's draw them toward exactly how you can engage this and work with us." And so we have what we call a "five director." Oftentimes, what we'll use is an arrow. It doesn't have to be red, it doesn't have to be an arrow, but something that gets someone to have a cue that they need to look in this direction, okay? So we have a high draft for the dress right, or the call to action area.
Now, over here, this is a really important area. Most real estate investors do not have their, we call the hero section, because the hero section really is the hero of the page. Here's the thing: the really real website visitor engages them and gives them to convert as a lead. So your hero section should have your benefit, I director over, and then right here, we're focusing on the call to action, okay? So the top of your opt-in form, make sure it's a benefit. What is it that they're going to get? And what do they have to do to get that? If we're going to be focusing on, let's say, rent-to-own tenants, up here we could say, "Access our free rent-on tenant list. Just fill out the information below, and you'll see the properties on the other page." I'm very clear what they get and very clear how they do it.
The next thing we want your call-to-action box to be big, okay? That's one of the biggest mistakes a lot of people make is they have this little technical action box and a little tiny, tiny button. We want to make sure that the button is so darn big you can't ignore it, like you always accidentally click it or something. We're gonna make the button so big and so obvious that you can see in this mock-up that we have to look in a completely different color. So as soon as you saw this video come on, I want you to kind of roll back yourself into the start of this video on what you look, we're looking at, and remember what was the first thing the year I was drawn to on this whiteboard when you turn the video on? My guess is it was these big orange pumps, okay? And that's very intentional. You want your website to do the same thing.
You want your website to, as soon as someone gifts our, we call it the grunt test, kind of like a caveman, right? If someone can immediately within five seconds of landing here on your website, given kind of the grunt, "I know what they're doing. I know I like it. Help me," then you know you're doing it right. If you don't pass the grunt test, then you need to get to work and make sure that you have your benefit and then very clearly outlined spot that they know that they need to do next, okay? Make your button as wide as the form fields. Make your button in a different color than the rest of the website. So contrast. It doesn't matter what color your button is, just as long as it contrasts from the rest of the website, so your eye is drawn there, okay?
The next thing we're going to do is your branding and your called your phone call thing at the top of every report as well. So we want to make sure that there isn't something that looks bad or ugly at the top of the site. With Investor Carrot, we have a very simple logo builder inside the system. If you don't have a logo yourselves to make it look good, just give something up there that looks good, okay?
The next thing, always have your phone number at the top of the website and at the bottom of the website and in your content and everywhere, okay? And I'm going to tell you why it's really important that the phone number is at the top of your site here in a second. So half of the hero section, if someone isn't ready to become the lead and engage with you, then they start to dive in and do more research. That's where the rest of your homepage, the rest of your website comes in handy, okay? So your hero section should really drag them down further into the end of the rest of your content. Have another headline here that gives a benefit, okay? "Sell your house fast in seven days," "Close on the date of your choice," or whatever it is. That is your main benefit, okay? If they come, "Yeah, that's what I want," and then they keep on reading down.
I always like to engage people with pictures on our website. So if you have some pictures that you can put up there of properties, you guys have our deals, or whatever it is, that it really adds realism to it. Make sure the pictures are local to your area and then drag them down with benefit-oriented text, okay? "How can we help you?" "What are your problems?" "You know, here are the problems that we can help thank you with." "Yours, who we are, and why we're qualified to do so."
Then at the bottom of the page, no matter how long or short your page is, make sure you always have a very similar call to action at the bottom. You can see, niggle, a huge button for maybe even the same form is up there because when someone scrolls down, we don't want them to have to scroll back up to be able to engage with you. We want them to, we always want to have a call to action right where they are. Where if they have to make a decision, what they need to do next, they're probably trying to lose their decision. Probably it'd be meeting at the back button. We don't want to have me at the back button. We want them to do what we want them to do at the time we want them to do it, okay?
The next thing is over in the sidebar: social proof. So social proof is basically testimonials, credibility. It's it's it's comforting your your prospects and customers that other people have gone before them and you have solved their problems in a really, really great way. So find some social proof, testimonials from your customers, from partners you've worked with, get them on your website. Even if you only have one or two to start, get them on there. And then last, we always like to really tell the about. I've hoarded lots of tests we've done. We actually wrote a blog post on this. Always in the top three most visited and web pages on every website, no matter what type of investor, not even investors, a whole different websites and different industries, always in our data, that's one of the top three is always the about page. Our company, whatever you call it. And that's because people are always trying to prove or disprove their thoughts about you, about whether you're a company that they want to work with, and they want to work with people. They want to make sure they can connect with you, okay? So make sure that you've gotten here about information, basic there, and it links back to your full about page.
And one thing I didn't put up here is you want to, of course, make sure that you have your navigation bar, okay? So main links there, FAQ, about, so you know how you can help them, things like that, okay?
Last, so all this stuff is really, really important, but none of that's gonna work very well for you if it's not mobile optimized, okay? And not just mobile responsive. We're talking, has to perform well to get someone to actually engage in the website, convert as a lead on a cell phone. Now, we don't rehear it, and there's a couple elements you really want to take note on the cell phone. If you're not a lot of developer, pass this along your web guy. Or all this has already built an Investor Carrot. So if you find that Investor Carrot is a better solution for it, we'd love to have.
So on the mobile side of things, make sure that it, number one, it is responsive, so it shrinks down to the size of your screen, so it looks good. Number two, make sure your branding shrinks down as well, but it's at the top of the website. Make sure you've got your phone number at the top of the website and not wrapped in an image, because someone can't tap on that image and have yourself go and pop up and say, "Do you want to call him?" But any time you put a phone number on a website on an iPhone, on most Androids, you can tap the phone number. If not, it pops a box, says, "Do you want to call this number?" Makes it really easy for someone to call, so they don't have to try to remember what the number is, bounce back to their bubble call feature, type it in, shoot out the numbers, let me bounce back over to the neg on the intercom.
So get the phone number on top, very clear benefit-oriented headline saying that line, so it's not any different, simple text, and then a big old huge opt-in button that spans the entire width of your form field, of your screen. And there's a one reason for this. Then I'll let you go. Is when someone's holding their cell phone, okay? And it's going to pretend all this when sounds holding their cell phone, your hand is down here. I have some, I've seen some real estate investor websites that have their call-to-action button way up in the upper left, and it makes it a lot harder for someone to get up there to make that ax. We want to make it very, very low resistance for someone to work with us. So right there, when they're rolling in, tap it, tap it, they're good to go, okay?
So this is the simple six that format for making your homepage and your real estate investor website a lot more effective. Dive into our blog, die, ignore other videos for more details and more specific something exactly how to write your copy, exactly what other elements to build your website to make a lot more effective. So thank you guys for watching this week's whiteboard video, and keep hitting us with questions. We'll keep coming at you with great content. Thank you.