AP 0685: Why Doesn’t Your Home Page Have a Feature Box?

AskPat 685 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 685 of Ask Pat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.

We have a great question today from Max, but before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com. An awesome, awesome company that helps you manage your business finances. Everything from your expenses to the income to your tax paper work and all that stuff. Plus, your invoicing. So if you do any invoicing of any kind, you have to use FreshBooks, because it makes it really easy. Within like 30 seconds you can send an invoice in a very professional way and get paid for whatever services you do. Anything from coaching to your clients or you do any consulting, or anything like that. So if you want to check it out for 30 days for free, go to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and make sure you enter Ask Pat in the how did you hear about us section.

Alright, now here's today's question from Max.

Max: Hey Pat. I'm a copywriter at CopyPost.com, and I'm all about email opt-ins, conversion rates and all kinds of other stuff and I read about it at CopyPost.con. My question is since Derek Halpern did a review on your old website, he suggested that you put a feature box on your home page. Now, I notice with the new design, which isn't so new anymore, but you didn't include it on your homepage. I was wondering if you had any reasoning or analytics behind it or anything else because I notice it on every website, pretty much, I go across except yours. Again, thank you so much for everything you've done for me, you're awesome. Just, you are super awesome. Thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey Max, what's up? Thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate it. It's actually a very good question, that has been asked a few times before, and yes you're right. A lot of people see that I don't have a feature box on my main page. So a feature box is essentially a hero section at the top of your page that includes an opt-in form. And this is where it would feature some amazing content and some incentive to get people to leave their name and or email. Or at least their email, and subscribe to your list. And I don't have that. I have a big green button that says, “Get started here.” Why am I doing that?

Well, it is different from everybody else and that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. And I'd like you all to just realize that. Because everybody else is doing something, it's a good sign that it's working, but it's also something that if you want to stand out, can be an opportunity to be different. And Max, you've already called it out that you've noticed that everybody else has it and I don't. I would recommend that people include it on their sites. But I don't do this and I don't practice it because in the space that I'm in, the entrepreneurial internet marketing online business space, I want to be different. I want people to come to me knowing that they're going to get a different experience.

Yes, I may be losing some those potential opt-ins right up front. But I am in it for the long term, and I know many other people are too, but I want to show that right up front. Like, “Hey, I'm not here to take something from you. I'm not here to take your email address right away.” It's almost like a two step opt-in process. And yes, you can include a two step opt-in process on that feature section if you'd like. Which, actually, would probably be the best practice for most people out there. But again, for me, I want people to go into my site, to look around, to see my picture, to read my story and then make a conscious decision. Not just one based off of an initial feature box or hero section but because of the content and what they know they can get from signing up. I want them to sign up because I know, in the long term, that's going to mean more customers, more revenue. But obviously it's going also mean more open rates and a better experience throughout the site.

That's, at least, my theory. That's something that's kind of hard to test. I could split test it and divide groups into different lists and see what their open rates are versus whether they opt-in on a feature box versus somewhere else on the website. But again, I'm just always trying to portray the idea that, “Hey guys, I'm not here to take something from you right now. I'm here to show you what I have to offer,” and for me it's the Getting Started page. That's the number one call to action I have on the home page. “I want to show you I have stuff to offer, and I want you to want to leave your email address. Not because I asked, but because you made a decision to say, ‘Wow I need more from this guy.'”

So Max, that's simply the approach I've taken. It's different, and it's different because of the reasons I mentioned. Because I want to stand out in this very busy, very competitive space that I'm in. It seems to be working. So sacrificing the immediate gains for long term gains. That's what it is.

So Max, thank you so much for the question, I appreciate it and I want to offer you an AskPat t-shirt. You'll get an email from my assistant in the next month or so to collect your information so we can send that over to you, free of charge. Because everybody who gets featured here on the show, gets a t-shirt, an AskPat shirt. And if you want to see what they look like and even go to askpat.com and ask a question yourself, you can do that. So just do that right now. Go to askpat.com, ask your question. You can get featured here on the show, and we'll send you a shirt.

So Max, thank you again so much, I appreciate you. I also want to thank FreshBooks for their sponsorship of this particular episode. Again, if you want to check them out for 30 days for free, go to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and make sure you enter Ask Pat in the how did you hear about us section.

Okay, and here's a quote to finish off the day. This is from, and I apologize in advance I'm going to butcher this and it's going to be really bad, but it's a great quote. This is from Antoine de Saint-Exupery … Sorry. “A designer knows he has achieved perfect not when there is nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away.” Good stuff. Thanks so much. I appreciate you, and I look forward to serving you in the next episode of Ask Pat. Bye for now.