Hi there, I'm Greg Merrilees, co-host of the Real Magic podcast. Today, I'm excited to welcome our very special guest, Pep Laja, the founder of CXL and one of the world's leading conversion optimization experts.

Pep has an impressive resume - he's been voted the #1 most influential conversion optimization expert globally, and his company CXL is home to the world's leading conversion optimization blog with over 100,000 subscribers. CXL also runs two major live events each year, Elite Camp in Estonia and CXL Live in Austin, Texas. On top of all that, Pep is a sought-after speaker and runs his business from Texas with a team spread across multiple countries. Oh, and he also has a young family that he makes time for. I don't know how he does it all!

As a designer, I'm looking forward to picking Pep's brain on all things conversion optimization. I know a lot of our listeners struggle with getting their websites to convert well, so Pep's insights are going to be invaluable. We'll be diving into his process for taking on new clients, the tools and techniques he uses, and some real-life case studies of websites he's optimized.

I'm also curious to get Pep's take on the age-old debate of copy vs. design when it comes to conversion. As a designer, I care a lot about the visual aspects, but I know Pep is going to argue that copy is king. Should be an interesting discussion!

So sit back, get your notepads ready, and let's hear from the conversion optimization master himself, Pep Laja. I have a feeling this is going to be an eye-opening episode.

Conversion Optimization Secrets from the World's #1 Expert

If you're running a website, one of your top priorities is likely improving its conversion rate. After all, what's the point of driving traffic to your site if those visitors aren't taking the actions you want, whether that's making a purchase, signing up for your email list, or something else?

That's why I was so excited to have Pep Laja, founder of CXL and voted the #1 most influential conversion optimization expert in the world, as a guest on the Real Magic podcast. Pep shared a wealth of insights from his years of experience helping companies of all sizes optimize their websites and digital funnels.

Here are the top takeaways from my conversation with Pep:

1. Understand the Customer Journey
One of the key things Pep emphasized is the importance of understanding your customer's full journey on your website. This means integrating data from all your different tools - Google Analytics, email marketing, CRM, etc. - to get a unified view of how users are interacting with your site.

As Pep explained, "Every single thing a user can do on your website should be recorded in Google Analytics or whatever you use, where in the flow towards the final action like purchase or sign up, where are people getting stuck, where they're dropping out, and which segments like maybe some traffic sources behave differently, devices, obviously, and things like that."

Once you have that holistic data, you can start to identify the key "leakage points" - the places where users are dropping off in your funnel. That's where you can focus your optimization efforts.

2. Leverage Qualitative Research
While analytics data is crucial, Pep emphasized that you also need to bring in qualitative research to understand why users are behaving the way they are. Things like user surveys, interviews, and session replay tools like Hotjar can provide invaluable insights.

Pep shared a great example of this from one of his clients. They were seeing a massive drop-off on their checkout page, but the analytics data alone didn't reveal the reason why. By setting up a poll on that page using Hotjar, they discovered that 125 out of 150 respondents said the shipping costs were too high - something they never would have uncovered just by looking at the numbers.

3. Focus on Copy, Not Just Design
As a designer myself, I was particularly interested in Pep's perspective on the age-old debate of copy vs. design when it comes to conversion optimization. And Pep was pretty clear - copy Trump's design every time.

"Typically, good design is better than bad design. But what is good design? Good design is not the latest trends like ghost buttons...Or video backgrounds...Our brain reacts to movement on a website. So whenever stuff is moving, we stop paying attention to the value proposition, to understanding how this problem product will help us, how this is different from all the other products out there and so on."

Instead, Pep believes the role of design should be to effectively deliver the message. He advises starting with the copy first and then designing the website around that. "What the tool that the designer should work with is that you get all the copy upfront. And now I'm going to think, what should the design be, so that we are most effective at delivering the message?"

4. Run Experiments, Don't Assume
One of Pep's key pieces of advice for small business owners is to not assume you know what will work best. Instead, you need to run experiments to truly understand what resonates with your audience.

"If you don't know what works. Run an experiment. That's it. We don't know what we don't know."

Pep gave the example of pop-ups, which can have a massive impact on conversion rates - he's seen 1,000% differences between sites with and without them. But you can't just assume pop-ups will work for your business. You have to test it.

The same goes for things like design trends, competitor websites, and any other "best practices" you might read about. Pep cautions against blindly copying what others are doing, because the context and your audience may be completely different.

5. Hire Experts, Not Cheap Labor
Finally, Pep had some strong opinions when it came to the importance of hiring expert designers and marketers, rather than going the cheap route.