Well, after some rumination, I checked my conversion stats for the 8020 drummer.

(For larger context, read this post.)

I’d been getting anecdotal evidence of a positive response from facebook – many new page “likes”, a ton of them from South Korea and Taiwan, which I included on a whim after traveling there and getting a gut feeling jazz was about to “blow up”. So I held my breath, and opened the stats page on Squarespace (which, as I’ve discovered, does most of the work Google analytics and Crazy Egg used to do in a single click, especially if you set up your site architecture strategically).

Here are the stats, as best I can interpret them-

1546 impressions on facebook.
92 clicks (4.479% click through)
71 apparent site visits from FB
8 button clicks to “about” page (11.2% conversion)
0 on “pre order”

There’s reason to be optimistic. 8 people watched the preview video on the front page and clicked a button that says “learn more and pre order”. It’s true that none of those clicked through to the sales page, once the price was disclosed. Still, for $2.50-a-day advertising in Facebook, 8 initial conversions in 2 days is a good starting point.
Obviously now I need to experiment with “closing”. Here are the steps I took this morning to “adjust” before I recheck on Wednesday-

-removed “browse free videos” button from the info page and moved it to text of 5th chapter (I’ll include screenshots when I get back on my Mac)

-included “money back” language in first “buy now” CTA
-made video link “real” with a video

There are two possibilities for low conversion. The first is simple bad page design. Maybe by giving people an “out” at the top of the page, they weren’t inspired to read through the content. Maybe because the money back guarantee wasn’t clear, they weren’t ready to commit.

The second possibility is they simply need to see more evidence. When I picture myself making a purchase, I might visit the site multiple times, and establish a baseline “trust” for the seller before deciding “I’ll help this guy out and purchase”. I want to instill that positive feeling, and I think the way to do it is to flesh out the site with more free videos, or maybe “previews” of the chapters in the series.

Here’s what’s chambered for the next revision-

-adding actual video preview segments (and video preview at the top)
-removing “buy now” button from the top of the page (maybe that’s putting price in people’s heads too soon?)

This will eventually be a professionally-produced video of the highest quality I can make it, with professionally-edited trailers of every facet. I could simply dump $3,000 into it now and write it off my taxes, but I’m doing this partly as an experiment for my musician buddies – to see if I can use the Ferriss model to create a low-initial-investment, low-risk sales vehicle, which means “bootstraping” sales pages (only offering features necessary for sales at first), and attempting to “crowd-fund” production, using the Dane Maxwell model. (google it.)
As before, I’m not posting links here to avoid upsetting my metrics. If I see a click on the “buy it now” page, I want to know it’s really a “sale”, not a Breaking Ferriss reader. Photos coming soon!
N