Improving Your Conversion Rate [Case Study]

Hey,

When I first started advertising my wife's books, I was as excited as a kid in a sweet shop.

But when the ads weren't getting much in the way of traction (i.e sales and borrows), I soon became deflated and realized there was more to this advertising thing than good looking ads and relevant targeting.

So, I got to work on improving the conversions of the ads (i.e. sales and borrows) by focusing my attention on the book product pages, specifically:

– Book Cover

– Book Description

– Reviews/Ratings

– Title and Subtitle

– Pricing

Why, you ask? I wasn't fully aware of it at the time, but I soon became VERY aware of it...

Advertising is just bringing attention to your book, but your book sells your book.

Here's how I tackled each section of the book product page:

Book Cover

This had the BIGGEST impact on the performance of the ads AND conversions.

The first iteration of the book cover cost us $100 and sales were slow. The second iteration of the book cover cost us $650 and the difference in sales was night and day.

Here's a comparison between the original book cover and new book cover for the first book in the series.

When we switched the book covers, this had the BIGGEST impact on our sales and borrows, particularly with Amazon Ads where the CTR (Click-Through Rate) of the Ads increased significantly.

We've updated the book cover ever so slightly over the past few months (added the subtitle of the book and "international bestselling author") but the core of it is still exactly the same.

And the other books in the series use the same layout and style, making a consistent through-theme and tying all the books together.

Book Description

This took a little more testing! We looked at other book descriptions in the fantasy genre and using those as inspiration, tried 5-6 different descriptions over the course of 3-4 months.

Finally, we landed on one that just seemed to work and we've stuck with it ever since.

Reviews and Ratings

In the beginning, we had no way of collecting these as we didn't realize how important they really were.

Social proof, especially on Amazon is HUGE and you need a way to be able to consistently collect reviews and/or ratings of your books.

To achieve this, we added a link at the back of each book to make it as easy as possible for readers to write a review.

We also added an email into the autoresponder sequence people receive once they sign up to Lori's reader magnet (a free novella).

Today, her books receive 3-10 reviews/ratings each day, on autopilot.

Title and Subtitle

The title is pretty straight-forward – the title of your book!

The subtitle was a little trickier for Lori's books, because they don't fit snugly into a specific genre. Her books are definitely not written to market.

They have a bit of adventure, a dash of romance, a good amount of fantasy and a sprinkling of tropes from a few other genres!

The subtitle is best used for letting readers know what to expect from your book; for fiction, that's typically the genre, for non-fiction, it's usually the desired outcome.

We tested a few different subtitles, and have only recently (within the last 2 months) figured out a subtitle that just works.

Pricing

We've done a little testing on the price of the books, but in the main, we've stuck to $2.99 for the first in series and $3.99 for the later books in the series.

A $2.99 price point for book 1 makes it a fairly friction-less decision for readers testing the books for the first time, and also means we fall into the 70% royalty bracket.

The later books in the series are at least 1.5x the length of book 1, so we felt comfortable charging $3.99 for these.

We did look around at other books in the fantasy genre when deciding on our prices and at the time, this pricing structure seemed fairly consistent across the board.

Pricing the books this way also provides us with the opportunity to run KCDs (Kindle Countdown Deals) and other promos, predominantly on book 1, which we couldn't do if book 1 was $0.99.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Focus on these aspects of your book product page to improve the conversions of your Ads:

– Book Cover

– Book Description

– Reviews/Ratings

– Title and Subtitle

– Pricing

I've written a free growth guide here that goes deeper into these.

And there you have it. Remember, advertising is just a form of traffic generation and visibility for your books.

Your books need to sell your books. What we've covered today will help you with this.

To Your Success
– Matt