How I cut my bounce rate from 60% to 40% by killing my product demo

Six weeks into the marathon. Still tinkering. Still finding leaks. I'm a brand marketer and messaging guy, so I've never worried about the effectiveness of my messaging. It's been working organically and in minimal trial paid.

All the directories and A LOT of Reddit Dm outreach, and SEO sitemapping has slowly starting boosting traffic. Ppl have been landing. Even checking things out. But not enough have been taking the 5-10 mins to "click" to try the free demo.

I had the standard SaaS landing page. Hero line. Big "try the free demo" button. Looping gif of my tool fixing a fictional souvenir company's positioning.
Looked great but was not converting like I thought it should be.

EGO CHECK!

I made SEO changes, re-designed the lay-out, removed a competing a CTA (which really helped), but still didn't have enough meaningful results.

Then something (finally) hit me. My brand strategy tool for founders was speaking to their brand not their website. brand strategy is the most critical component to success of any product (yes, even bad ones) in history. But the "concept" of "brand" a) has too many connotations for founders, and b) many don't care (yet). what they do care about tho is their WEBSITE LANDING PAGE and maximising conversions.

THE BIT YOU'RE READING FOR: I realized my looping demo was a puppet show. You watch a product fix someone else's problem, clap politely, leave. None of it was about you.

So I killed it. And added instead one of the simplest features I already had in the matrix, and already used daily personally. The answer was right in front of my eyes. I AM the ICP of my product. Do I have 10 mins to try a free demo for a new product? Maybe. But I’m skeptical.

So I figured out a way to showcase the power of the product as simply as possible: paste a screenshot of your homepage, and in 30 seconds the full power of the tool I built on 20 years of brand marketing experience at Red Bull, Amazon Music, Twitch etc would give users actionable messaging and market positioning feedback. + i moved my trust signals top of the nav, not below the fold. BOOM!

This became the single front door into my product. Fun, useful, zero clicks. Just screenshot/paste on the landing page and the tool does the rest. No signup. No email. Paste and go.

The insight is dumb and I should have seen it earlier. people don't want to watch a product work. they want it working on them.

As @clawback says "You changed the user from spectator to participant."

Now someone who uploads their site has already committed. By the time they see the flags, they're in. The actual tool inherits that momentum and they then go on to improve it.

Bounce dropped 60% to 40% the first day it was live. Small sample. Six weeks of data total. But I'm not putting the demo back.

Still too much copy on the page and design improvement for my liking but its improving and i'll continue to make focused tweaks based on the data.

Built mine at selfservo.com. Try it. Roast t. Or paste ur links below and I’m happy to rapid audit any IH page messaging in the comments.