9. How to improve conversion rates

YC Partner Kevin Hale covers the first principles of conversion, one of the main drivers of growth for your startup, and how you can improve it starting with your landing page.

Growth happens in between Conversion and Churn

First thing to ask is: Do we need to focus on this at all? (ie is the growth not great?)
Avg conversion rates
- Freemium SaaS- 3%
- Flickr— 5%
- Adult Friendfinder— 10-22%
- TurboTax Online— 70%

Knowledge Spectrum— Your user sit on the Current knowledge point, and your software/product sites on the Target knowledge point— You're trying to close the gap by either 1) Increasing the knowledge of the user or 2) Decreasing the knowledge required to use your interface; Can apply this concept to ANYTHING

2 Most Impt Things:

What is the 1-Button interface?— ie If you reduced your landing page to just one button, what would you need to do to get them to push that button?
The 7 Questions you should go through every time you're trying to improve the webpage:
1. What is the call-to-action?
  - It should be really close to the Magic Moment (the experience, knowledge, interaction that somebody has with your startup and they go "Holy fuck, I totally get this")
2. What is it? (ie can I just copy/paste a sentence of this and send it to my mom and she would understand what it is?)
3. Is it right for me? (Customer trying to figure out if your product relates to their problem)
4. Is it legit? (Don't worry, super low threshold, just use a standard template/theme)
5. Who else is using it?
6. How much is it? What's the catch?
7. Where can I get help? (Some ppl no matter what will want to ask you a question)

<aside> ⭐ All information is owned by Y Combinator. I claim no ownership of this information.

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