AJ Davis  00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Experiment Zone Podcast. I am interviewing Bina Coleman from Compassionate Callers. She and her company help families with elderly take care of people in their homes and make sure that they have all the support that they need. We go through their website today and make sure that the mission and how they help people is really clear in the copy and layout in the user experience of the site, so you'll see us do a live conversion audit, and you'll walk away with some great tips that you can apply to your store too. Let's jump in today. We are speaking with Bina, and Bina tells us a little bit about yourself and your company. Yeah,

 Bina 00:48 Well, first, thank you for having me. My name is Bina, as she said, and I am a gerontologist. I have a degree in gerontology, so that's a little bit about my background, which is very niche, but it's the study of the elderly that brought me to start my business called Compassionate Callers, where we were calling people up to five times a day, seven days a week, for anything. I mean, it could be medication reminders or meal reminders. I live in Arizona. If anyone's listening to this, it's very hot in the summer, water reminders, or just a quick hello. And just recently, we merged with a company called Parent Projects, and we're using Compassion Callers in a little bit different way

AJ  Davis  01:32  And you know, this is why I love doing what I do, conversion rate optimization. A lot of people think of it as strictly e-commerce, but really, any business that wants to communicate and connect with people that can use their services can benefit from what we do. So I love it keeps my life interesting, and I love hearing what you guys are up to. Tell me a little bit about your goals for the business this year and how Conversion Rate Optimization, or just conversion rates, matter for you.

Bina 02:00 Yeah, yeah, of course. So with this new merger, my goals have shifted a little bit, and I'm kind of just jumping in and getting my feet wet right now, but my new title is head of patron engagement. So for all of our clients, I am the one that's just going to make sure that they are getting what they need, that they're getting the correct, vetted resources, and that they are having a good experience with our compassionate concierge. That's sort of how we merged our businesses. So that's my new role. I'm the head of patron engagement, and then for the conversion, working with you guys. I mean, truly, yeah, it is very important that someone converts and becomes a client. We call them patrons and create a project for their aging loved ones.

AJ Davis  02:47 And so what are some of the goals that people have? So let's talk about, let's kind of switch gears to talk about the website a little bit more specifically. So what do you want them to know about working with you, and what are some important things that they would find out about as they look.

Bina 03:01 Yeah, very important. Something right off the bat that I can think of is, if you are going through caring for an aging loved one, and it's overwhelming, which it is, you just might not even know where to start. And that's kind of where Parent Projects was created was to give you this platform to just put everything on, have a compassionate concierge at your service at any time to really walk you through what your next steps are, whether you know in each case is individualized, so every case is going to be different, and everybody needs different things. So it is an overwhelming process that we're hoping to ease people's minds and take their worries away.

AJ Davis  03:48 What are some of the reasons somebody might reach out? You know, what creates some urgency for them and getting your support? 

Bina 03:54 So that's a great question because it does happen. If somebody falls, if an elderly person falls they're in the hospital, and now they have to go to a rehab facility, then they have to go somewhere else. That's a really big one. It's a lot of moving parts. And again, I hate to use the same word, but it's overwhelming just to know they're in a safe place. They're going to get the crutch rehab they need, they can eventually return home one day. So that's always a really big one. Or if someone has dementia. If someone gets a new diagnosis of dementia, they're finding out it's not safe for them to be living home alone anymore, or even if it is, you know, an elderly couple, maybe that's not the safest situation to have two older people living together if one has dementia and all this stuff is going on. So they're just two examples.

AJ Davis  04:41 It's relatable. I mean, we have, and I'm sure many people listening, it's certainly something that's happened in our family, where we've had a family member fall and suddenly it changes everything about what their situation looks like, yeah, or

Bina 04:54 you got to go through it, yeah,

 AJ Davis  04:57 Yeah, and I think it's part of what life is like, right? Do we want to age? We want to be successful in our lives and live long lives, but things happen as we age, and unfortunately, we have to deal with those challenges as they happen. I want to talk a little bit about how people find out about you, and kind of part two of that question is, are they doing it on their mobile devices? Are they sitting down and doing it on their computer? So how do people find out and how, what's kind of the context that they're in to find out about 

Bina 05:26 You? Yeah, so when you mean, do they like doing it on their phone, you mean when they've created their project, or do you mean when they actually found our website?

AJ Davis  05:34 That's a great question. How about both? Let's talk about

Bina  05:38 So I mean, you know, we do that, and we do social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram for that. Of course, we are currently in the process of starting some big campaigns so that will get the word out even more. More to come on that for sure. And then when someone goes to the website, they kind of just go through the natural stuff of what parent projects are and all this, and then they can sign up. And there is a 30-day free trial. I take that back. It might even be more days now, but there is a free trial that someone can start using right away. And it gives them that opportunity to make sure this is a good fit for them.

AJ Davis  06:23 That's great. Well, we'll jump into it in just a minute. So as a reminder for our listeners following along today, we are going to be doing a live conversion audit on our podcast today, and so the way that we do this in each episode is that I'm going to screen share. So if you're following along and watching on YouTube, you'll be able to see the screen with us. If you are just listening to the audio. Today, we're going to be describing what we're seeing, and very importantly, you can actually pull up your site because we're going to talk about really specific things for our guests today, but we'll also be talking about general concepts that help to bring home the message so that prospective customers can understand what your business is selling. All right. So I have parentprojects.com up on our share screen today, and one of the first things I always look for on the site is to answer three questions. So I'm not looking at the screen. I'm going to be looking for what this website is about. Who is the website for, and why should I work with this company? So here I am looking above-the-fold personalized resources for busy families. So there's the WHO right sizing and an aging parent. Make sense of the noise, learn what to do, and connect with local professionals to professionals experience with your situation. I think we get pretty close on this initial brand message, okay, I think there may be a bit of a gap between what you were describing and what I'm seeing here for how you might help. So maybe we can brainstorm together some potential changes here. So when you say, when it says personalized resources for busy families, right sizing and aging parents. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that means? Yeah,

 Bina 08:05 So when it's kind of a play on words, instead of downsizing, you're right-sizing it, which is very clever, because you always hear when people age, they're going to downsize, but yes, they probably still are going to. But we want to make sure that it's not just a downsize to downsize, it's the right size for your loved one. So whether you know you're moving from a 3000 square foot house to an apartment, or you're moving from an apartment to a facility, whatever the case is, is this the right situation or the right sizing for that person?

AJ Davis  08:39 And why do some families care about that? What? What are some of the motivations to care about that? 

Bina 08:44 So the motivation for that is truly the safety of that loved one. Is it safe? Is it secure for your loved one, your person, to be living alone? Are they having more falls? Are they forgetting to take their medicine? Are they not showering and eating? You know, a lot of times people stop, excuse me, stop brushing their teeth. So it's all these little things that can really add up to some dangerous and not secure situations.

 AJ Davis  09:12 Yeah, and I think that's what I took away when we talked earlier, is really the word safety was in my mind. And so I'm glad to hear you say it too. I think that there's the right sizing and aging parent, which is what is happening. But this message could be stronger with a little bit more of the why. So it's not just about getting through the noise, but it's about finding safety and making sure that your loved one is healthy and safe in their living environment. So I think a tip here would be to kind of refine this second line here to start to use those exact words that you said around safety and health and wellness, and potentially even highlight some of the scenarios in which it comes up on the front page right away, so people know what, what are we? What are we here for? We're we're getting re what are we getting? We're getting resources because we're busy. Families, and we have an aging parent that we want to help with the right size. Why do we want to do that? Why would this company? We want to make sure our loved one is safe and healthy, and we want to learn what to do to make that happen. Okay? But overall, this layout looks nice. You've got a really clear hierarchy of the text here, so I know where to get started on the page. You have an action or a button here, called action to learn more. Sometimes we want a little bit stronger wording here, and I see we have a get started up here. So we might also consider reflecting that here, like a Get Started now. So that's the thing. Getting started is a little bit stronger. So what we find is that action-oriented words can help people say, Oh, I'm ready. I'm ready to get started. What should I do? Oh, I click here to do it. Learning more is a little bit more of a passive experience, and tends to be the language we use and more like a secondary which is exactly what's happening in your nav. Your nav has got started as the main one and learns more as more of that secondary action. Okay, all right, so scrolling through here helping America right size. Well, as your projects pick up, there's little room for doing it twice. There's all the resources. Tell us a little bit about the project itself. What is the project? Yeah, no,

 Bina 11:19 Yeah. So that's a great question, because the most important part of the project is actually what someone will start for their loved one. So a project could be anything like, let's say, if God forbid, my mom fell, that would be a project of me starting to say my mom fell. I don't know what the next steps are. She's in the emergency room. Now let's figure it out. Then let's say my uncle also fell. Then I would say I start a second project. My uncle fell. He's in the emergency room. What do we do now? So that's what a project is. It's a very individualized goal or project for that person to make sure those steps are correct and they're going to get the best care they can in their local area.

AJ Davis  12:07 And so in the case of moving from a bigger house to a smaller house, maybe a smaller house to a higher touch facility, would those be two separate projects or one project? No. So

Bina 12:18 Each person can have as many tasks as they need in their project.

 AJ Davis  12:24 Okay, perfect, yeah. So then that's how you represent it. Okay, great, yeah, yeah. So I think here, this is, you know, we're hearing a little bit about how you support families, what it might look like the introduction of projects here, I think because it's such an important kind of framing of how you work with families. I'd like to see it more specifically mentioned, like described before we say, as your projects pick up, there's little room for doing it twice, right? So I think potentially removing this sentence so that you can have it be this section is teaching you about what we do if we help you the right size, and our parent projects are doing these things, and then the check, check, okay. I love this list here, gathering facts, collecting family expectations, and what to discuss. This gives me a sense of like, it's not just advice on a call, but I'm really getting an action plan and, like, a real project for supporting the situation we're going through, and we get the nice Get Started button. So glad to see a nice CTA in this section. The images here highlight a combination of the projects themselves. Right these three screens, and then images of the family. What is this middle one? Is there a delivery component, like a physical component to those?

Bina 13:48 Well, I think that's more saying you're moving somebody that's moving, okay, there to help you move. Yeah, that also people do move to be closer to their adult children, so they could be cross-country moves or down-the-street moves. So, yeah, great.

AJ Davis  14:04 Okay, so what might be a good use of these different images is breaking apart the what of what a project is, which the section feels like it's teaching us about the project. So these three images resonate with me, and then these other three are really like, why you would want a project, or how a project helps you. So I'm hopeful that as we scroll down, we're going to hear more of those examples. But if not, we can talk about how to introduce it up here. Okay, so leverage technology to organize the web in your most difficult situation, aging in place, downsizing location, end of life. I think these three examples are really helpful to start to see and relate to our like individuals, like why I'm here, what kind of situation is going on for my family, and why a project might be helpful. So I would be tempted to switch the order. Of these two things, because this is the solution, and this is saying from a customer-centric perspective, here's what you're going through, here's how we help you, and then here's, like, the details of how we help you. So kind of starting with the user being user-centric, with the message getting a little bit more granular about their situation, and then helping them visualize how they'll work with you. So I would switch those two sections and then this overlay that happens here. This is kind of a small detail but can be hard for people to observe or notice, particularly on mobile. When you hover, that's how you get more information, instead of having a quick description or maybe not needing that text at all right, aging in place, it's no surprise many want to ride it out in their forever home and take the right steps can extend their economy. It could just be that these are the common situations. Click to read about how we help people in this particular scenario. As I click through, I do get to an aging in place page, which is what I expected to be able to learn about how you might help, and how I can work with parent projects to help with aging in place. So now scroll down. We have a lot of content here, downloadable resources, and social media. I think there's an opportunity here to really talk about this situation and why a project would be helpful before getting into this other related content. So okay, I expected to read about aging in place like what are some of the challenges? Why might I want to have a family member's age in place? How? How complicated is the decision or not? How can parent projects help in this place with a call to action to reach out and get started? So, yeah? Well, it's interesting, yeah, building out some sort of, I call it a hero section as well, but some sort of landing section to this page to introduce the what and why of aging in place, and then why parent projects, almost thinking of it as like a mini landing page or a home page about aging in place. Great, and that will get people things to kind of grasp on to, versus this other content could be very useful, but you can imagine, okay, I'm going to read about combating caregiver isolation. That kind of takes me off track. If we have a family member who fell and we want to help her age in place, right? But I like this kind of clarity of organization here. Like, these are the common ways to think about the situations happening, right? Agreed. So we can help. This is a little distracting. I don't, I don't. I could leave it or take it, really this little movement that's happening in that part of the page. We want people to like, feel comfortable, and confident that this is the right business to help them. This can reinforce that a little bit, but it may also kind of distract them from jumping right into specific

 Bina 18:09 Content, interesting, okay,

 AJ Davis  18:12 What do we bring to the table? We have a magazine, business, media, and family planner. Is this the main part of this last section here, the family planner, connect? Yes,

 Bina 18:24 That is right. The platform is working and right, everything, actually.

AJ Davis  18:30 So tell us about the relationship of that versus these other three items that are what we bring to the table. Yeah.

 Bina 18:38 Okay, so that magazine, or the E-magazine, it's going to be a lot of kind of what we saw scrolled up above with like, the five tips, and, you know, I think it's going to be a lot of tips and a lot of good information for people who may just be getting their feet wet with the understanding that their parents Have these diagnoses who've never thought about it before. So that's the E-magazine, a verified business network. We call it Vbn, a business that we have vetted. So the vetting process is something I take very seriously because that is something that the patrons will be using, and that could be a resource for anything, home care, home health. I mean, we go down to mobile pet grooming, because if someone has a pet and they live alone and they're elderly, we want to make sure that they don't have to drive just to get their pet, pet washed and groomed. So we break it down to around 72 if not more categories, and they are going to be certified. They are certified vendors within each category. The podcast is a podcast where we talk to our vendors, and really, kind of just learn how they're going to help those in their local area. This is nationwide, so you know, there could be a home care agency. In Arkansas. I don't know why. And then there could, you know, here, obviously, because we're local in Phoenix, and so that's where the podcast really gets to shine a light on that Vbn. And then the Connect is kind of what I was talking about before. That's the project. So within the VBN, you can create tasks you can set up in like store your insurance information, or your aging parent's information, Doctor names, and numbers. So it's all in one convenient spot, especially their siblings, and adult children all over the country. To have one platform like this is nice. So if one adult child can't pick up the phone and one needs to talk to the doctor, all they have to do is jump on there and they can grab that information.

AJ Davis  20:43 I love it. You guys are doing a lot of really good work to support families. I think some of that's getting lost in the way this is displayed. I almost am tempted to say, what if we had a dedicated section about not just learning more, but if we had something where we have, in addition to the podcast and the E-magazine, we have ways to kind of help people jump into that content. So using the nav to do that could be a good way to do it could be that each of these sections just gets a little bit more space on the homepage because it what, what you want to think about is like, what's the primary reason people are coming to the site, or the primary way you want to connect with them or have them reach out. But then you also, if you want them to kind of be able to come back as a resource to see the E-magazine over time, that may be motivation to give it its own landing place in the navigation time flies fast. In our audit series, we are almost at a time. So I'm gonna ask my favorite wrap-up question. So what are three things we talked a lot about, different things on your homepage today? What are three things that either we talked about or you were thinking that you want to do to help improve the conversion on the site?

Bina 21:51 The three things that I would choose, I liked what we just talked about. I thought that was very helpful, because like you said, it is a lot of information. It's all needed and it's all useful. That's a lot. Will you scroll down a little, maybe a little more clarification on the right sizing, like you said, make it like, kind of more really say what it is there? And we didn't even get into this.

AJ Davis  22:33 Yeah and I think just looking at this part, just to throw one more thing out there, is, like, I think this is this, like, free trial kind of language and helping people know that there's something to try out can be really helpful and powerful to actually use is the language, right? So get a free trial.

Bina 22:48 So if you scroll up, I can show you or I can tell you one other thing. I know that was only two you mentioned, and I actually completely agree that get started. Learn more like this. Learn More front center button should say, get started. Just a little more cohesiveness.

AJ Davis  23:05 Perfect. Well, thanks for recapping what you took away today. For folks listening along at home, I think that hopefully there are many things that you're thinking about for how to introduce what you're doing. Bina, I suspect a lot of people are listening and want to hear more about how they can get help supporting their loved ones. Yeah. How can they find you? Yeah, you can

 Bina 23:23 Find me right at the website, parentprojects.com, or at bina@parentprojects.com, which is my email, and that would just be how you get a hold of me. And I want to say thank you to you. AJ, this was great. I thought this was very educational for me, to be honest.

AJ Davis  23:39 Fantastic. Well, I'm glad it was helpful, and it was so nice to see you again, and thanks for being on today. Thank you for tuning in to the Experiment Zone Podcast. You can check out more episodes on YouTube, Apple Spotify, and your favorite podcast apps. Check out the show notes for any websites Linked In this episode, including where to connect with us on social media. We appreciate you tuning in. Remember to Like subscribe and turn on your notifications so you'll be updated on each episode release visit us at experimentzone.com for all podcast updates as well. Thank you for dropping by.