How to split test your Thrive Apprentice Registration pages for more conversions

John // Tutorials

2 Comments

September 19  

If you want to create simple online courses from your website, Thrive Apprentice is going to be an essential tool in your kit. In today’s post, I want to help you get more out of Apprentice by showing you step by step how to increase your registration process using A/B split testing.

No more default WordPress registration pages. No more unnecessary fields for people to fill out… Just pure, simple, registration goodness. You ready? Let’s do it.

Why are we tinkering with the Thrive Apprentice registration process in the first place?

At Incomemesh.com, you know I like to tinker – it’s part of my nature as an inquisitive engineer.

But there is a real business reason to want to get into the weeds with the Thrive Apprentice registration process.

Simply put, you want to make it super easy for your visitors to sign up for your course, and you want to be able to control the experience.

And by default, you don’t have much control over the default registration process:

Default Thrive Apprentice Registration Page

What’s wrong with this page? Let me count the ways:

  1. No control over the headline or call to action
  2. Full access to the menu buttons (gives your visitor more ways to bounce off the page
  3. No control over what fields you are requesting
  4. No way to split test

Luckily, there is a very easy process to let you overcome all these issues, which we will go into right now!

Improving your conversions to your free course registration page is one of the most valuable activities you can do for your business. In many cases, opting in to this members area is the beginning of your sales funnel.

Looking for better conversions throughout your site? Sign up for my free conversion optimization course CONVERT.

How to customize and optimize your Apprentice Registration Page

Thrive gives us two easy methods to make customizations to our registration page:

  1. Running split tests using Thrive Optimize
  2. Running split tests using Thrive Leads

There is no “right” way to do this – it is going to depend on your personal preference and what is most important to you. I’ll quickly describe each method for you below, and give you a wrap up of some considerations to help you choose the right method for you.

Using Thrive Optimize to customize your registration process

No matter which way you decide to go, a common first step is to create a custom page on your site that you will use for registration purposes. We will build this page in Thrive Architect and have full design control over it:

Custom registration page

For this example I quickly pulled up the “Atomic” landing page which gives you as simple headline and opt in form.

Link up your CRM to your new registration page

One of the awesome benefits of customizing your registration process is that you can automatically add your new WordPress users into your email autoresponder as soon as they register (without the need for additional plugins).

Connecting your

There is a very handy free plugin called WP Fusion that also helps you accomplish this and gives your site additional super powers that I cover in this video as well!

You can link up your specific tags and success action for your CRM – and in the case of a registration page, I’d recommend you send your users straight to your membership area / course page so they can get on immediately with learning.

Once that is set up, you can go right back into your API settings and enable the WordPress connection:

Thrive Leads allows you to add WordPress Subscribers directly in your opt in forms – very handy!

When you connect your WordPress account and select an access level (probably Subscriber in most cases), you’ll be able to customize your fields even more on the form:

Here we are going to add “Password” and “Confirm Password” to build out a fully functioning user registration form.

When you finish configuring everything, you’ll be able to see your fully functional registration form:

Now that we have our custom registration page all set up, we need to link it in to Thrive Apprentice to create a smooth user experience.

How to connect your custom registration page to Thrive Apprentice

Head back into your Apprentice settings, and go to your general settings:

Thrive Apprentice General Settings

And set up your own custom registration page to link to the page you just designed and published:

Thrive Apprentice custom registration page

Now every time someone tries to access one of your courses but doesn’t have an account, he/she will be sent to your beautifully designed opt in page to sign up. Nice!

So step 1 of the process is complete – we have a custom registration page. This should already have a positive impact on your conversion rates…

But we can do better. Let’s split test the page next!

How to split test your Thrive Apprentice registration page with Thrive Optimize

If you are a Thrive Themes Member then you will have access to the Thrive Optimize plugin – which is probably the easiest and fastest way to run split tests on WordPress.

Once you have the plugin installed and activated, head back to your custom page in Thrive Architect, and click the little A/B button on the right side to start your split test:

Split test with Thrive Architect

In the Thrive Optimize interface, you can simply duplicate your existing page which will bring ALL the settings into a new variation – and you can start to edit and customize this new variation all you’d like:

Duplicate Thrive Optimize

Now you can edit the new variation of the page and make any changes that might increase the conversion ratio:

  • Change the headline
  • Add / remove images
  • Add additional benefits of the membership with bullet points
  • Change color schemes
  • Add / remove required fields to fill out

Be sure you make a meaningful change to the page – I walk through my 2 step framework to generating smarter split tests in depth in my free course Convert.

Once you are happy with your changes, click “Start A/B Test” and enable automatic winner settings (you don’t have time to babysit your experiment):

Thrive Optimize Settings

Finally, you’ll need to tell Thrive Optimize what “success” looks like for you. That is known as defining your conversion event. Simply select “subscription” because that is what we are after 😉

Success – you now have an A/B test running on your Thrive Apprentice page!

That wasn’t so hard, was it?

So now behind the scenes, every time someone tries to sign up for a new course page, they will be sent to one of your variations, and as soon as there is enough evidence of which version is working better, Thrive will automatically adopt that version as the default page and archive all the others.

The net result to you? A better, sleeker sign up process.

You can also do a similar process using Thrive Leads to run your split test. Be on the lookout for a write up on this process as well. You can also follow along the video above where I walk through each process individually!

Ready to convert more students?

Leave a comment below on what course you are planning on launching now that Thrive Apprentice is officially coming out of its infancy!

every lead generation opportunity on
your website you want to make sure you
can split tests increase your conversion
ratio and get more subscribers per
visitor on your blog and when it comes
to thrive apprentice the ability to
split test the registration page seems
rather hidden and in today’s video I’m
gonna show you how with zero additional
plugins non thrive plug-in you can
actually split test and optimize the
conversion ratio for your thrive
apprentice registration pages okay let’s
go ahead and dive right in
okay so here on our website this is the
in kamesh University and you I’m in an
incognito window and you’ll see if I go
into one of my courses and try to enroll
I have it set on the default settings
here where it’s going to offer me to log
in or to register a new account here and
when I click on this button here you’ll
see this form and I’ll link up in the
top corner here a video where I show you
a couple of different ways of getting
around this kind of not the best
registration page but in today’s video
I’m going to show you a little bit
further even deeper on how you can
advance the conversion rates of this
page so what we’re going to do in this
video is we’re going to change the page
this is sending them to then we’ll set
up using thrive leads and thrive
optimized and the ability to increase
our conversions so let’s go ahead and do
that right now so let’s first just cover
the big picture kind of the strategy
where we’re going today and then we’ll
go into step by step so the first one is
the default registration page there’s
not a whole lot you can do with that so
we’re gonna go ahead and put that one
aside and we’ll create our own custom
built with thrive architect registration
page so that’s going to be step number
one and redirecting the registration
process to that new page the next step
on that page is using thrive leads we’re
gonna create our own custom registration
area are a little widget there that we
can then do split testing within thrive
leads and then finally if you stay to
the end of the video I’ll show you a
little bonus on what you can do even
further okay so that’s kind of the big
picture where we’re going let’s go ahead
and do that now together so let’s hop
out of our incognito window now we’re
back here on the back end of our website
the first thing we want to do is create
a new page and I’ll do that in the new
window here let’s go ahead and call this
custom registration page
for apprentice not the best name but
it’ll work for our purposes and what we
can just go ahead and do is go straight
into thrive architect and now here you
have the option you could use your
existing kind of header and footer and
give you all these buttons here that you
would have on your blog normally but for
this purpose of a squeeze page I want to
minimize the number of options I give my
my visitors so I’ll go ahead and go to a
template and let’s just use one of the
default thrive apprentice temp or thrive
architect templates to get people to
sign up and I’ll just take the atomic
which is super simple it doesn’t get
much simpler than this will choose this
lead generation page here and choose the
template okay so this will be kind of
path one of what you can do to do your
split testing with with thrive
apprentice to increase your
registrations using just the built-in
template here we can change this header
real quick put a little headline here
probably not the best headline but it’ll
work for me I’ll put my colors into some
of this here and let’s adjust this a
little sub sub header and give them some
urgency and some scarcity here we’ll go
ahead and connect this form to service
and now here’s where some of the magic
happens so like any lead generation form
I do want to have them so I pulled into
my email list so I’ll go ahead and set
this up here just call them a generic
subscriber for now and for form fields I
like to keep it simple so let’s go with
email and post oft in action I’m going
to at this point direct them back to the
University so here’s one of the big
differences here so using the default
registration page on thrive apprentice
has one benefit which I have yet to
figure out how to overcome that benefit
is if they’re on a specific course let’s
say you have five different courses in
your school and they’re trying to
register for one specific course when
they click on the default registration
page and they put their information and
they hit a sign up it’s gonna go right
back into that specific course and that
way that’ll be a very seamless process
for them they’ve registered on your site
successfully they click start course and
bada-bing bada-boom they’re off to the
races having a custom registration page
is kind of a bit more of a
one-size-fits-all page where you’re
gonna want to send them back to one
single page as the success action
so probably the best thing to do there
would be to send them to the homepage
kind of a splash screen of your thrive
apprentice school that way they can just
one more click to get back into the
course they wanted to take and they’re
off to the races again so it’s not that
big of a deal but it was one thing I
wanted to kind of disclose here so I’ll
go ahead and send them back to if I
could spell the University here and hit
save so now that we would be done here
if this was just an opt-in but we’re
actually making this a registration
process which is a little bit more
intense so kind of a hidden feature I
guess is you can go to edit here and add
a second connection so I’ll edit my
connections here and go back to API
connections and now I’ve only set up
this additional way to connect but I
have my wordpress and if you don’t have
that made yet you can go to add new
connections and under add new connection
here you should be able to just select
down here at the bottom here a WordPress
it’s probably because I have mine
already set up it would be somewhere
around here for WordPress one and that
is just going to create a new user when
they sign up on your form here so we’ll
go to WordPress account let’s head back
over here we’ll select the WordPress
account and you get to give them a
specific level of access when they sign
up with this specific registration page
so we’ll say subscriber continue and now
when it comes to registration pages you
have a few options here you could not
include password at all I would highly
not recommend you do that I just think
it’s good for people to set their
password once and for all you know from
the get-go so I’m gonna put password in
here and you can option to make that
required obviously and you can
optionally also put in a confirm
password which is also probably a good
idea so we’ll do email password and
confirm password and that will be our
registration page our registration
process will click go here and because
we set up the post opt-in action before
it’s going to retain those settings and
now we have a new form here let me hide
myself to give you some more space to
see so now we’ve got email password
confirm password and get it now but I
honestly do not like how this looks so
let’s go ahead and do a little bit of
here and make this form look nicer I’m
just gonna try to think what I want to
do with it I guess we’re just gonna make
it
probably not the prettiest but we’ll
edit this area let’s move all these
fields underneath each other email
password confirm password and gosh I’d
like to do something different with this
but let’s go ahead and move it under
here as well delete this column just by
hitting the delete area so now and that
lets that doesn’t look too bad right
well it’s passable just because I’m kind
of a branding guy I want to go ahead and
change my master color to my brand color
and that works nicely and if I wanted to
be kind of anal I could go through each
one of these and change the color of the
boundaries but I won’t the color the
borders because they’re green right now
but that’ll work for me and now we have
a opt-in page that is not too
bad-looking it’s pretty obvious what
you’re getting here you could add some
images and things like that nature but
you have something that is passable and
workable so we’ll go ahead and save our
work here and now let’s just confirm
that everything works so we’ll go back
to our thrive apprentice area here and
let me just refresh this page here to
make sure that it picks up the fact
there’s another page on my blog now and
you know what I’m probably gonna need to
publish this page won’t I so let me go
into my page settings here where I
created that custom registration page
and just click a quick publish here okay
so now we have published our page let’s
go ahead and just view it real quick and
in incognito window sign up below to get
free instant access premium courses free
for a limited time and now when they go
through this process what’s great about
it is it will kind of do the password
strength thing which i think is really
nice they added it so the longer your
password is the better it gives you but
I’ve just put in a password that does
not work and we’ll let’s see what
happens here it’s not even going to
redirect me it’s not going to bouncing
back to the WordPress page it’ll just
tell you straight up your password does
not match fix it so I’m happy it’s
working I wanted to let’s see how it
works when we hook it up with apprentice
so we’ll go back now to our prentice
area and refresh the page just to make
sure that it picks up that new page in
our area and we’ll go up to here to
general settings
and under apprentice register page what
I want to do get rid of that one and let
me remember what I named this thing so
we’ll call this custom I think we call
it a custom registration page for
apprentice boom and now we’re still good
make sure you have that show login form
for not logged in users enabled that’s
what’s going to also show that
registration button down at the bottom
so let’s go ahead and test to see how
this works
scroll down hit save and now let’s go
back to our index with an incognito
window and now let’s head into one of
our courses once again and try to enroll
here so tell me I don’t have access yet
please login or create a 100% free
account to get started they could mess
around here with username password but
let’s just go straight to the register a
new account here I might need to clear
my cache let me do that real quick we’ll
get into cache later on but it can be
one of those things that gives you a
little bit of a struggle when you’re
making some changes and you want them to
happen quickly so be right back let me
clear both of my caches okay so the
cache has been cleared let’s go ahead
and open up a window again and head back
to the website and head to our
University and once again let’s go ahead
and I didn’t make any changes to the
apprentice settings so let’s just see if
it was a a memory issue which I think it
probably was so we’ll go ahead and try
to register an account here and there we
go now it pulls us up directly to sign
it below this is our new page so let me
go ahead and create an account let me
use a different email address real quick
okay so I use one of my previous email
accounts and let me go ahead and try to
sign up and you can see here it redirect
me back to my University so this is the
one thing I told you earlier I can’t go
directly back into the course but that’s
a very small misgiving to be able to
have a custom registration page on your
on your website so now if I go back in
my button now shows up the start course
button so that means I have created an
account on my website that will also
link in to your email marketing system
with no additional plugins needed now
let me get you into this how the way to
increase your conversions
right now so first let me just say
you’re gonna increase your conversions
already by giving yourself a nice
landing page instead of that default
registration page that apprentice
provides you but you can do much much
better and let me show you how to do
that so let’s go back into the page that
we had built here this is the page and
thrive architect that it we’re using for
our registration process and if you’re a
thrive member or if you purchased the
you thrive optimized plugin this is a
method where you can go ahead and do an
a/b test and create a new test on this
page let’s go ahead and click that guy
here and now you have the options here
you can try to just change the headline
or you can try to change everything
about the page and see which one’s going
to convert better let’s for the sake of
the argument here let’s just clone this
page now this creates a complete copy of
the page we just made and we can go into
edit this variation and let’s say we’re
gonna just change the color scheme up a
little bit so here where we had free
instant access as being the orange text
let’s make this text black and let’s
make sign it below orange so just a very
you know yeah not the best it splits as
you can do here and actually to that
point I do have one of my courses in in
Commission University which is all about
increasing your conversions using smart
split testing I go through entire
lectures on how to prioritize and pick
the right split test for each step in
your process so if you want to all send
a link up to that course and you can
also just go to in kamesh comm and sign
up there to get that free course as well
the course is called convert so I hope
you guys enjoy it okay so back here we
now have two different variations let’s
save our work here on this variation and
let’s just briefly take a look at it on
tablet looks good and on mobile looks
good as well
so we can go back to our a/b test area
and you can see here what’s nice is that
the the image does show the reflections
you just made the changes you just made
there so what we can do now is set up
and start an a/b test and we can name it
and you can go ahead and give some
automatic winner settings which
basically thrive are very smart people
and they’re good at statistics that’s
what they do here so just trust what
they have here it’s going to run
and a minimum of 100 people signing up
and 14 days of running the test before
they can say this test is for this
version is running better than that
version so that’s all well and good
we’ll click Next and then because we’re
doing that opt-in form that lead
generation form we can just use the
subscriptions goal that’s going to make
sure that it counts a successful action
every time somebody actually registers
for your website
and that’s what it just says there so
they can start the test and you will be
good to go so you’ll notice here on your
page settings you’ll now have this
thrive optimized a be test overview you
can adjust how much traffic goes to one
version or the next etc etc but once
you’re here what you’ll notice is the
Edit Page button is missing so thrive is
had her smart guys they’re not gonna let
you tinker around with the page once the
test is already set up so my advice to
you is if you’re gonna run a split test
like this make sure everything’s working
right you know test it just with the
individual variation before you get into
the actual split test process so we’ll
go ahead and just update the page to
kind of make sure all those settings are
saved and that will wrap up the first
method of running split tests with your
registration page let me go ahead and
just briefly show you the second method
of doing that and then we will call it a
night so what we’re gonna do for this
one is we’re gonna go in to thrive
dashboard and our thrive leads plug-in
and we’re gonna create a new thrive
leads shortcode we’ll just add a new one
here call it registration demo and add
the shortcode let’s find it here
registration edit the form we’ll create
a new form
we’ll call this a custom registration
form okay so once we’re here we’re gonna
go ahead and edit the design of this and
again let me just kind of tell you the
strategy of why we’re doing what we’re
doing here so there’s two ways of doing
this one is you just create the page in
thrive architect and then split test the
different pages against each other to
see which one works better that is a
very good option another option is if
you make one page and you embed a thrive
leads
short code you know you basically pull
in a thrive leads element onto that page
you can split test within thrive leads
and create different form types and pull
those in and it’ll kind of achieve the
same goal it’s really up to you if you
don’t have thrive optimized and you do
have five leads obviously you’ll do that
method vice-versa there is a benefit in
doing it the thrive leads method which
we’re doing right here and that main
benefit is if you’re looking at thrive
leads to see all your sign up stats like
how many people are signing up for your
website it has to be a thrive leads code
for it to track that as a conversion if
you just pull in a landing page from
their template and you use that it’s not
going to show you the number of
conversions in your thrive leads
dashboard so it’s like it’s it’s a very
small thing you kind of pick your poison
or as you’re going through this just
pick which method you think it’s easy I
don’t you like to do more and go for it
so with that out of the way let’s go
ahead and design our form here we’re not
gonna spend a lot of time on this I just
want to show you how to do a quick split
test using thrive leads and then you can
imagine you just dump it into a page and
you’re good to go as well so here let’s
just pick a template I’m feeling lazy
we’ll pick this guy here okay so we’ve
loaded up hi I’m Joe close to my name so
we’ll take it I won’t do any
customization on the page itself but let
me do the same thing here with the
actual signup form where we’ll connect
it to our CRM all good this is you know
carbon copy what we just did and again
our custom redirect URL we want to send
them back to the home page of our
courses so that’s good and now we’ll go
right back in and edit that API
connection and now add the WordPress
account so this is going to like we just
saw on the other one allow them to put
their password and require it and put in
their confirm password and require it
and bada-bing bada-boom
so this
is all set to go what we’re gonna be
able to do now is just preview this on
different devices obviously your form
gets a little bit longer because you’re
adding a couple of fields
I’m currently testing only having the
password field once and that’s purely
you know that this could come back to
bite me but my thought process is you
know most people they’re using the
password they’re used to using doing the
confirm password personally I’ve never
entered my password in and then made a
typo because I’m entering it carefully
so I’m my hypothesis on this little test
here is it by having one list field it
should increase my conversions and if
they happen to forget their password or
put it in wrong they can always say that
they forgot their password so that’s
that’s my guess but you guys you do you
and decide what works best for you so we
have our thrive leads code here so let’s
go ahead and exit this and head back to
our area here our thrive leads where we
can see this registration shortcode I’ll
just refresh the page to make sure that
it has the most recent version of what
we just built and now what we can do is
just clone this guy and this is all like
thrive leads is set up for split testing
so you don’t need to go to any fancy
workaround to actually create the split
test you just clone this page and then
you can make some adjustments here so
again just adjust something on this page
to show you that we’re doing a split
test and I’ll just change the image from
this guy / – let’s just call it let’s
just go for this image here it’s really
nothing to do what we’re what we’re
talking about but this is you know you’d
be able to change anything you’d want to
on it and I’m not Joe I’m John so I’ll
change my name there and we’ll save and
exit this guy that’s all you have to do
to create a split test within thrive
leads so we’ll go back to the area here
and now that you have two forms set up
there’s a little variation to them you
can just say start a be test and again
title your test so we’ll consider us
registration test two and very similar
to thrive optimized we’ll do automatic
winter settings enable those and you’ll
notice
if you’re astute that the exact same
settings between both methods which is
good so we’ll start the test and now we
have a test running and you’d be able to
get all the test data once you start
getting some traffic running to that
area so the last thing we would need to
do to make this actually work is once
again we’re gonna create a new page a
new landing page and instead of doing a
split test with a thrive optimized we’ll
just pull in this thrive leads shortcode
onto the page and then all the split
testing will be taken care of for us so
let’s call this custom registration too
and we will let me show you another way
I’m currently using a thrive theme so
they have a nice landing page page
template which I like it
it um it still keeps the theme intact
but it takes away a lot of the buttons a
lot of the mess which can distract your
users so I’ll save a draft here and
launch the right architect and let’s
just show you how easy this is to do
okay so we’ve pulled up our page and in
hindsight I should have hidden the post
title so I’ll do that in just a second
but let me just pull in our thrive
typing and thrive it’ll show you the
thrive leads shortcode I’ll just tap on
that guy and now I can look for my
custom registration what did I call it
let me hit a quick refresh all right
well I’m here in my thrive leads
dashboard and for whatever reason I’m
not able to get it to automatically pull
in to my architect but luckily they give
you the shortcode right here so what I’m
gonna do is just copy this shortcode I
think it’s because I have a test
currently running you might need to
actually put it in your page before you
start the test but it’s all the same
let’s go back to our area here and put
in a shortcode thrive leads shortcode
let’s try this one more time yeah
curious so we’ll do a wordpress content
that’s where you put your short codes in
and I’ll just type in that short code
and hit save and now you can see the
shortcode showing up there nicely and
you could put anything else in here like
you
but now once we hit save and exit the
split-testing will already be handled
through our configuration using thrive
leads and here you go so now when I look
at the page here it’s gonna look you
know very nice very kind of themed and
all that good stuff one thing that you
want to just be aware of if you’re going
this second route let me publish publish
the page and show you what you’re just
gonna what you’re gonna find and see if
it’s it’s important to you or not so pay
attention I’m going to right-click on
this and say open link in an incognito
window and you’ll notice the page will
load first and then the thrive leads
will kind of dissolve or you know
magically appear slightly slightly
delayed and that’s because you know
using the JavaScript won’t get all the
techy details but essentially the page
is loading and then the page is
triggering JavaScript which is going to
say thrive leaves hey you’ve got a split
test running what version you want to
serve up and then it will send that
version in now it’s not going to bother
really any of your visitors if you’re
looking at and you’re wondering why is
it doing that that’s why is because it’s
kind of doing a second kind of round of
code there which is no problem but on
thrive optimize the first method we
talked about it’s not gonna really have
that problem it’s going to load your
page a little bit slower because it’s
kind of doing that that split testing
that decision-making before the page is
loading on your on your website so you
pick whichever one works for you
honestly they’re they’re both going to
be equally effective they’re the same
split testing methodologies it’s really
up to you okay so let’s go ahead and
kind of just wrap this up and once again
bring it back to the big picture the
strategy here so the whole goal of this
video was to help you increase your
conversion rates when people are signing
up for your thrive apprentice school you
know though the huge value in thrive
apprentice is being able to offer
premium courses for email addresses and
it builds a great relationship it builds
great trust and authority so you want to
make sure your registration process kind
of reflects that if you show them just a
blank page with a whole bunch of fields
they need to fill out it can not be the
highest converting option there
so using thrive architect and thrive
optimized you have the ability to
do some split testing and add whatever
custom fields you want into the process
and also using thrive leads and their
split testing engine you can do some
pretty powerful stuff in whichever way
it makes more sense to you my personal
preference what I’m doing on my website
today is I am using the thrive leads
option because I like to have a central
place to get the statistics on how my
conversions are going on my website if
you do the thrive architect and thrive
optimized method it’s going to be it’s
not going to show all the same metrics
there you might need to go into your
email system to determine how your
conversion rates are doing and that’s
not a problem but I like how thrive
reports are data so that’s what the way
that I go so I hope this video was
helpful if you enjoyed this and want to
get more techie tutorials to improve
your conversion rates and all the
aspects of your online business go ahead
and click the subscribe button below and
the little bill to be notified when I
release it in my next video
I hope you enjoyed this I’m John from
Inca Metacom I’ll see you guys in the
next video
take care

About the Author

John Whitford is an entrepreneur who has built over 12 profitable online blogs and businesses. He's also the founder of Unbeatable Tech, a data-driven digital marketing company that specializes in sales funnel implementation for both his own businesses and clients alike. John loves to be a beach bum while brainstorming new ideas for marketing strategies, but he's always excited to take on another project!

John

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