- Result
- 31x ROAS, 215 paid subscriptions, August to October 2023
- Client
- Copy Chief, a membership platform for working copywriters
- Scope
- Membership funnel design, landing page, paid social
- Stack
- ClickFunnels, Meta
31x ROAS on a membership funnel rebuilt in ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels membership funnel redesign for a copywriting education business. Client: Copy Chief, A membership platform for working copywriters.
A copywriter is deciding whether to spend rent money on herself. She saw an ad that named the exact thing she is stuck on, and she clicked it because for once the words matched her situation. The page she lands on is about the community. It is warm, it is well meant, and it never repeats the sentence that brought her here. So she reads for 20 seconds, decides this is for people further along than she is, and leaves. Nothing about the offer was wrong. The page simply assumed a person who had already made the decision she is still trying to make.
Paid traffic deserves its own destination. Borrowed pages leak.
What was actually happening?
The campaign sent paid traffic to a page written for people who already belonged. The promise in the ad appeared nowhere on the page, so the visitor had to reconstruct the connection herself. Creative was being judged on engagement instead of on subscriptions, which meant the best performing ads were the ones least likely to sell.
Every figure below is a real capture of the live page. Each frame caps its height and scrolls inside itself, so a full-page capture can be read end to end without leaving the figure. Both frames are reachable by keyboard. Nothing here is a mockup or a drawn schematic.
1. What does a paid traffic page owe the advertisement that sent the visitor?
UX and UI analysis, before against after
Before: what the design cost the visitor
- The promise from the advertisement was absent. A visitor clicks an ad because of a specific promise. When the landing page does not repeat it, the information scent that brought them there breaks on arrival, and the foraging research shows people leave the moment the scent weakens. Source: Xerox PARC, Pirolli and Card, Psychological Review, 1999.
- Written for existing members. A page addressed to people who already belong gives a new visitor no reason to join. The reader could not see themselves in the copy, which is the failure the headline research describes. Source: Nielsen Norman Group, 2015.
- The sign up action appeared once, below the fold. With most viewing time spent above the fold, a single action placed beneath it was outside the zone where the majority of attention lands. Source: Nielsen Norman Group, 2018.
After: what changed and why it works
- The page opens with the ad promise, word for word. The first line repeats what the advertisement said, so the scent that brought the visitor continues unbroken onto the page. Source: Nielsen Norman Group, 2003.
- One action, same words, every screen. Wherever the reader stops scrolling, the same next step is in view in the same wording. Consistency is one of the ten usability heuristics for exactly this reason. Source: Nielsen Norman Group, 2024.
- Written for the person who has not yet joined. The copy addresses the reader the advertisement targeted, not the member who is already inside, which is what makes a paid traffic page answerable to the ad that paid for the click. Source: Nielsen Norman Group, 2003.
Sources cited in this section
- Xerox PARC, Pirolli and Card, Psychological Review (1999), Information Foraging: people follow the strongest scent toward the answer and leave when it weakens.
- Nielsen Norman Group (2015), Headings Are Pick-Up Lines: 5 Tips for Writing Headlines That Convert.
- Nielsen Norman Group (2018), Scrolling and Attention (57% of viewing time is above the fold, 74% within the first two screens).
- Nielsen Norman Group (2003), Information Scent: how users decide where to click.
- Nielsen Norman Group (2024), 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.
Before against after, with the measured column
| What | Before | After | Measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Destination | Shared membership page | Dedicated ClickFunnels funnel for paid traffic | Yes, campaign ran August to October 2023 |
| Message match | Advertisement promise absent | Promise repeated as the first line | Not measured in isolation |
| Optimisation target | Engagement rate | Paid subscriptions | Yes, 215 paid subscriptions |
| Return on ad spend | Not published | 31x on the membership funnel campaign | Yes, August to October 2023 |
What was built?
- A mobile-first funnel built in ClickFunnels for paid traffic only, separate from the member-facing site.
- The advertisement promise repeated verbatim as the first line of the page.
- Creative bought against subscriptions not against engagement rate, and iterated on the funnel result.
- 1 ask, identical wording on every screen of the funnel.
Skill sets deployed on this engagement
The funnel on this page is one of four skill sets Joshua ran for Copy Chief over four years. The publishing operation underneath it is what made the funnel numbers repeatable.
Content strategy and CMS management
- Publisher of record across WordPress, ClickFunnels, LearnDash and Keap/Infusionsoft for the founder, the copywriting team and customer success, October 2021 to December 2025.
- About 4 blog posts, 2 to 4 landing pages and 4 podcasts a month published with SEO metadata, meta descriptions and taxonomy set; click-through up 28%, bounce down 22%.
- Course and forum releases to copywriters through LearnDash and Ingenium wired to Keap, and the publishing workflow standardized into SOPs the team could run alone; operational friction down 45%.
Funnel and landing page design (UX/UI)
- WordPress and Elementor membership funnels with A/B testing and Infusionsoft email orchestration; membership subscriptions up 50% quarter over quarter.
- A live event funnel in 14 days that returned 10x on ticket sales, plus conversion work on checkout flows and member dashboards with Google Analytics and Hotjar.
Paid social ad creative and media buying
- Static and animated Meta creative segmented TOF and BOF around the ICP's pain points, then media-bought: Escape Velocity 55.03x average ROAS, CPA $42 to $22; Membership Funnel Redesign 31x, 215 subscriptions.
AI content pipeline and video editing
- A custom GPT pipeline turning each podcast episode into short-form video, a blog post and an email for the copywriting team; editing time down 80%, YouTube viewers up 527% month over month.
What did the funnel produce?
The membership funnel campaign ran from August to October 2023 on ClickFunnels with Meta traffic, and returned 31x on ad spend across 215 paid subscriptions.
The honest limitation
The campaign ran to a deadline. Evergreen traffic does not convert at launch rates, and the 31x figure belongs to the membership funnel campaign of August to October 2023, not to the funnel in perpetuity.
This engagement runs as Lead Source Reporting.
Pick a time. We set the baseline on the call.
Mobile conversion rate, AI-referred traffic and lead count, measured before any work starts. You leave with the window and the number, whether or not you hire me.
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