Effective Sales Page
With hundreds of thousands of sites and articles available, how do you catch people’s attention?
How do you turn words into sales?
The HEADLINE.
It must be catchy and engaging and
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Think about the last time you read through a newspaper, magazine, or some other printed periodical. How do you decide which articles to read and which articles to skip?
The headline.
If the headline doesn’t grab you right away, engaging your interest and curiosity, then you’ll most likely move on without checking out the article at all.
The same concept holds true for your sales page; a great headline is absolutely vital to getting visitors to stick around and keep reading. Newspapers often use a main headline and a sub-headline to enhance the likelihood that you’ll stop to read an article. On an Internet sales page, though, you need to use three different headlines:
- “Gotcha” Headline
- The Main Headline
- The “Still Gotcha” Headline.
THE “GOTCHA” HEADLINE
This is the first headline the visitor reads, located at the very top of the sales page. It doesn’t need to be huge in size or long in length. What it does need to do, though, is grab the attention of the specific prospects you’re going after. So, you’d write it one way if your main prospects are teenagers, for example, but write it in a completely different way if your main prospects are senior citizens.
THE MAIN HEADLINE
This is the most important headline on the whole page because it is the largest, the most eye-catching, and the most concise description of the product’s biggest benefit to the prospect. It needs to literally jump off the page at the reader in a size that’s too big to ignore. Most importantly, though, is the emotional reaction this headline creates in your prospects. If you can capture them emotionally, then you’re well on your way to converting them from prospects to sales.
THE “STILL GOTCHA” HEADLINE
Lots of sales pages don’t use this third headline and that’s a big mistake. Why? Because this type of headline serves to reinforce the message communicated in the main headline and clarifies for the prospect exactly what benefit or advantage they can expect to gain from making a purchase.
One of the biggest mistakes when it comes to any of these headlines is to use too many words and make it too long. Remember, just a few really powerful words will be exponentially more effective for you than a lot of words strung together in a long, drawn-out explanation.
The opening act must grab the prospect’s interest on a level that’s strongly emotional and it must hang on to that interest intently.
One of the common mistakes we see on Internet sales pages is when people launch into selling their product or service too soon. While you, of course, want to sell your prospects aggressively, if you do it too early or too quickly, you’re likely to get the opposite effect of what you desire.
That’s why the opening act is so very important. When you capture the prospect’s emotional interests, they are suddenly much more interested in the rest of the sales page because they feel a “personal” connection to you. Appealing to their emotions, then, is a powerful sales tactic that isn’t a classic pushy sales approach.
But how can you best grab prospects in an emotional way and with a high level of intensity? Take a look at these proven techniques:
- Emphasize the benefits prospects will enjoy once they get their hands on your product or service.
- Emphasize the positive ways their life will change and improve once they get their hands on your product
- Emphasize the positive feelings they will experience once they get their hands on your product or service
- Emphasize what they will have more of (time, energy, money, success, etc.) once they get their hands on your product or service
- Emphasize what they will have less of (stress, difficulty, debts, struggles, etc.)
You don’t have to go into great detail about each of these things during the opening act; this is just an introductory opening – the full details will be discussed later on in the sales page.
HONESTY & AUTHORITY
Everybody who spends any time on the Internet is aware of the huge number of scams, frauds, and other sleazy activities out there and your prospects are no exception. You’ve already succeeded in overcoming their initial skepticism because they are looking at your sales page, but now you have to do a bit of extra work to convince them to let go of any lingering doubts or worries.
Establishing your honesty and authority with the prospect makes it easier for them to make the move from interested visitor to satisfied customer. Times are tough nowadays, so getting prospects to spend their increasingly scarce money requires you to be even more creative and authentic about demonstrating your credibility and trustworthiness.
How do you go about doing this? The best way to look at it is that you want to promote your honesty and authority both early and often. Don’t bury this information deep into the sales page where prospects have to really dig to find it. If you do, they are never going to find it because they will have stopped reading a long time ago.
Here are some effective ways to go about doing this:
- Talk about specific results, not just generalities
- Use real numbers to describe a benefit or an activity, not just estimates
- Use testimonials that touch on key features or benefits you want to emphasize; these are most effective when you include the full name of the person whose experiences the testimonial describes
- Be sure to mention any special certifications, credentials, expertise, or experience associated with your product
- Highlight positive reviews, quotes, and mentions of your product from reputable outside sources
- Always, always include a real contact address complete with address, email, and phone number; this reassures prospects that you are indeed a real person and not just another scammer on the Web
Unfortunately, true honesty, integrity, and authoritative knowledge are quite rare on today’s Internet. For every one person like you who is focused on making a legitimate business out of your efforts, there are dozens (or more) of people out there focused on finding new and creative ways to scam unsuspecting prospects out of their time and money.
When you firmly establish yourself as being honest and authoritative regarding your product (beginning early in the sales page and continuing throughout the sales page), you dramatically increase your potential results.
INSPIRE WITH BENEFITS
Your prospects aren’t going to fall all over themselves to make a purchase just because you have a great product or service; no, you have to capture their emotions and inspire them to take action by describing and emphasizing the most interesting and positive benefits they will enjoy after they buy your product or service.
Benefits are quite different from features; a feature is some attribute or function of a product or service, while a benefit is some advantage, help, or aid that results from owning and using the product or service. The key to presenting benefits successfully is to identify which ones are most important to your specific prospects and then emphasize them from highest priority to lowest priority.
Research tells us that people reading Internet sales pages do much more scanning than reading, so if you want to capture attention and clearly communicate benefits of your product or service, then you need to present them in a bullet point format. For instance, let’s say I want you to know my product has many benefits, such as being easy to use, increasing your vocabulary, and improving your writing skills.
Can you quickly and easily find the product benefits written in the paragraph above? No, of course not. Now let’s try it in a better and more effective way.
My product has many benefits, such as:
- It’s easy to use
- It will increase your vocabulary by at least 15%
- It will improve your writing skills by at least one full letter grade
See the difference? The bullet points make each benefit stand out more clearly to the readers, making it easier to catch their attention and tap into their emotions.
Don’t be afraid to include a long list of benefits as part of your sales page; think of each and every thing you can, right down to the smallest little positive outcome you can figure. Once you have your list, put the benefits in order of priority with the highest priority coming first. This way, your prospects will read the most powerful benefits first and also have an easy time scanning through the entire list without taking too much time or effort.
INFORM WITH FEATURES
Think about the last time you went shopping for a bicycle. You probably looked at a number of different factors when comparing different models; most importantly, the specific features offered by each model. Items such as the number of gears, the type of brakes, and the type of seat are all examples of important features you looked at and considered.
The same holds true for your product or service; you have to include information about the features (and sometimes specifications) offered so that the prospect will know exactly what they are getting when making a purchase from you.
When you communicate the features well, your prospects get the kind of details they need to make a buying decision. This is why you need to be as accurate and as thorough as possible. You’ll gain two advantages by doing this:
- You will increase the conversion rate from prospects to paying customers because your sales page will provide the detailed information needed to demonstrate the value of your product and entice the prospect to make a purchase.
- You will receive fewer complaints and/or requests for refunds because customers will know what they are getting in advance and there will be no unpleasant surprises for them.
In most cases, you’ll want to list the features in the same basic format (bullet points) as the benefits we talked about in the last section, but with a few minor changes. Because the features represent the details of your product or service, you’ll need to use more text to describe everything clearly. You may need to use sub-bullets to get all of the information in there without becoming too text-heavy and hard to read.
Everybody likes to think they’re getting a good deal when they buy something, but exactly what goes into a good deal can vary a lot depending on the product, service, and situation. In most cases, though, the best way to increase the value of something so that prospects see it as a good deal is to add in some sort of extra bonus.
This strategy is used all over the place. For instance, if you buy cable television, chances are, your service provider has a number of different “packages” available with various combinations of channels and services; each package is offered at a price that’s lower than if you were to buy the individual services separately. Another example is when you purchase a combination meal at your favorite fast food place; the cost of the meal is generally less than the cost of each individual item purchased separately.
The same approach works very well when it comes to Internet marketing and creating an Internet sales page. You want your prospects to be strongly enticed to purchase the main product or service, so to sweeten the deal a bit, you offer an extra bonus item. Maybe it’s an ebook written on a similar subject or perhaps it’s a “special edition” version of a poster, print, or the like. Whatever it is, when you offer an extra bonus, you make it harder and harder for the prospect to walk away without making a purchase.
The best bonuses are those things that customers would very likely be willing to buy separately from your main product; adding bonuses like these to your main products is what makes your offer appear to be such a great deal to them. Just as importantly, the best bonuses are those things that cost you as little as possible to provide. By keeping your costs down, but still adding value for the customer, you increase customer satisfaction and increase your profits at the same time.
No matter how much (or how little) you pay to get your hands on the bonus items, always include a specific value for the item when you’re promoting it on your sales page. Why?
Take a look:
- Buy my ebook today and get this special workbook for free!
- Buy my ebook today and get this special workbook (a $50 value) for free!
Which one of these is the most compelling offer statement? The one with the value attached, of course. It’s just one more way to remind your prospects that making a purchase from you is not only an excellent decision, but an excellent value for their money as well.
