Let's face it, we only have so many visitors. And many of us struggle to gain the visitors we have. We work hard for the hits. No doubt about it.
So it only makes sense that we squeeze everything out of the hits we do get.
Don't you agree?
Today I wanted to cover some powerful and often simple ways you can increase your conversions.
Let's dig in...
When you are creating sales copy for the internet you need to make it simple. Most experts will tell you to write on a 6th grade level.
This is in no way a blanket statement saying every one surfing the net is not to bright. It’s a fact because; it’s how most people talk to each other on a regular basis. Normal every day conversation.
When was the last time you used big fancy words when you chit chatted with your friends?
I’m sure there are some folks that use highly educated chatter when in social situations, but they are sure not the majority.
You also have to remember, not every web surfer has gone to college or is a literary genius, I fit into that class myself. To cover your bases you need to write at a level every one will understand.
Do you want to lose potential customers, only because they couldn’t understand what your trying to say on your sales pages?
Of course not.
The use of simple language also makes for easier reading; your visitors don’t have to think when they are digesting your content. Have you ever read something and had to think while reading? How to pronounce a word or figure out its meaning?
It’s too much work. It will be easier for your visitors just to move on, away from your pages.
It takes all Kinds
There are buyers at every level of intelligence. A high school drop-out can buy just as quickly as a noble prize winner, actually probably more likely.
The best way to write anything you want others to read is to write as though you are talking to a friend, you could even imagine a friend sitting across from you as you tap the keys.
Copywriter Great John Caples said this on the subject:
[intense_blockquote] “Simple language is no resented by educated people. And simple language is the only kind most people understand. When you read over your content, say to yourself, “Will this be understood by my barber or by my mechanic who fixes my car?”.”[/intense_blockquote]
Emotional Words - Interesting Copy
Beef up your content so it is compelling and interesting to your visitors. How many folks are going to stay around and read your content and take action if they are bored to death?
I know for myself, the biggest reason I leave a web site is when it’s boring.
What about you? Don’t take my word for it, think about it for a moment.
The same goes for any reading really. As I write this I am in the middle of a copywriting book from a very well known copywriter. Even though I have a huge thirst for this information I have had a hard time staying with the book. Why? Because it turned boring. The information is incredible, but it’s not written with enough emotional or interesting writing. I’ll get through it, but it’s no fun when it turns into work.
Few examples of emotional words: inspired, amazed, delighted, reckless, brave.
Do you want your readers to feel like they are working when they read your writing? Course not, no one does. It makes matters worst when they don’t know you or did not come specifically to read your works.
Your soul objective is to get your visitor to read your content or get them in the frame of mind that they want to buy what you are selling or promoting. Even if it's to sign up for your list. You want to get them to take action and make the decision and follow through.
One of the most famous Copywriters, Joe Sugarman’s boiled down process, is to get the reader hooked with each sentence so they move on to the next.
Suck them in...
The headline draws them in and gets them to read the next sentence, and so on, moving through to the end, to the call to action, or as long as it takes to get them to take action you want them to take.
The way to keep them reading is of course to make it interesting. Boring writing won’t keep them scrolling, it will only push them to move on to your competitors site.
I personally believe that humor helps, it is even said that each time you get the reader to laugh, even a chuckle, you reset their attention span. Although, some copywriters disagree and others do use it as a tactic.
The late Gary Halbert often used humor, though maybe not intended, in his sales copy. Of course testing will sort out the truth.
Benefits Not Features
What sells products is what it can do for the buyer. You need to sell the benefits not the features. Sure you've heard it many times before, What's In It For Them.
What is the difference between a feature and a benefit?
A feature of a diet pill might be: “Lose 5lbs With Our New Diet”.
The benefit could be: “How Sexy You’ll Look in that Black Dress After Losing 5 Pounds”.
While both are pretty stimulating, wouldn’t you agree the second one is more compelling?
You need to remember, people yearn to be popular or look good. The incredible growth in plastic surgeries proves the fact. Or they want to be rich, have all the fancy toys. They want to lose weight, or have long flowing beautiful hair. (wouldn't mind some hair myself, doesn't have to be flowing). The list goes on as to the hot buttons for your visitors.
You need to show, with emotion, how the features of a product or service helps your potential customers or leads get what they want. What they really want.
Presentation
There is no doubt that presentation makes an incredible impact. How your web site and sales page look, or your optin box, project an image of you or your business, good or bad.
I am not saying you need to be a high end design web designer, nor do you need to hire one to do such work. I am saying, put some thought and effort into the look of your web properties. It can and usually does pay off in the long run.
These days, there is no reason to have a low quality web presence, no matter your skill or knowledge.
Pretty as a Picture
For example, WordPress blogs have literally 1,000’s of themes that are simply plug-in-play, any one could create a professional looking blog with a few clicks of the their mouse.
The same goes for a regular, every day website. There are numerous places on the internet where one could find more than an ample supply of designs, most all are quite easy to use.
Think of your website or blog as a real brick and mortar store. If you were a customer, would you walk into your place of business? Would you be leary to make a purchase? Would you trust YOU?
Why should online be any different than offline?
We all form an impression, often even sub-consciously, when we go to a new place of business or website. The old saying about first impressions, you only get one chance, so you better make it good.
Would you be jumping to buy something from a store that looked like it was decorated by a run-away twister?
I’ll be the first to admit I have purchased from terrible looking websites, but not that often.
As I said you do not need an award winning web site, quality content will often over shadow a less than stellar design. Still, there is no reason not to have a neat and tidy site.
Images
While some of the highest pulling sales letters in history have had no images or graphics, they should not be ruled out. If anything they can make up for deficiencies in other areas.
Do you have a picture of yourself on your website or in your products?
If you do not, then why not?
Say Cheese
One of the things your buyers wrestle with is trust, you know they are already skeptical, it’s a given, so they are thinking, can they trust you. It’s your job to do everything you can to show them they can trust you and they are safe to make a purchase with you.
One way to do that is show you are a real person, you are real, not some fly by night scammer.
Believe me, I am not crazy about having my picture taken, and they never seem to look good, but showing my mug shows I’m real.
Another even more important way to use graphics is in a way that shows the visitors the product in use, or better the reward of using the product or service. This can be very effective.
Your Gonna Be a Video Star
You could go one step further than a picture of yourself. A video builds even more credibility. With a picture, you could have gotten that from anywhere, it might not really be you, for surfers that think that way, as some do.
With a video, you are more than some picture, your talking to them. Full color motion, flesh and blood.
Another advantage of using a video of your self, is that you could do more selling. You can express your passion for the product or service. This comes across more powerful than words or pictures ever can.
An inexpensive web cam can create some quality videos you can do right from your computer. Be sure to check the resolution or mega pixels before purchasing a web cam, the higher the better.
Why do you think SO many sales letters are only video's these days? Because they work.
Testimonials
Here’s the grand daddy of all conversion tactics, well pretty close anyways. A testimonial can speak volumes for your product because it is seen as an un-biased endorsement for your product from another customer.
Testimonials have proven to increase sales. Some of the most successful ads in history have been built entirely on testimonials.
The best testimonials are the ones when a customer tells or shows exactly how the product has helped them.
Instead of, “This is a super duper product”, a much better and more powerful testimonial would be such as “XYZ helped me make $35,000 this year with three clicks of my mouse!”
The more specific you are, the more useful and powerful they will be.
Take testimonials one step further by urging your happy customers to provide a audio testimonial, a real persons voice stating how good the product or service is.
Better yet, put your testimonials on steroids, gather some video testimonials and you’ll add so much to your copy and increase your chances of conversions 10 fold.
Discover how to get more Testimonials with our Simple Testimonial Mastery Report.
Almost unbelievable
It’s a fine line which most marketers some times cross over to the dark side, with unbelievable claims.
You need to make you claims that border just on the edge of being almost unbelievable, but to the customer, it is still possible. And I don't have to tell you, that they need to be true.
$1,000,000 a year would seem impossible and unbelievable to most people, where $30,000 sounds much more achievable.
If you hype your sales copy to much, do you think your prospects will believe you? If they don’t believe you, do you think they will buy from you?
Some copywriters are of the mind that you shouldn’t need any hype to sell your products, hype free selling.
In my opinion, it depends on your product and how well you can write your copy.
Bottom line, don’t make promises your product or service can not keep.
Professional Copywriter
I’ll be the first to tell you, copywriting can be an art and can take some time to learn. I don’t mean to say it’s not possible to write copy that sells without extensive training or experience; I am just saying it might not be a big hit your first time out.
Experience is the key word, along with testing. Any sales copy needs to be tested to verify it’s results, which is where the experience comes from.
Calling all Experts
With that said, you could take the easy and much quicker way out by hiring a professional to write your sales copy for you. While it may cost a few bucks, the right copywriter could provide you with almost instant sales. Almost like money in the bank.
Even a professional produced sales letter will need to be tested, but usually they will pull well from the start, least they should. Do your research before hiring any one. I am amazed at how many people give strangers money without doing the research. Believe me, I’ve seen it many times, too many.
You can also create your own compelling copy with our video series: Online Copywriting Pro
Testing and Tweaking
Small improvements can create Huge Gains. Increase your conversions from 1% to 2% and you’ve doubled your sales.
To really know how well your selling letter is converting you have to test. You already know that, but are you doing it? Every one talks about testing but it seems few follow through and actually do it. Guilty myself.
Many people say they don’t have enough traffic to test, not true. If you don’t have that avalanche of visitors beating down your doors yet, you can still start by testing the most important parts of the sales process. This allows you to test only a few variations so you do not need as many visitors to provide usable data.
First and foremost is to test your headline, or test different versions. The headline is the first thing your visitor see and most likely the biggest reason for them to stay on and read more or leave all together. After all it your headline doesn’t grab their attention, they will not be reading the rest of your content or copy.
If you want to write powerful Headlines, Check out our Free Report: Powerful Headline Writing Forumlas
Another important part of your sales copy that needs testing is your call to action. You could have written the best copy in the world, but if you don’t have a strong call to action, you could be losing sales.
Strong Call To Action - Reasons To Buy
I am referring to your buy action or buy copy, where the visitors click to make the purchase, or to simply sign up for your mailing list.
Surprisingly some marketers do not put much effort into their call to action.
You need to actually tell them what you want to them to do.
“Click here to order the XYZ E-book Right now”. Would be a simple pitch, but still tells the reader what to do.
You could also use interaction for more of a commitment from the visitor. Some ideas would be checkboxes like this:
Yes Jim, I Want my Personal Copy Of XYZ!
You could also offer a reward for purchasing, such as a limited time bonus.
There could be a price reduction if they order immediately.
Putting up Limits
Limiting the number of copies being sold could be another enticement for the visitor to make the purchase. A time limit could work as well. Retail stores use this tactic often, such as a one time sale, or holiday sale. Count down timers are perfect examples for the web.
Often membership sites will have a member limit to push sales.
And for heavens sake, make the purchase process as easy as possible. Look at many of the big sellers on the net using such devices or easy ordering such as “One Click Ordering”. They do it for a reason, to make it super-simple brain-dead easy for customers to give up their cold-hard cash.
Infomercials are famous for… “Order within the Next 5 minutes and We’ll throw in _____”. Why? Because it works. They will often pile on bonuses, such as doubling or tripling an offer.
Much can be learned from watching infomercials. Companies pay big money on television commercials and infomercials… because they sell crazy amounts of products.
Mistakes
Here are a few mistakes people make when writing content or creating sales copy that you might want to stay away from or at least, keep in mind as you create.
Big blocks of text
Who wants to read a big long block of text? No one.
I see many blogs with this problem, it’s like one extra long super boring sentence, that seems to run on for pages. Think about it for a minute… do you get all excited to read a page long area of text? To readers, your making them work.
Break up your writing into two to three sentences at a clip, make it quick and easy to read and you’ll get and keep more readers. This can also be beneficial for those that scan pages.
Justified text
Actually this is one I just learned about not too long ago. If your not sure what I am talking about, I am talking about when the text lines up straight on the right and left, like a newspaper column.
I use to justify the text in my e-book, I thought it looked so professional. Thought I was so cool, but not for long. A Mentor of mine called Joe Vitale enlightened me in one of his books. He explained when you justify text, it’s like a big block, like I mentioned above, to your readers it looks like “work”.
Who wants to work when they read? It changed my formatting style pretty quick.
So often, it’s the little things we don’t think about.
Traffic leaks
Surprising I don’t see this one too often but it does happen. On your sales page, landing page or squeeze page, the action that can be taken is to click the buy button, or enter their email address, or to simply click a link. Give them reason to leave, such as links to other sites (including social sharing buttons) and they just might leave, never to return, ever again.
There are some links every site should have, such as an earnings disclaimer, affiliate or support links, just make sure to place them at the very bottom of the sales letter. They are still accessible, but not distracting, not drawing them away from the copy until they have read everything.
Hey, what a minute, that’s more than 10. Dang it. Guess that's your bonus for the day.
Well, that pretty much covers everything I wanted to get across. The rest, of course, is up to you. Not one of these tactics will help your sales or put more subscribers in your autoresponder account, unless you put them in practice and use them.
I also created a PDF, your welcome to download here:
10 Simple Tactics For Increasing Conversions
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you have anything to add?
Be sure to leave a comment below.
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To your success,
