Stop Screwing Up Your Sales Letter


"Sales Letter"... that's your web site's sales page. The page with the carefully written copy designed toconvince a visitor that they will benefit from buyingwhat you are selling.

I began direct marketing before the internet and learnedthe basics of mail order marketing. I am glad to saythat many webmaster have adopted the teachings of theold time, direct mail copy writers. They learned thehard way what would sell and what would not.

Mail order means spending thousands of dollars on every mailing. If that mailing doesn't produce salesthere is hell to pay. Copywriters learn fast or they were out of work.

No, much of the writing on the internet is good. Theproblem is most have not learned about basic layout.

Notice how often you see a good sales message delivered in a very small, gray font. It's hard toread even when your nose is almost touching yourcomputer screen.

Many people don't have perfect vision... plus ourpopulation is growing older and seeing well canbe a challenge for seniors. Why obscure your sales message?

People will not work to understand what you are saying. It's hard enough to capture a visitor's eyeballs with a great headline... don't lose them because they have to strain to read the copy. One click and they're gone!

Use a font like Arial... large and black, so it jumps off the page.

Your page is too wide! Your lines too long!

If your sales letter fills the most screen your sentences will be way to long to read comfortably.

The eye likes to scan a few words and then move down to another line. That's what it has been trained todo with newspapers. Newspapers have their text ineasy to scan columns.

Even hard cover books have very readable pages... andthat's about as long as you would want a sentence tobe.

Please, no more small fonts and long, long sentences.

Finally, white only for your background... black typeon a white background.

And, please, never...ever put white type on a black background. If you run a split test you will learnit just does not sell!

Short sentences and paragraphs always. Seldom should a paragraph be longer than two or three sentences.

Paragraphs must be indented. Testing mail orderletter's proved that indenting helped to draw the eye fromthe end of one paragraph to the first line of the next?

and increased sales.

All words, including headlines, in upper and lower case.Why, because that is what the eye is accustomed to seeing.It's not nice to confuse eyeballs!

Everything concerning your sales letter must capture andhold your visitor's interest and attention or your brilliant writingwill fail.

The details discussed here can increase your sales by 3% to 10%or more... so just stop screwing up your sales letter!

Mark Walters is webmaster of http://www.CashFlowInstitute.comand http://www.BusinessOpportunityReview.comYou can contact him at mailto:[email protected] 2005