Why Ignoring Sales Page Design Can Lead to Low Sales Conversions

Okay, your copy is perfect now. You’ve spent days finding the perfect order, toiling over the placement of bullet points, red text and yellow highlighting, but even you don’t like the final product.

Believe me, if the page itself is a jumbled eyesore, visitors will bounce before they read what you have to say.

Here are a few tips to make sure that your sales page design makes your words look even better:

1. Sales Page Template

First on the list is the web template of your sales page. If you know about about design, then no problem. If not, there are plenty of businesses out there that sell simple affordable sales page templates.

Surf around the internet a bit and take a look at some of the top selling products. Visit sales pages that you’ve bookmarked in the past. Look for products that continue to sell. You’ll notice that their copy is laid out in a way that complements their product. If your page looks cheap, that’s the impression your giving of your product.

When it comes to sales page design, you really have two choices. You can either get somebody to custom-design a template for you, or buy a ready made version. There are hundreds of them out there, and they don’t cost a fortune.

2. Sales Page Graphics

Once you have the sales page template ready to go, you want to concentrate on the graphics. If you’re selling digital information products, you’re going to need e-covers. If your info product requires a lot of colours, images, and extra elements, it can take hours to create something that looks professional. Packages that include DVDs and other pieces can be even more difficult.

If you’re not good at design, don’t try and create the images yourself. Many design businesses sell prepacked e-cover and product cover design packages that you can customize and reuse. Or, if you’d rather hire a designer instead of fussing with the software, there are many freelance designers that sell e-cover design services.

Just remember, once you have all the elements in place and you finally launch your sales page, you’re goal is to drive visitors to click the “but It Now” button. Opting for an unplanned, badly designed page in the beginning will prevent you from selling your product, no matter how great it is.

3. Customer Testimonials

Finally, there are testimonials. The best testimonials include photos, audio or video. So when you receive a rave review from one of your customers, don’t forget to ask for a photo, snippet of audio or short video. Some folks won’t provide any of those and that’s okay, but the more photos and media you add to your new sales page, the more professional it will look.

Create testimonial boxes that complement the colors of your page and don’t distract the reader. Don’t get me wrong, testimonials are an important selling tool, but boxes that are too large, un-centered and contain garish colors can take away from the sales page copy that you’ve carefully constructed.

So, even if you do only one or two of these simple things, you’ll be surprised how much better your sales page will look. In the process, you’ll get more potential customers spending more time on your page, which will result in more sales.

Don’t underestimate the power of a first impression. It may be the only chance you get.

Pamela Weir is a Content Copywriter. If you are looking for a sales writer with experience creating sales pages, squeeze pages, website content, and press releases, please visit her Copywriting Services page for information.

6 Tips for Conquering Writer’s Block

I am a writer.

And as a writer, I frequently suffer from Writer’s Block.

Don’t get me wrong, when it comes to writing for my clients, I have no problem finding the words, image or emotion that will drive their copy and get results.

When it comes to writing for myself, I sometimes have a hard time establishing a flow. Running your own business can consume your thoughts. It’s often difficult to focus on your own goals when you find it so much easier to focus on someone else’s.

Writer’s Block is debilitating.

One of the techniques I use to get ‘unstuck’ is writing backwards. Not in a ‘zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba‘ way, but in a way that establishes the conclusion first and then works backwards to make each sentence more vague as you reach the end of the piece.

I know, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not supposed to.

While trying to find inspiration, I stumbled on some great techniques for overcoming Writer’s Block.

Here are a few of the techniques that I thought would be most useful:

1. Create a list of the wrong ways to approach or write the project.
2. Sit back and think, what would your favorite writer/hero do?
3. Determine if there is something you can research or learn to help you find your flow.
4. Write from the perspective of someone who believes the opposite of what you want to write.
5. Break the task into smaller pieces. What can you accomplish right now?

By the way, all of these techniques can also be applied to your marketing plan.

If you happen to be stuck and you aren’t really sure what your next move should be, associate some of these techniques with your business marketing plans.

Using these ‘unblocking’ methods might help you gain a fresh perspective of your goals, and drive your marketing energy in a direction you hadn’t anticipated.

What do you do to to energize your flow when you get stuck?

A Writer’s Frustration

Well, I wasn’t going to post about it, but I think I really need to.

So here’s the story…

While doing some online research the other day, I typed in a very popular keyword and took my chance that all the best matches would be on the first three pages of Google. I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to work right? That’s what we all fight for… our great struggle for organic search content.

Anyway, picking a link from the first results page, I read the Meta description and thought I’d stumbled on someone who really knew what they were talking about. I clicked the link and started reading the page.

At first it seemed as though a few words were misplaced, possibly misspelled. Not a big deal. But as I continued on I was shocked to find that none of the words made any sense.

In fact the original article, obviously put through an article writing application or software, didn’t really have anything to do with the keyword that I had searched.

Here’s an example of the core text:

These are ease mostly compounded into digit contract and uncovering a consort that module do this shouldn’t be a difficulty when hunting for automobile shelter policies online. You crapper revilement downbound on the instance you module be intelligent by lettered where to countenance and what to countenance for. A beatific consort module intend you discover of jams and be there when you requirement them. They module provide you automobile shelter prices without making you see same your bothering them by asking.

Can anyone make out what this is supposed to say? Do you think it has anything to do with networking?

The entire blog is like this, an over thesaurus-ized version of the original.

It’s frustrating because here we all are following the rules and working our butts off to do things “white hat’ and within the vague lines, and a page like this gets a good search engine rank. It’s discouraging, and it reinforces a technique that we aren’t supposed to be using.

I’m not going to say who it belongs to or what the URL is because I don’t want to be sending any traffic that way.

I just wanted to share my frustration.

As a writer, I feel cheated.

Pamela Weir is a Marketing Copywriter. If you are looking for a sales writer with experience creating website content, press releases, squeeze pages, and sales pages, please visit her Copywriting Services page for more information.