The most effective landing pages follow these four checklist items
Have you ever seen a sales letter that included a bulleted list of items… and the last item in the list said, “and much, much more?” Well, here’s a news flash…nobody with an IQ higher than room temperature believes that there is “much, much more.”
If you actually have more benefits or features, put them in the list.
Clear language and good grammar are part of good storytelling and so is telling the truth. Don’t try to bamboozle your prospect with tired ad copy clichés. Use words that speak to them. Identify their pain-points and try to solve them with the copy that sells your product.
After you’ve written the sales copy for your landing page, take a look at this check list and see if you’ve tackled every item that defines an easily understood landing page.
1. The sales letter uses clear language and good grammar.
If you sell information products, whether in print or online, you’re in the direct response marketing business. It doesn’t matter what your product is, if you can’t describe its features and write glowingly about their benefits, you can’t sell it effectively.
This also means that your spelling and grammar is correct. One misspelling on a landing page can ruin the credibility of your product in an instant.
This also means that you need to label everything the way it’s meant to be labeled. It’s understood by everyone on the web that when a word is blue and underlined it’s a hyperlink and clickable. It’s also expected that graphic buttons are clicked only to initiate processes, such as “Click here to join!”
Violate these familiar navigation standards and you go against the norm, taking visitors out of their “comfort zone” and perhaps detracting from your website’s credibility.
2. The sales letter avoids terms not commonly understood by the target user.
Your sales letter needs to make sense to the person reading it. Many landing pages use way too much jargon in their product descriptions. Don’t think only of the person who already knows what you’re offering them, but also of the person who still has yet to learn what you’re trying to sell them.
Conversation, storytelling and simple words can go the furthest in the copy for your landing page because you’re forcing them to leave your page in order to Google all of those funny words that aren’t part of their vocabulary yet.
Determining common labels among web users can be easy and absolutely free. Simply check your website’s search logs to see what terms your visitors are using to find information that isn’t easy to find from the homepage.
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3. The sales letter uses “power words” to create excitement and urgency.
If you are an experienced direct response copywriter, you know that “you” is generally considered to be the most powerful single word, ranking right up there with free, new and save.
Used judiciously in online copywriting, power words can grab a reader’s attention and help communicate and persuade. But they are not a substitute for formal structure. Good online copywriting requires an orderly format that moves the reader along to a purchase decision.
Power words can be, well, powerful, but they do not work without context. Power words in online copywriting need to be used in cooperation with all of the other tools in the copywriter’s bag of tricks.
In addition to using convincing power words, urgency is also key. Using phrases like limited time, right now, don’t miss out and good only until [DATE] are an even more convincing way to guide your user to the “buy” button.
You won’t find many effective landing pages out there that miss the boat when it comes to urgency. The folks at QVC have mastered this technique by letting viewers know on a constant basis that supplies are going, going, gone!
When you sell digital products, you have to find more ways to convince people that if they don’t buy right now, that they might not get this chance again.
4. The sales letter terminology is consistent.
Good writing is consistent in the use of spelling, abbreviation, terminology, grammar and punctuation. Web copy is no exception. Does consistency matter?
Definitely, because inconsistency confuses readers and makes you look uncertain of what you’re doing. Words drive the brain. Good copywriting compels the reader to take action. Form follows function.
Once you’ve written your sales copy, pass it around. Give it to someone who does not already know the product and ask them to answer the following questions:
- Do you know what this product is?
- Do you know what it can do for you?
- Do you have enough information to make a purchasing decision?
- Do you know how to purchase this item?
If they can’t answer these questions, then take another stroll through this checklist and determine how you can improve.
