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Getting Your Sales Letter In Tip Top Shape
Given that your two biggest ongoing goals as a merchant are to get visitors to your website and convert them into customers, and that your website sales copy is your most important tool in accomplishing this, it behooves us to spend some time in figuring out exactly how you can use your website to increase your CR or conversion rate. The importance of having a top-notch, killer sales letter cannot be over-estimated. Your sales letter is the key element of any successful promotion. It MUST BE POLISHED and PROFESSIONAL and it must be tested and proven to sell. No use spending money and effort driving targeted prospects to a site only to have them lose interest once they get there. If writing sales copy isn't your strong suit, then I suggest you either pick up one of the many courses available that will teach you how, or hire someone to do it for you. Don't pinch pennies when it comes to this crucial task! One of the first things you should do is read all of the articles in this document. They are written by proven masters in the art of writing copy that sells. Don't just skim them. Their wisdom and advise is worth it's weight in gold, and they are an excellent way for you to get a feel for the style and personality of the various masters. Then, after you have read the articles, make your decision as to whether you want to go with a course or hire a professional copywriter. If you opt to go with a professional copywriter, the very best you can get for your small business buck is Michel Fortin. No two ways about it. His specialties are action-driven sales letters, email campaigns and powerful web copy. As for courses, I highly recommend all of the following:
...the list goes on and on... You can find more of these amazing courses, written by the world's foremost authorities on the subject (with full write-ups supplied) on this documents' three pages of Web Copywriting Courses. Okay, let's say, for the sake of moving this tutorial along, that you have your sales letter written and online, but it just isn't doing the job you'd hoped it would. You are making some sales, but you are not converting as many visitors as you would like into customers. What can you do?
15 Ways to Increase Your Web Site's Conversion Rate 1. Change or improve your headline This is a virtual no brainer. By
simply changing the headline of one of his ads, marketing giant Ted Nicholas was
able to increase his sales by 1700%! Of course, this is an extreme example, but
your headline is the easiest piece of your web page to tamper with, and it may
be just a simple matter of adding a benefit or a "how to," or giving
more explicit details of your claims. (i.e. "How To Start Your Own Internet Business
And Make $12,536 In 30 Days!") This includes: The pre-headline, the headline, the sub-headline and the first few paragraphs. Your first 300 words have to captivate your prospect, arouse interest, qualify him or her and set the stage for the sale. Most visitors to your site will read your headlines, skim the first few paragraphs, check out your price and P.S. and either bookmark, opt-in, purchase or move on. So you need to pay special attention to the content of your first few paragraphs. Your best bet is to pull your readers in with a compelling story featuring the main benefits of your product or service - and to hold off on any mention of your offer. 3. Add a Deadline Prospects respond to deadlines because they are afraid of missing out on something. Deadlines are most effective when you provide a credible reason to ACT NOW! For instance, " You must purchase before such and such a date, to take advantage of this special discount, offer, price, bonus etc." A caveat here. I don't know about you, but I am not fooled by the merchants that use JavaScript generators to automatically keep moving the deadline date backward. I think that trick has about run its course, and it is not a wise move if you are looking to establish your credibility. If you are going to go the deadline route, either code a specific date on your page and stick to it - or keep the date ambiguous by saying something like: "this offer will expire in the next 48 hours." 4. Add a Bonus Everybody adds bonuses these days, so much so that if you present an offer without a bonus, your prospects may well feel gypped out of their due. So, just adding a bonus to your offer is not going to increase your conversion rate substantially - unless you make that bonus truly something special. If you have a product package that can be broken down, try taking part of your package and using it as the bonus. This way, it will be seen as a much needed component or accessory, one that prospects will want badly enough to proceed to your order form. Another good idea that clever marketers have used is to create an instruction book for their software and use this as a bonus item. Now, clearly, they would have to include the instructions with their software anyway for their customers to know how to use it, but by building the book up as a bonus item, "filled with insider tips, tricks and strategies," they make it seem like something special that they are throwing in as an extra added attraction. Bottom line? Although your product has got to be there, the better you can make your bonus(es), the better chance you stand of making the sale(s). 5. Change Your Guarantee If your product isn't selling as well as you feel it should, it could be that you are not offering a generous enough guarantee. You really should offer an unconditional money back guarantee. Period. And rather than offering it for a limited period, you should make it for a lifetime, subject to certain limitations. This is not as risky as you'd think, especially if you have a quality product. And it can boost your conversion rate considerably. If you don't have a quality product, don't even bother to put your business online until you do. You'll only be wasting you're time and money. 6. Increase Demand by Limiting Supply It's human nature to want things more, the more difficult they are to get. So a good tactic to boost sales of your product or service is to create scarcity - or perceived scarcity. If prospects think the offer will disappear, and they might never get to participate, they become amazingly motivated to ACT NOW! One way to achieve the perception of scarcity, without actually having to limit your product sales, is to limit the bonuses you give out to a specific number of buyers. Or you might sell only to prospects who meet specific qualifications, even if they're simple ones. People like feeling like they're part of an exclusive club. 7. Offer a Delayed Payment Option A lot of monthly subscription sites are using this technique very effectively now. Basically, you reverse the risk on your prospects by offering a "try before you buy" option. You let them try out your product or service before their card is charged. This works best with digitally delivered products that have a built in expiration date or with subscription services (private websites). If you are dealing with hard goods, you have to factor in the shipping and handling expense of returns. 8. Raise or Lower Your Price If your product isn't moving to your satisfaction, it may be that you are charging the wrong price for your market. If you have a previously existing customer list (to whom you have sold other products), you should have a good feel for what they are willing to pay. How does this product compare to others you have sold? Price it accordingly. If this is your first product, and your product isn't selling, it might be that you haven't properly assessed your market. What are your site visitors like and what are they looking for? Are they bargain hunters out for a great deal? Are they more concerned with customer service than cost? Are they more concerned with prestige than price? Have you deliberately priced low to penetrate the market - perhaps your visitors are mistaking your low price for low quality. Or have you priced high to skim - sacrificing market share for fast profits. Perhaps you have priced higher than your product warrants. Or worst of all, perhaps you have priced somewhere in between, in that nebulous "No Man's Land" because you really just guessed at what you should charge, mistakenly believing that getting the price just right really wasn't that important. TIP: If so, my advice is to immediately remedy the situation by taking advantage of Ken Evoy's nifty "Make Your Price Sell" tool that makes determining the optimal price for your product or service a breeze. As luck would have it, Ken has generously made available a free version of this nifty pricing software, so if and when you have need of it, you can download MYPS gratis by clicking here. 9. Add an Up-Sell "For only $50 more you can get our deluxe gold version, which comes with the following 10 super-bonuses and 2 free hours of professional consultation." This simple, powerful sales technique is called an "up-sell" and will boost your sales even more. 10. Add a Down-sell You can also go the opposite way and add a down-sell, which is a handy trick to use when a prospect doesn't bite on your initial offer. This is often accomplished with exit pop-ups that are set up to catch prospects as they are leaving your site and present them with a last ditch sales pitch. You offer price conscious prospects your product or service ("minus all the bonuses and extras") at a substantial savings over your initial offer. If you drop your offer sufficiently, you can convert a lot of prospects that wouldn't ordinarily have purchased your product with this technique. But the key is to make your down-sell offer appear a real bargain in comparison to the price you are selling your product for on your website. If not, you are not going to get many takers. Remember, these folks weren't sold on your product the first time around. The only thing that is going to sell them on it the second time is the feeling that they are getting a real steal of a deal! 11. Add an Immediate Back-end After the initial sale, any additional sales to a customer are called "backend" sales. If you are marketing online and not going after backend sales, you are missing the boat entirely when it comes to generating the easiest kind of business of all - repeat business. Your customers know you, trust you and are familiar with your company and products. They are more likely to make additional purchases of related items from you than from competitors they have never dealt with before. If you want to get a more bang for your buck right off the bat, you should send off a quick email right after your customers purchase from you the first time. The email would thank your customers for their purchase and encourage them to order an additional product by simply clicking on a link or confirming their email address. Since you already have their payment info on file, it's an easy process and an effortless way to increase your visitor value (which equates to CR). 12. Have an Opt-in Subscription Follow-up System in place If you're not doing this, you're losing out on a ton of business. I'm not going to go into the benefits of having an opt-in list here. If you want to know what they are and how to set one up you can pick up our "Everything Email" tutorial at http://www.everything-email.com. Suffice to say, if you want and easy way to increase your conversion rate without changing your sales letter, simply add an opt-in subscription form, entry or exit pop-up to your site. This way you will be able to collect your visitors email addresses and be able to follow up with them, providing them with more information about your product or service. Each time your follow up, you increase your chances of making a sale. Of course there is a caveat to all of this. You must send your subscribers worthwhile, interesting and pertinent information. So you must spend some time thinking about and preparing a follow up sequence of messages. There is no point in collecting email addresses if you don't have a carefully crafted sequence of messages prepared - and if you are going to send out blatant sales pitches for your product - there is no point in going through the opt-in process at all. Not only will you lose all your subscribers, but you will lose your reputation as a merchant as well. 13. Change the Colors or Design of your Website If your product isn't selling well, it could be that the overall appearance of your site needs some adjusting. Make sure that your color scheme and tone of your site is in line with the personality of your target market. Do not use more than two - or at most three - different colors on your pages, and make sure that those colors look good in all browsers. 14. Increase the readability of your website If at all possible, keep your background white and your text black or a contrasting dark color. Use a consistent font throughout your site - don't mix and match - and make sure it is large enough to be legible. Good standard fonts for read-ability online are Arial, Verdana and Times New Roman. Use consistent formatting on all your pages. Keep your headings and subheadings the same size and text. Keep your borders consistent. If you indent one paragraph, indent them all. Keep paragraphs short so there is plenty of white space to break up the text. 15. Increase the Number of Products You Offer Perhaps the easiest way to increase your site's conversion rate is simply to offer more than one product from your website. This way you automatically up your odds of meeting your visitors' wants or needs. These extra products don't have to be your own. In fact, the best way to go about this is simply to look for complimentary products you can sell on an affiliate or joint venture basis, and then simply ad them to your site as endorsements, pop-ups, pop-unders, banners, exit offers or add them to your opt-in follow-up system. So there you have it. 15 simple ways you can increase your bottom line by increasing your conversion rate or visitor value. The thing to bear in mind is that you must always strive to increase the profit potential of your website (or websites). To wrap this whole thing up let me just say that while the Internet may not make you rich overnight, as some of its more zealous exploiters would have you believe, when it comes to taking a raw idea, researching it, testing it, and rolling it out into a full blown business, there is absolutely nothing like the WWW. There just isn't any other business medium that would allow any of us to go forward with such little capital with such little risk to realize such magnanimous returns!
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