The Axandra newsletter archive

11 February 2003

This week we're continuing our series that tells you what you can do to get a better visitor/sales ratio.

You know that a high ranking is important to get high quality targeted traffic to your Web site. However, a high ranking alone is not enough.

Many webmasters have the problem that their visitors don't buy something on their site even if the way the visitors reached the site indicates that they're interested in the products.

For that reason, we're going to tell you in a five-part series what you can do to improve the effectiveness of your Web site.

PART 3: How to write a good sales copy

Last week, we told you how to keep visitors on your site. This week, we're telling you how to convince your visitors with a good sales copy.

As soon as people are on your Web site, you must convince them with a good sales copy. Always remember: People aren't necessarily interested in your product or in your company. You have to fulfill their needs if you want to sell them something.

1. Know your product

Before starting to write sales copy, be sure that you know your product and that you're passionate about it. You have to fully believe in your product. If you don't, you shouldn't sell it. You cannot write convincing sales copy if you don't stand behind your product. You must be sure that you're doing your customers a favor by offering them your product.

2. What's in for your customers?

Your customers want benefits. What can your product do for them? What can it do for them now?

The benefits of your product should be the first words on your site. Make them bold and make them big. If your visitors don't know what's in it for them after the first few seconds, they'll leave your site.

People don't read everything on your page. They scan it for interesting information. Grab their attention with benefits.

3. Don't mix up features and benefits

You must differentiate between features and benefits. Features are the attributes of your product, benefits are what your product promises. For example, if you sell a solar-powered clock, then the feature is "runs without batteries". The benefit to the buyer is "you save money because you don't need to buy batteries anymore".

Don't bore your potential customers with technical details. Tell them what your product will do for them. How they will feel when they tried your product. Maybe your product or service will make them more money, maybe it will save them time. Tell them and don't be shy.

4. Be nice and trustworthy

Your customers must trust you. They won't buy from you if they don't. On the World Wide Web, you cannot speak face to face with your customer so you have to establish credibility in other ways.

The most common things to establish trustworthiness is to offer a free trial and a money back guarantee. Use testimonials. You must literally speak with them in your sales copy. Write with a natural style. Don't try to be over friendly. Just write it the way you'd say it to a potential customer face to face.

Make sure that customers know that a real person is sitting behind this Web page. Include your full contact information on your Web site and make it easy to find. If your visitors don't know from whom they will purchase and how to contact you, they won't buy anything. Show your privacy policy.

5. Killer headlines will grab your visitors attention

Nobody will read your entire page. Make it easier for your customers by dividing your page into paragraphs where each paragraph has a headline. Your headlines should make clear what to expect in the next sentences and they should grab your visitors' attention.

Use words like "free, proven, benefit, first, discover, complete, exclusive" and avoid words like "should, could" and "but".

Be sure that you use "you" more than "I" or "we". Remember: Your customers don't really care about you and your business. They only want to know what's in for them.

6. This site will be gone tomorrow!

Not really. :-) However, urgency sometimes helps to improve the performance of your sales copy. Make a special offer for the first 200 subscribers, add a special bonus if people purchase this month or until midnight.

7. End your sales copy by telling the reader what to do

At the end of your copy text, you must tell your visitors what to do next, e.g. "Download a sample chapter" or "Click here to order now for immediate delivery".

Use the tips above to write as persuasively as you can, but remember not to deceive your customers in any way. You'd risk poor word of mouth, legal action, no repeat business and refund requests.

Next week, we're telling you how to guide people through your site so that they do the right thing: buy your product.

* Overture increases minimum bids by 100%

Overture wrote in an email message to their advertisers that the minimum bids will be raised from 5 cents to 10 cents.

"Listings from 5 cents to 9 cents will be grandfathered in for the time being. Historically grandfathered 1 cent to 4 cent listings will be moved to the new grandfathered minimum bid of 5 cents effective March 29, 2003.

Any changes in bids for your listings will result in your minimum bid moving to 10 cents."

Overture UK has also doubled its minimum bid, to 10p.

* Yahoo is testing new layout with paid listing boxes

Yahoo is displaying boxed links from Overture along the right side of result pages, a format that is similar to Google's AdWords.

Until now, Yahoo has displayed 3-4 sponsored text links at the top of the result page. Now they're displaying up to ten boxes.

* Overture won deal over Google

Overture announced an exclusive two-year deal to provide paid listings results on the popular sports site ESPN.com, which is part of the Microsoft Network.

* New PPC search engine partnered with AltaVista UK

Thomson Directories has launched a new UK pay per click search engine called WebFinder.com. The WebFinder.com results will appear on AltaVista UK and Freeserve, a popular Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the UK.

Search results for unsponsored listings are provided by Inktomi.

* Financial news

Both Overture and FindWhat have reported profits in their fourth quarter results. Lycos cuts 21% of U.S. staff.

* "A Nation of Voyeurs"

The Boston Globe Magazine reported in their latest cover story how Google is changing what we can find out about one another - and whether we should.

* "Google-Opoly: The Game No One but Google Can Play"

This article from the Slate magazine gives a good summary about the SearchKing vs. Google lawsuit.

"The legal question is whether Google's lead in the search-and-ranking business gives it unfair dominance over every Internet business [...]"

"Since no business is interested in being ranked 370th on Google's list, earning a top-rank on Google is the Internet equivalent of printing money."

* Do you want to get better responses to your link requests?

Exchanging links is an important way to get visitors to your Web site.

If you're not getting many responses to your link request messages, you might want to fine-tune your email message texts. Download our (free) ebook and find out what you can do to get a better response rate.

* Web sites we recommend

• How to make your Web site more effective, part 2
  
  
• How to make your Web site more effective, part 1
  
  
• Frames and the NoFrames tag
  
  
• The importance of robots.txt
  
  
• Take care of filter words and stop words
  
  
• Happy New Year
  

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