1. Don't clutter up your site with lots of content.

If you are selling something, you are not really that interested in people just reading what you have to say. You just want them to get to your site and make a decision quickly, either to buy or not. Also people won't spend time reading lots of words; they will quickly become bored and move on anyway. In this case, do as I say, not do as I do. My site is full of useless narrative, and I must get round to cleaning it up. Look at successful landing pages, most of them are one pagers, so copy that format for your own site.

2. Make sure your sales message is visible

As explained above, your visitors only have a short attention span, so make sure that they can't miss your sales page, if it's not the landing page, or the action you want them to take.

3. Make sure your sales message is understandable.

Use short, plain words, so that your visitor knows exactly what you have to offer. You know what you mean, but your reader may misconstrue what you are saying. I have often misread a price as a one-time payment, when in fact it is that amount per month. Of course that may be intentional on the part of the site owner.

4. Keep pumping your strongest benefit

Following on from the point above, repeat your main sales message 3 or 4 times, so that the reader cannot miss it.

5. Have lots of breaks between your line of text

Notice how this article is split into lots of paragraphs with short sentences, with hardly any words with more than three syllables. People don't read individual words, they read chunks of words. If that chunk is too big, their eyes will tend to go to the next paragraph break, and therefore miss most of what you have to say. If you are using Microsoft Word to write your sales page, use the Flesch reading ease indicator on the Tools - Options - Spelling and Grammar - Show Readability statistics.
This article comes in with a score of 75, which is excellent. Anything above 60 is good, the closer to 100 the better.

6. Make sure your site shows people what they expect to see.

If your method of traffic generation suggests that your site is about a certain subject, don't make your site deal with another subject. For instance, if you write an article about archery (with a link) don't let that link go to a site about gridiron.

7. Don't use lots of formats

You want your site to have a coherent look, so always use the same font, but change the sizes. Make all your bolded text the same colour (usually red).

8. Use words that are in general use

Don't use jargon or technical phrases. The internet is for the use of the public, who have different levels of education - you must appeal to them all. Don't make them go scurrying for a dictionary if there is a word that they do not understand. They probably wouldn't anyway; they would just click away from your site.

9. Make sure your key selling points are not buried in the text

The whole point of a sales page is to sell something. Therefore make your benefits stand out from the rest of your text. Use bold fonts, different colours, italics or underlining. Make sure your customer can't miss them.

10. Use emotive words, not purely factual ones.

Limit your factual words to statistics, like how much you've made in the past month or year etc. Use emotive words when describing the benefits of buying your product or service. Paint your customers a picture of what their life will be like if they decide to purchase. Use phrases like “freedom from your day job”, “permanent holidays”
If you are running a money making site virtually every visitor will be looking to make a full time income from the internet, so show them how they can achieve that goal.

As a final word, keep your site simple, with lots of spaces and colours. Think about what your visitors are expecting when they come to your site, and fulfil that expectation, and you won't go far wrong.

© Peter Phillips