If you sell any products online, you know that writing sales pages can be difficult. You want to convey information about your product in a way that grabs your readers’ attention without seeming cheesy or over the top.
It doesn’t help that there are an innumerable amount of web pages available, all competing for your visitors’ attention. If a visitor to your sales page doesn’t see anything that grabs their attention right away, they click and find another page that does. Studies show that you only have four seconds to get the attention of your visitor. So the main headline must be a real attention getter and what follows should command attention as well.
The Headline
The headline is the first thing your visitors see, and it makes sense to put a lot of emphasis on it. It should be fairly short, preferably sixteen words or less. It needs to include words that draw the reader in. Using the word “you” if possible makes the headline more personal. Words that give the reader a feeling of privilege or knowing something that few others know, such as “discover” and “secret” have been proven quite effective.
Your headline should be in a font that is substantially larger than the rest of the text. Bold text will further increase its visibility. You might also consider making it a different color but it should always be in high contrast to the background and easy to read.
Bullet Points
Bullet points are a good way to keep a reader’s attention once the headline has drawn them in. They can be used for lists of benefits or for lists of problems that your product can solve. Bullet points draw attention to themselves with little effort on your part. But it is still important to give the reader something worth reading within those lists.
Visual Variety
It is of vital importance to make sure that your sales letter is easy to read. One of the most important factors in achieving this is paragraph length. If your paragraphs are too long, your reader’s eyes will glaze over and he will end up leaving. Five lines is a good guideline for paragraphs that will hold the reader’s attention.
Bold and italic text and capitalization are also great tools to provide visual variety and retain the reader’s attention. Just be careful not to go overboard with them. Use bold and italics on no more than one sentence per paragraph and not in every single paragraph. Capitalization should be used even more sparingly, on no more than one word in several paragraphs. Overusing these features is annoying and will drive readers away. Using them properly will keep the reader interested.
An attention getting sales page will bring you more sales than a bland one. It is essential to get and keep the reader’s attention. If you don’t have his attention, you won’t get his order.