1. Your sales letter needs a hook at the top of the page. Don’t make visitors scroll down the page to find out if you have a solution to their problem. Internet users have countless options for how to spend their time online. If you take too long to get to the point, visitors will take their money somewhere else.
Your headline will make or break you. Tell visitors immediately about the benefits of buying your product
or service. Get right to the point. Make sure visitors don’t have to scroll down the page to find out what the benefits are. Make sure they see it on the first page view.
2. Focus on a single action you want the reader to take. Resist the temptation to talk about Step Two—your sales page should only have a Step One. Write down the action you want visitors to take. If you can’t describe that action in a couple of words—one brief sentence at the most—you need to sharpen your focus.
3. Keep your paragraphs short. Endless blocks of text aren’t fun to read, and they’re hard on the eyes. Your paragraphs should contain no more than three or four sentences. Make sure you have enough white space around each paragraph. This makes reading easier and more pleasant, enabling you to pull the reader along to the end. An occasional paragraph with only one sentence helps to draw the visitor’s attention to your most important content.
4. Vary the length and type of sentences in your sales letter. Few sentences should contain more than twelve or thirteen words. Nothing causes visitors to abandon a site more quickly than sales copy that drones on and on as if it had been written by someone who just wanted to get the job over with. Long
sentences should be followed by short sentences to keep readers on their toes. Try it. It works. See what I mean?
5. Short words are better than long words. Less than 20% of your words should be three syllables or more. Don’t tell prospects how their lives will be improved by utilizing your product. Let prospects see themselves using your product. Never finalize something—finish it or end it.
Shorter words are almost always more powerful than their longer synonyms. They sound truer, too. When speakers want to hide behind their words, they use the longest and least familiar words in the dictionary.
Foggy language kills your conversions ratio. The problem is that even when you have nothing to hide, people will automatically think you’re trying to cover something up if you let fog creep into your copy. Be yourself. Customers want to trust you.
6. Use verbs in the active voice. Don’t tell prospects how their lives will be improved by your product. Tell them how your product improves lives. Keep adjectives and adverbs to a minimum. Delete almost all words ending in “-ly.” Don’t overdo the superlatives. Cut down on “-est” words.
7. Use bullets. Bullets are the best way to guide the reader’s attention. Bullets also help you focus your writing. Bullets are the perfect format for writing sentence
fragments, and fragments are often easier for the mind to digest. Bullets are the best way to emphasize key points or action steps. Indenting bullets also helps to break the monotony of endless blocks of texts. This refreshes readers and pulls them along to the end of the sales letter.