Are You Making These Seven Fatal Mistakes with Your Website Copy?

People don’t come to a website looking for interesting pictures or cool design elements – they come looking for information.

… That’s why you need to make sure to give them the information they need, in words that catch their attention and compel them to sign up for your opt-in offer or purchase your product.

Too Many Websites Don’t Follow Proven Copywriting Conventions

However, on our journeys through the Internet universe we come across way too many websites that aren’t using effective salescopy techniques to convey the value of their product or service to their visitors.

This applies to professional companies with super slick websites just as much as it…

New FTC Rules on Testimonials and Endorsements

Pay attention if you use testimonials in your salescopy, or if you endorse other people’s products on your blog or website in return for any type of compensation. The FTC has introduced new rules that require more disclosure. The rules go into effect on December 1, 2009.

The rules aim to protect consumers from:

• unrealistic expectations
• unverified results claims
• paid endorsements disguised as editorial content
• endorsements that don’t tell the truth

Here are the basics:

Testimonials

Testimonials turbocharge your marketing. If you can quote happy customers who have achieved great results, it’s almost as powerful as somebody recommending your product to a friend.

And of course you always want to quote…

High-risk words to stay away from.

If a word is hard to pronounce, people will assume that whatever it represents is risky.

This comes from the results of a recent study published in Psychological Science. The subjects looked at  two made-up names for food additives and had to decide which would be more harmful. Another experiment did the same thing with roller coaster names, asking which ride would be more exciting and more likely to make people sick. It didn’t matter whether the risk was something desirable (a more exciting roller coaster) or undesirable (something harmful in your food) — hard-to-pronounce words = risky.

Definitely something to keep…

Use Benefits To Increase Sales

When it comes to your website, the MOST important elements are the WORDS you use to sell your product.

People don’t come to a website looking for pretty pictures or funky design elements — they come looking for INFORMATION.

… That’s why you need to make sure to give them the information they need, in words that catch their attention and compel them to sign up for your opt-in offer or purchase your product.

Unfortunately, when it comes time to writing salescopy (the words on a sales site), so many website owners commit a FATAL mistake:

They focus on the features of their product…

First Things First

You’ve got your site up. NOW what?

"Derek, there’s so many things I need to do to my website… I don’t know where to start! What should I focus on?"

I agree — the list seems ENDLESS!

You need to drive traffic… grow your opt-in list… make sales… improve work on your SEO…

Okay, step back for a minute and realize it’s just NOT POSSIBLE to do everything at once!

So once you’ve built your website, here’s the FIRST THING you should do:

Make your sales process watertight!

There’s no point spending cash on pay-per-click ads to drive targeted traffic to your…

Free Pants

A Quick Lesson in Salescopy for Online Marketing

So the other day a shopping bag appears in our hallway, and on the side somebody’s scrawled in felt pen, FREE PANTS.

Well they might as well have written DEADLY POISON or LIVE RATTLESNAKES.

People would approach this bag and lean over it and peer inside. They’d talk about the mystery of the free pants with other people in the hallway. Were they men’s or women’s pants? What size were they? Were they new or used? Were they clean? Who left them? Why would anybody give away pants?

Nobody knew.

But what was really interesting was that…

Can the comma… enter the ellipsis

Want to get people to read all your salescopy?

Forget about it.

Want to get them to read MORE of your salescopy?

Then make it eyeball friendly… by breaking up your blocky paragraph text with ellipses. These three little dots pack a punch, according to Anne Holland, Content Director of MarketingSherpa.

Check out her blog post here…

Your 10 step rescue plan

Imagine: After weeks of hard work, your website is finally live. You’ve officially been open for business an entire week. And yet you haven’t made a single sale.

Not. One. Single. Sale.

Arggh!

Don’t despair — we’ve all been there before. In fact, it’s one of the most common problems people ask us to solve for them.

Here’s something that’ll help ease the pain of turning a "dud" site into one that rakes in the profits…

You need to ask yourself every single question on the list below, starting at number one. Once you’re able to answer "yes" to all ten questions, I guarantee the sales will come…