When you’re selling information products online, the sales letter for your product is one of the most important pieces of the system. The more effectively your sales letter converts visitors into buyers, the more money you’re going to make. It’s this process of converting visitors (or traffic) into buyers that we call conversion.
Today I want to share with you some of my techniques for boosting sales letter conversion, so you can try them out if you’ve already got a sales letter online. If you haven’t you’ll want to refer back to this post as soon as you’ve got your first sales letter ready, or before you get started on writing it.
Just a quick note, that as with all tweaks and changes on your sales letter, you should test them to see what works for you. Not everything will work the same in every niche, so that’s why it’s so important to test what works for you. I’ve included some information on testing towards the end of this post.
Graphics Tweaks
1. Headline
This may seem obvious, but you should have a clear headline at the top of your page. In my tests I’ve found that red (color code #c10000) can work very well, and also headlines in black can work well. You should also test having quotes at the start and end of the headline as this can also give a little boost in conversions.
2. Subheadlines & Images
Using images and subheadlines is a great way break up your sales letter without distracting from the main message. Many people will not read everything on your page, so by using things like subheadlines and images, you can reset the attention of your visitors and get them focused on particular areas of the sales copy.
3. Add Bullets
Bullets give you an easy way to summarise benefits of your product easily. Notice that I said benefits and not features – it’s important to focus on what your product can do for your prospect, rather than what the product actual contains.
Bullets are also great as they allow people to skim-read your benefits and see what your product can do for them, without having to read all of the copy on your sales letter. This means that if you have a good set of bullets that really sell the benefits of your product, you can often grab someone’s attention enough for them to purchase.
4. Keep Fonts To A Minimum
I’ve seen some sales letters that use a horrible amount of different fonts. This distracts the visitor, makes your copy hard to read, and it usually doesn’t flow well either. I would recommend sticking to 2 or 3 fonts maximum. For your main sales copy I recommend either Arial, Verdana or Georgia font faces. Try bold Sans-Serif fonts like Helvetica for your headlines.
5. Remove Navigation
Your sales letter should have minimum navigation on it. If you do have to have a navigation bar at the top of your sales letter, ensure it’s easy for people to get back to your sales page from all other pages they are linked to, and don’t have any external links.
I recommend adding a footer navigation on your sales letter which includes things like your privacy policy and disclaimer notices (consult a legal professional for that sort of stuff) and also you may want to link to your affiliates page and support page from the footer navigation.
6. Order Button & Order Form Links
Many people do not include an order button on their sales letters, and only use a text link. You should try and make it as easy as possible for people to see your order button, and also make it as enticing as possible. Using a button like the “belcher button” can give your sales letter a bit boost. I know it’s pretty ugly, but you should definately try it as it’s been proven to work across a lot of different niches.
You should also consider adding links to your order box or button from other parts of your sales page to encourage your visitor to take action. You can do this by adding an anchor link to your order button from other text links on your sales page.
Sales Elements
7. Use Proof Elements
You should always backup your claims on your sales letter, and provide proof where possible. This builds trust and adds to your credibility. Include screenshots where relevant, and video proof is even better.
Another important proof element is social proof, in the form of testimonials. Video testimonials are the optimum option, so if you can get any kind of video testimonials from your buyers, include these on your sales letter to really boost conversions. Audio and test testimonials also work great, but try and include photos and names of people where possible for the testimonials.
Note: Due to new regulations in the USA, some forms of testimonials are no longer allowed, so I recommend checking with a legal professional before adding testimonials to your sales letter
8. Include a Guarantee
Using a guarantee is a great way to boost conversions. Including a 30 or 60 day money back guarantee will give your buyers more confidence. If you’re confident in your product, you shouldn’t be concerned about offering a guarantee, and selling digital products means you have no fulfilment costs anyway so it’s much less hassle if you do have to refund.
9. Use Video
Video is one of the most powerful ways to boost conversions on your sales letter. Video sales letters are now being used more regularly to do the main selling on a sales letter, with the text copy reinforcing the message of the video sales letter. You can also use video to add product demonstrations, or personal introductions to your sales letter, which will also boost conversions.
Other Strategies
10. Have a Good Story
People love to read stories, and if your sales letter has a good story to it, it is much more likely to hold your prospects attention. The best sales letters take people on a journey, and they become engrossed in the story and want to see how things work out – all the time being influenced and becoming more sold on your product.
So if you have a good story about your product, or about the conception of your product, use it in your marketing.
11. Use Scarcity
Scarcity can be a huge conversion booster. Here are some ideas for adding scarcity to your sales letter:
- Limit the quantity of your product available
- Limit time your product is available for
- Limit your bonuses after a certain time, or after a certain number of purchases
These can all add urgency to your sales letter, but it’s important that if you place limits on your sales letter, you follow through with them, or you will hurt your credibility in the future.
12. Strong call to action
Telling your visitors what you want them to do next on your site is an important part of making the sale. You need to have a strong call to action on your page which your visitor to click your order button or whatever they need to do next. You may also include a discount within your call to action – for example: “click to order now and secure your 30% discount”
13. Add Live Support Chat
This isn’t perhaps something you’ll want to consider to start with, but once your business grows and you have started to build a team or even have one virtual employee, it might be worth testing out having a live chat application on your sales letter. This allows a visitor to click the live chat button and you or your employee would be alerted with the question or message from the visitor.
This can establish a lot of trust and people can see you’re a real company ready to deal with questions, which can go a long way to securing the sale. This is also something you might want to consider just during a launch period when you have more people coming to your site and your attention is focused on sales of your new product.
14. Add address and phone numbers
If you can include an office address, or even a phone number, this can build a lot of trust with your visitors, even if they don’t plan on calling you. Some people are still conditioned to think that doing business online is risky, so by seeing a phone number on your sales letter (probably towards the bottom of the page after the order box), you may find you’ll boost the confidence in your offer and your website.
I don’t recommend just giving out your personal number on your website, the safest thing to do is purchase a special number or redirect number for your business so you have full control over it and maintain your privacy.
15. Remove Sales Letter “Leaks”
Your sales letter has one main focus, that is to sell your product. You should not have any distractions on the page which may distract a visitor from the main sales message. I often have had clients come to me asking if they should remove Adsense advertising from their sales letter – my answer is always YES! So ensure you have no unnecessary links or distractions on your page that do not fit with moving people through the sales process.
16. Test Everything
I left testing until last as, strictly speaking, it’s not really a specific conversion booster, but this is where you can really make the difference to your sales letter conversions. By testing all of the changes you make to your sales letter, you can establish what is working best for your site, and ensure you are continually improving your conversions.
When you are testing anything on your site, you should make big changes first. By doing this, you can immediately see a positive of negative impact, and then gradually refine the changes, making smaller changes as you go. You should also focus on testing one change at a time, because you may otherwise not know which change made the difference on your page.
The easiest way to test your sales letter is by using the Google Website Optimizer. This free tool allows you to split test different versions of your sales letters, and the system has a simple step-by-step process to help you get started. Essentially you have to create two versions of your sales letter, and test which page converts better by tracking hits to a success page from each page variation. That is a very simplified version, I recommend checking out the tool for yourself and seeing how it works.
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I hope you’ve found these sales conversion boosters useful, try some of these strategies on your sales letters and let me know how they affect your conversions – and as with all of these, don’t assume you know what your visitors are going to do as they will often surprise you, which is why testing is the key.
If you have any other conversion boosting tips, I’d love to hear them – leave a comment below!