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I am constantly bombarded with
all sorts of advertisements, single-page sites, and sites
offering very little real content but some wonderful new
"product" or "service" for sale that
purports to make its customers wealthy beyond their
wildest dreams.
For the purposes of this
article, let's refer to Amazing Formula (http://www.amazingformula.com)
as an example of such a site. (Note: I have never
purchased this product and can make no claim, verification
or guarantee one way or the other as to its effectiveness.
The sole purpose of my mentioning this site is as a study
of the ad copy within.)
There isn't very much in
terms of "content"; the marketing of the
"bribes" is confined to a single page, with a
hyperlink to "testimonials" which may or may not
be legitimate. Yet, this site has been around in some form
for nearly four years, according to The Internet Wayback
Machine (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.amazingformula.com),
with the same basic "content" and no significant
updates. Why? Because it works.
What makes this website and
others like it profitable, even without a significant
content update in 4 years? The sales copy. The sales copy
of this page uses simple, but effective techniques to
trigger the user into buying the product, in this case a
CD-ROM indicating how to sell anything to anyone at any
time. Let's look at some of these techniques now.
That's right, I, Adam
Senour, am going to give away millions of dollars' worth
of secrets to you and I'm going to do it WITHOUT CHARGING
YOU A SINGLE RED CENT!!! No e-books to download, No
expensive CD-ROMs to purchase, No courses to subscribe to,
NOTHING! You too will be a website copy writing genius,
able to sell your goods and services at will!
Short paragraphs. Users
traditionally don't wish to read long blocks of text. They
like information concise, simple, and to the point.
"You"
words/second-person perspective. This is arguably the most
misunderstood and underrated aspect of copy writing. When
reading sales copy, users are looking not for general
information on the product. They want the answer to one
simple question: "What's in it for me?" Using
words such as "you", "your", and
"yourself", while being generic in nature, go a
long way toward establishing a website rapport with your
customers.
Bold, Underline, Italics.
Highlighting important phrases with bold, underline, and
italics allows your customer to quickly scan and decipher
the nature of your copy and the key elements of it. Bold,
underline, and italics can be used in conjunction with
colour to further distinguish vital elements of your
marketing message.
However, it is strongly
advised that you use bold, underline, and italics
sparingly in order to ensure that only your most important
points are receiving the full attention of your customers.
Use bold, italics, and underline sparingly.
The colour coding of
important words, and the selection of those colours.
"Cool" colours such as Blues and greens are
traditionally used to relax the user and put him/her in a
positive mood conducive to sales; and "hot"
colours such as reds, yellows and oranges are meant to
incite the user into making a purchasing decision.
Headings and subheadings.
Headings and subheadings should be used to break up long
blocks of text into shorter and easier-to-read sections.
In the case of the Amazing Formula website, graphic
headings are used to break up the content; however, for
search engine reasons, you may wish to consider text-based
headings to split up your content into sections.
Bullet lists. These lists
can be numbered, as this one is, or they can be unordered,
as the Amazing Formula ones are. There doesn’t seem to
be much difference in either event, as long as the copy
for each bullet remains concise and to the point as in
point 2; although the unordered list bullets can be
stylized with graphics, as the Amazing Formula website has
done.
A call to action. What do
you want your customer to do? Where would you like them to
go next? Give your customer at least one clear and
understandable path to follow to make the appropriate
action.
In the case of the Amazing
Formula site, there are not one, but 2 "Click to
order via our secure server!" buttons as well as an
order hyperlink in the menu on the top of the page. The
garden path, albeit a very short one in this case, is
clearly laid out for the customer to follow.
These are the seven secrets
of The Shriekers. Implementing them on your website should
lead to a significant increase in sales and profits.
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About
The Author
Adam
Senour is the owner of ADAM Web Design, a
leading web design and development company
in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Visit http://www.adamwebdesign.ca
for more information on ADAM Web Design
products and services. |
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