Three Readership Tips To Skyrocket Your Online Sales
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Dear Web Business Builder, It they don’t read, they don’t buy. It’s as simple as that. For the doubters, imagine a web page with just pictures. How many orders would you get? Precious few. So today I’m giving you three priceless tips to get your prospects thinking. Huh, I thought you said this was about reading? It is, but here’s the dirty little secret ... Reading is “thinking”, and most people hate to think. Ergo, most people hate to read. Therefore, a big part of your job as a copywriter is to take as much of the “thinking” out of the “reading” as you possibly can. Does that make sense? Say yes. So how will you do it? There are many ways. Here are three I feel like writing about today … Tip 1 – Slice your copy up into delicious looking bite size morsels. Short words. Short sentences. Short paragraphs. Short words are anchored in childhood, before our intellectual development takes place. So they speak directly to our emotions. Bruce Barton said: “no ad can be great that contains anything that can’t be understood by a child of intelligence. Certainly all of the great things in life are one-syllable things — child, home, wife, fear, faith, love, God. The greater the thought we have to express, the more likely we are to find simple words.” The same applies to sentences … A sentence is like a puzzle isn’t it? It must be decoded. And aren’t long sentences more difficult to decode than short ones? Sure. The long ones require you to think, just to figure them out. They add needless overhead, narrowing the mental bandwidth available for your sales message. And they run counter to the pleasure principle, because thinking for most people, hurts. Read this next long sentence and you’ll see what I mean… A sentence is like a puzzle that must be decoded, with long sentences being more difficult to decode than short ones, adding needless overhead, narrowing the mental bandwidth available for the message, and running counter to the pleasure principle, because thinking for most people, hurts. Do you see how much more involving and pleasurable it is reading short sentences? Now paragraphs are another thing altogether. Each paragraph is a decision point. Your reader is asking himself, “Do I really want to tackle this one?” How does he decide? By the look of it of course… Short paragraphs are inviting. They hold out the promise of instant gratification. Long ones are intimidating. They look like work. And who wants that? It’s human nature not to want to start something we may not want to finish. The same goes for paragraphs. It’s also human nature to want to remain consistent with our commitments. We don’t want to stop something we started. The same goes for paragraphs. Do you see the power of the short paragraph, the short sentence, and the short word? Tip 2 – Glue one thought to the next with epoxy cement. Another place where the reader’s attention and interest are siphoned off is between sentences. When one sentence fails to flow logically into the next, the reader must again expend precious mental bandwidth to make the connection. It is easy to assume the reader knows things he does not. And when you do, you lose him by making too much of a leap between one point and the next. Readership is inspired by an orderly march of facts, evidence and reasoning. There is a certain pleasure we take as human beings in putting two and two together. It is an identity reinforcing experience for us. Tight, super coherent copy makes us feel like we’re taking over the process, as we digest its facts and assent to its reasoning. The merit of the argument becomes visible to us, and seeing it, we associate ourselves with it. Our egos are stroked. The same holds true for the overall structure of paragraphs and sections. Give your reader the feeling you’re taking him in a straight line from where he is, to where he wants to go. And finally … Tip 3 – Be brief. I do a lot of critiques, and by far the most common criticism I have is directed at the sheer length of the copy people are writing these days. It seems they feel they need to write a book to sell a $39 e-book online, complete with a 74-word headline. There is a time and a place for long copy, and there is a time and a place for short copy. But there is never a place for copy that’s unnecessarily wordy like so much that I see these days. For copy to sell, every word must count. This is particularly true on the web. People do not have the same attention span online as they do offline. Most are juggling a never-ending stream of e-mails, chats, web pages, and internal documents simultaneously. They’re conditioned to flit from one document to another in a way they would never do offline. And I believe that calls for a whole new way of approaching your writing... Traditional direct response wisdom says you painstakingly explore every single feature, advantage and benefit of the product you’re selling. Or at least as many as you can fit into the medium you’re advertising in. Of course on a web page, there are no space limitations. You can write as much as you want. This is a double-edged sword. It encourages over-written copy that in many cases sells past the sale. Whoever said long copy always outsells short copy was wrong … Now please don’t misunderstand me. I still believe you should fully explore every single nook and cranny of desire for your product, and write until you’ve stimulated it as powerfully as you possibly can. But what I’ve learned through trial and error is that the execution of that copy should be approached entirely differently online than off. Instead of starting with long copy, and then testing headlines and different things to improve the conversion, I’ve been quietly experimenting with a new approach. I take that long copy — and strip it naked — right down to its bare essentials, often using images creatively to slash the number of words to a bare minimum. Then I test that short copy against the long copy. If I’ve done a good job of identifying all of the selling points in the long copy version before distilling them down into the short copy version, I often find the shorter one pulls better. Then I will begin split testing that short copy against various versions where I embellish one element at a time. I’ll add copy to the headline, the lead, or the product description, or the value build up, or the guarantee etc., and watch what happens. Whether you end up with short copy or long copy, packing as much selling power into as few words as possible is one of the true secrets to writing powerful, order pulling copy. One of the best ways to say more with less is to create mental pictures in the reader’s mind. You do this by relating the unfamiliar with the familiar, using analogy, metaphor, simile, and storytelling. Here’s a wonderful example from Masters of Copywriting contributor Harry Bourne … “Every so often — and sometimes in between — Mr. Manufacturer rises to announce that no one reads long advertisements. So the moot question has been and is, ‘How long should an advertisement be?’ Nobody has ever answered that question satisfactorily. Certainly it should be just long enough to carry its objective and no longer. If you can get any satisfaction out of that answer, make the most of it. One way to shorten copy is to shorten the words. Practice writing your headlines and text in words of one-syllable. You’ll be amazed at the strength of your copy. All good writing is distinguished by simplicity. It is the essence of strength. For instance, if you wish to indicate that your material handling machinery reduces the working force from ten men to one, you may choose to say in your headline — “Manual Labor Materially Reduced” or “It Took Ten Men To Handle This Job Before” or “Are You Affected By The National Labor Shortage?” If I had the job I should say, “In Place Of A Gang, A Man!” They are all words of one syllable and make a picture that almost instantly occurs before the reader’s vision.” Parting Wisdom: As direct response copywriters, we should all realize we are very likely naturally biased towards long copy. Being human, it’s very easy to fall prey to our own beliefs, and reflexively do what we think works best, instead of approaching each situation with fresh eyes. Those who refuse to be blinded by convention, and test adventurously, win. For more from Barton and Bourne, click here to check out the Net’s most comprehensive searchable archive of copywriting answers to your most pressing copywriting questions. Until next time, Good Selling! Looking for resources related to this article? Try some of these. Looking for more of Daniel’s articles? Check these out. Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives. P.S. For a limited time, you can now cram your hard drive full of control busting copy at a $100 savings with the Steal These Secrets Swipefile. Stop racking your brain needlessly for creative ideas when you can have a treasure trove of proven winning concepts at your fingertips -- guaranteed to open the profit floodgates -- or your money back! Check it out! Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant & direct response copywriter based in Toronto, Canada and publisher of the world famous copywriting anthology “Masters of Copywriting” featuring the selling wisdom of 44 of the “Top Money” marketing minds of all time, including Clayton Makepeace, Dan Kennedy, Joe Sugarman, John Carlton, Joe Vitale, Michel Fortin, Richard Armstrong and dozens more! For a FREE excerpt visit http://www.Sellingtohumannature.com The Total Package |
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