Want to make $500 bucks this weekend? Sure. So do I.
That’s how I ended up accepting a gig writing a 14-page sales page for an info product. Or rather, I wrote some of it. About five pages in, I had not only exhausted every possible exaggeration I could find about the product but was physically ill at the prospect of working on it. I choked.
Line after line was a version of “And that’s not all!” In the end, I tapped a more seasoned copywriter friend who could be more objective about it and he bailed me out. I did not make my $500.
Sales Pages as we know them are dying.
Well, I’m sure that, like Gollum in Lord of The Rings, the old kind will remain in some grasping, slimy form. But I dare you to find me anyone under the age of 30 who would be caught dead buying something from a page that you had to page down five or ten times to figure out what the heck you’re actually being sold.
It’s like a marriage proposal and a pre-nup on the first date. Whoa whoa whoa there, buddy.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the sales page structure is useful in moving your eBooks. So now what?
Be transparent.
Generation by generation, consumers are growing more cynical. We’ve had a century of increasing bombardment by sales messages. We know what you are trying to do. It’s disrespectful.
I feel respected (and a bit more trigger happy with the PayPal button) when I can immediately see:
- Who it’s for.
- What it does.
- What it costs.
- What you get.
- And maybe, what some other people say about it.
- A Guarantee.
Check out this example for the Escape Workshop in a Box. I recently had the honor of designing the workbook for this product — Pam Slim’s video version of her live workshops. Pam knows, and her readers know, that she always gives good stuff. If you’re still not sure, she offers a guarantee. No tricks, no 18 point red headlines. Simple.
I’m not saying the language can’t be emotional. Headlines are still important of course. But I’m going to bet that 4 out of every 5 of the people who buy from me or you already know and like us.
And authentic.
You might feel, as did until I got on this rant, that it’s all well and good for the Big Guys with Loyal Fans to soften their sell. Us up-and-comers are eager to grasp every little fish that swims our way.
Direct response, “squeeze” copywriting is never going to trump word of mouth. And social media puts word of mouth on steroids. Keep it real.
Here is some related reading along these lines:
- Say No To Squeezing Your Buyers by David Meerman Scott
- Zen Copywriting from Copyblogger
Thank you so much for writing this post! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by “gurus” and “experts” about how I need a super long sales page and I could never get past how annoyed I feel when I have to scroll through miles of copy before figuring out what I’m supposed to be buying.
Nailah
[...] Oh Squeezey Sales Pages, How I Hate Thee! Let Me Count the Ways … [...]
My comment before was simply: Amen.
Apparently, spammers leave one word comments…
So… Just want to say it’s such a relief to have continuing support for transparency and respect.
I want people buying my products because the *really* want to, not because I have manipulated or persuaded them to.
I think there is certainly room for clearly answering every question that might be going on in their head, but squeeze pages? Yuck.
Nicely done.
Kelly, I’m not clear on what you mean by a “squeeze page” exactly. I understood it to mean a page that a lot of your other pages link to, that your email promotions link to, and so on… to sell a product. And a squeeze page typically doesn’t have any (distracting) outgoing links, so viewers really have no choice but to buy or not buy. (Hence the squeeze.)
Is that what you’re talking about? And what is the relationship between squeeze-ness and length of copy?
If you’re just saying cut the hype, I’m with ya. If you’re making an argument for brevity, that’s cool. If you’re opposed to the squeeze concept itself, I’m not sure that’s the case you’ve made here.
I am opposed to the squeeze concept, as I understand it. Which is, funnel a bunch of traffic to a page that is exhaustingly long and confusing and induces a growing sense of panic that your life will be completely unfulfilling if you don’t by Product X.
But the point I hope I’m making is that if you are going to continually attract customers, those customers will eventually be (if they aren’t already) from the younger, web-native generations and if one of them sees a traditional sales page full of screaming copy, you’ll have lost them at “hello.”
Thanks, Andrew. I think I’m just lending my voice to the growing chorus of people who share that feeling.
I have just given you a standing ovation.
Kelly – Great post, and thanks for the link to David Meerman Scott’s post, too. I’m still wavering on this point as I approach my own launch date…. but leaning more and more towards no registration…. Even the idea feels freeing!
I’m now thinking hard on the hybrid approach that DMS suggests – free e-book and then something at the end offering a subscribe…
Hey Kelly, great post! It is definitely a turn-off to see those extremely long sales pages with the red text and yellow highlights. I think we can all stand to learn a few tips from Amazon…provide a brief description of the book with a sneak peek of the TOC and the 1st chapter and then customer reviews. That’s more than enough to help people make their buying decisions. I like the way Escape Workshop in a Box information page is set up, it’s actually giving you information and not really trying to ‘sell’ you. Great job!
+1 to this. I absolutely hate the sales pages that scroll on forever. Frankly, if you can’t get to the point on a product and tell it’s value to the reader in a few minutes, you probably don’t have something very valuable. However, many people still use them, so they either are working, or the people using them aren’t selling, and they wonder why.
I prefer a short video with a few points of copy. Much more intriguing than having to take 30 minutes to read a web page. I tune out on anything uninteresting in < 5 minutes, and expect it's less for many others.
[...] course I was also excited because he recently commented on my blog. So I got up after the session and asked him about the idea of no-strings-attached [...]
I’m delighted to join to chorus of praise for your article. It’s absolutely spot on!
The web pages that make you scroll until you’re sure the page will literally roll right off your computer and onto the floor are annoying. The products being hustled in such a format rarely get my money, and I’m sure that’s the case for many other folks.
Thanks again.
I came across your blog, i think your blog is awsome, keep us posting.
You made some good points here.Keep us posting. What template do you use in your website
You post informative posts. Bookmarked !
People in the world receive the loan in different banks, because it’s simple.
I too like the short and sweet “squeeze pages” (i.e. page with just an opt-in form, for list building purposes, not selling purposes). I just put 2 or 3 sentences on an Aweber form and that’s it for the page. Jason Fladlien’s “Bare Essence Squeeze Pages” was a great help for doing this. I’m not sure it’s so much a generational preference for shorter copy, as it is the fact that over 50% of school age kids are Hispanic now, and the vast majority of Hispanic kids access the internet exclusively from mobile phones. Most don’t even own desktop computers! To reach younger generations, you have to put less “stuff” on your websites and make them mobile-friendly. The cluttered websites littered with Adsense ads (my own personal pet peeve!) are going to have to go away. I rewrote my free giveaway ebook using Sticky Ebooks Formula’s guidelines, and some information I had gleaned from public domain sources (reliable ones). I basically take the new 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and make a simple guide to take someone step by step how to actually *apply* their recommendations. USDA has great scientific research, but a lot of the tools could be improved upon. The tracker tools at MyPyramid.gov are so unwieldy! I feel my “change the world” mission is to take common-sense, scientifically valid nutritional information for weight loss (i.e. provided abundantly by the USDA in the public domain), and reformat it in ways that are more usable/accessible. The academic language the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans almost ensure no one who really needs to lose weight will ever read it! I’m not an RD, and I’m no Jillian Michaels, but as a “reformatter” I think I can make a contribution. (I hope!) Most diet products on the internet promote very faddish methods for losing weight. It’s not unlike the debt consolidation/debt counseling industry. Dave Ramsey, Mary Hunt, and a few others, do very well teaching common-sense debt-reduction principles. My idea (and it might be too ambitious, but I might as well take a stab at it) is to do the same with weight loss. Since the vast majority of my “competitors” are selling snake oil, I can stand out in the crowd by selling information derived from reliable public domain/government sources. Well, that’s stage 1 anyway. Stage 2 will be to translate it all into Spanish as well!
Basically you can successfully differentiate yourself in any niche that is 85% snake-oil-vendors just by selling something you wouldn’t be ashamed to show your grandma. Sweet!