Muse Landing Pages

[angelmask]

I started thinking about this in Edan's thread about his new muse (congrats by the way), but I wanted to start a new thread to set something like an example (I am so tired of threads that wander way off topic).

Anywho...

Here's what I'd like to discuss/ask/debate....

Is a long, testimonial rich, "wait, there's more... I was once like you" sales letter the best way to convert traffic into a sale?

Seriously- this is how I react when I click on a Google ad which leads me to a page like this.

"Hm... that's interesting, I wonder what it is....
okay... that's a good point....
how can I get it.... how much does it cost...."

keep reading, keep reading....

stop reading/ scroll to bottom to see what is actually being sold, and how much it costs.

try scrolling up, because no one ever puts the price directly at the bottom.

Get fed up.

Leave site.



Am I so incredibly untypical? Is that really the best way to interest people in buying something they might actually want if they knew what it was?

[sub8hr]

I've wondered that myself. I often find sales letters to be way too long. And most often when I scroll to the bottom there's a lot of extra junk and it's difficult to figure out what it costs or where to click to add to cart and check it even.

I see validity in needing a bit more salesmanship than a brief product description when you're buying a product that costs a lot, but I don't want to read a book convincing me to buy a $10 ebook.

[WQFTruckster]

I agree with you. Long sales letters are a turn off for me. So much so that I leave almost immediately upon landing on one of them. Maybe they work for a certain type of customer (Those interested in getting rich on the internet by writing long one page sales letters for Ebooks they throw together in 2 days?) but for me, I would MUCH rather see a more traditional multi-page web site, maybe with a separate FAQ page.

If I'm going to buy something, I'd like more than just a brief description, but give me the bullet points, not your life story.

[lifeisgood]

To be honest I loathe those sites. When I come across one I leave immidiatly.

http://www.clickhereyouidiot.com/

[angelmask]

Anyone have or know of a good (not obnoviously long and crappy) landing page for a single product?

WAIT!

Before you hit "submit"

-I'm not asking, "Is anybody an affiliate for some god-awful eyesore, because I'd really like to waste my time on that."
-I'm not asking, "Does anybody know any e-books I can buy that will tell me how to write landing page sales copy? It would be great if you got paid twenty cents when I click the link, so please pretend like I'm actually going to want to see the schlock you're schlinging."
-I'm not asking, "Hey! Can you please post a completely unrelated link to your own website, I've been dying to know how to get to the website you advertise in your own screen name."

Got it?

I'd like to see (and others would too) a decently good example of a landing page designed for a single (or very limited set of) product(s). Perhaps it's one that actually motivated you to buy the whatever it is.

[blackhatontherocks]

Theres only one that I know of, and that's Tim's very own brain quicken site.


Tbh, salesletter SELL, that's why there used, and internet-marketers are all alike in that they usually resent those sites, I did too in the begining - but the reality is that they work pretty well, mostly because WE ARE NOT OUR TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC.

The only alternative I've seen was with Frank Kern's Mass Control 2.0 Launch where he basically had a video explaining whats in the course and "what it will do for you" (tm) and then a single button (nothing else on the page other than those two elements) leading you to a very short (maybe two additional paragraphs below the fold + one fullscreen 1024x768 browser-window-sized, already counting the order form) buy-now-page with little copy at all.

The video-instead-of-salesletter-thingie as well as the buy now page sadly aren't up anymore, so no link. You can however imagine what I talk about if you look at masscontrolsite.com and think of the same page with a video on the left, the button on the right - and 2 lines of text above it stating "click here to buy" or in previous iterations of the page, "click here to get on the early-bird list and to the site with more free stuff to watch" (which is still up - http://masscontrolsite.com/members/ - and trying hard to look pretty darn unprofessional btw).

So in short, selling one product equals a longish salesletter. I personally found something around 2000 words to be a sweat spot for a certain niche, but that's hardly applicable to any other one.

[DaveCraige.com]

Does anybody actually have proof that sales letters work better than, say an econmerce type of layout?

[Darth Fluffy]

I am pretty sure sales pages work well - especially those on Clickbank marketplace - business and marketing category. ALL those products are total crap, yet sales letters seems to convert well - why? Because if you have a sales letter you can
- LIE
- post fake earnings screenshots
- post fake testimonials from the 'little guys'
- post disgustingly fake testimonials from fellow-gurus who will endorse your product in exchange for money, or your own fake testimonial at their own pervert sales letter

I just finished reading a 50 page, $37 ebook that does very well at CB, it's about blogging, the sales letter has so many fake earnings screenshots that I almost ejected the contents of my stomach through the mouth. This "millionaire" also posted stock photos of a house claiming it's his own, plus photos of expensive cars, but without him in those pictures. I cannot beleive what will people do for money...

[blackhatontherocks]

Depends on what you call proof, I guess.

I can't proof anyone in this forum anything unless he places a certain amount of trust in me - maybe unless I provide account data to all sites relevant to a given conversion process so anyone could track anything on its own.

That said I've seen a couple dozen "page-review" types of videos with guys I *trust* where conversion numbers are stated. Also, everyone from Eben Pagan (whose doing about 20 Million a year with doubleyourdating-products, all even before they had the "check all our products here"-catalogue page on the domain) to John Carlton uses salesletters still to this day, and these guys haven proven again and again that they know what they are doing. Copy what works, refine or throw out what doesn't.

I don't get the comparison between salesletter-stlye and ecommerce-style, though, as I couldn't come up with a likely scenario where I'd actually be in doubt about which type of format I would choose - any examples, maybe?

Basically, the better the copy, the better the conversion rate - there's not much to argue about here. Length isn't as much of an impact factor as is the quality of the actual text and the ability to capture the reader and also create desire for the product in the process, if possible.

The more the people browsing your site are already in a buying mindset, the less copy you need to convince them. But that's like duh, really basic, common-sense stuff. You wouldn't bother reading about how great grocerys are if you, let's say, are already in a grocery store SHOPPING for groceries, right? So no need for a grocery sales letter here, simple shelf will do.

You would, however, probably compare some types of grocery on terms like expiration date, pesticides used to grow the plants, prices etc (which is essentially what an ecommerce-platform does).

Of course thats a dead-simpliefied example, but you'll get the idea. For info products, usually a "convince and create desire by painting pictures of desirable outcomes and associating these outcomes with your product" approach works well, and usually the higher the signal-to-noise ratio you can achieve (I.e. the fewer distractions your site has from the main salespage for your product) and also the higher the quality of the signal (i.e., the overall quality and amount of desire you induce with your copy), the better.

If I've got a couple hundred visitors a day in traffic from "buying mindset indicating keywords" and a lot of different products they are all related and that my prospects could all be interested in, I'm probably more likely to send them to an ecommerce-like site, placing an emphasis on easy navigation and also automated ways to present things people tend to buy together in close proximity. And that's mainly because in this scenario, they don't need to be convinced TO buy, only make a decision on WHAT to buy, and this way I can give them plenty of options without overloading them with different products to the point where no choice is made because making the right one seems impossible.

I might however, go in and later create optimised sales- and landingpages for products that do convert well with longer and richer descriptions, and increase conversion in the process, possibly considering the salesletter-like approach as well.

@Darth Fluffy:
Kudos for having that aha-moment. However, not everything sold on clickbank is crap, first of all because what's crap to you can mean a lot to someone else, and thats only one minor factor among countless others.

I've found 2000$ courses of people I previously respected to be sheer and utter crap, so much in fact that I did deem this much *lack* of content within so many hours of audio and video totally impossible before I witnessed it with my own ears and eyes. I'm glad it didn't cost me the actual 2k to find that out the even harder way, but it's a sad reality that your and my example are only the tip of the iceberg, and from what I've seen, still rather harmless compared to some of the top-notch scams that are out there.

As for derived sales morals - I usually manipulate people as much as I can in my salesletters to make them buy from me - but I also make damn sure beforehand to only sell stuff they are bound to find really useful later on, and give them a very simple and straightforward way to get their money back if they don't.

Cheers,
BHotr

[Caesar_X]

If I've got a couple hundred visitors a day in traffic from "buying mindset indicating keywords"...

BlackHat,

This is an interesting term that I hadn't heard before. Could you talk more about it please? Perhaps some examples of terms, or websites that talk about it?

Thanks,
Caesar_X

[blackhatontherocks]

I got the concept of "buying mindset indicating" or simply "buy keywords" from No.3 in the Resources List of my old thread over here http://fourhourworkweek.com/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=2093.

An indication of buying mindset keywords would be terms like "best prices on" + model-name/number. I.E. if I'm looking for a very general term, like digital camera, I might be just browsing the category, but if I'm looking for great deals on the new canon dx-400c (totally pulled that one out of my a**, no idea if that model exists), I've already moved from the browse-research-compare-stage of the buying process and have gotten much closer to the point where I'll actually make a sale. That's one of the reasons why price comparison pages work so well, because people already looking for prices on specific models of product categories are likely to make a buying decision rather soon.

And thus, if I can get a lot of traffic that's already informed about the product and ready to buy, a comparison/review/e-commerce kind of page might do very well.

You can check out the resource I talked about in the thread mentioned above, the chapter related to this stuff was probably called "keyword types" and should be a subchapter of the keyword research section in the quityourdayjob (free) ebook.

[insidethenewrich]

hey everyone,

just thought i would add my 2 cents to this. sales letters do work. for a certain demo that is. some people need all of that info and want to see the testimonials and such in order to reach a buying decision. when they see all of these "gurus's" with all of their earning statements, hot cars and fancy houses they start to salivate. why? because they dont have it and they want it. aha, what did we just do there? we reached our target market, got them excited and most likely if the price point was correct they hit the buy it now button. some people are turned off by long form sales letters. i totally understand, i am one of them. ironic too since i write them for people! some people just want the "meat and potatoes" for product info and will reach a buying decision. it all depends on who the target is that is going to buy the product. i have had great results doing both for a product. i created a sub-domain for the long form sales letter and pointed the regular domain to the standard website. to digress a moment, i have my own opinion on so called internet "guru's". i wont go into it here but if anyone has any questions or wants to hear me go off on a "rant" send me a message!

[shanerbock]

Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in too.... but I will be very short...

1... Long form sales letters work.... Not always, but they work.

2... Short form sales letters work... Not always, but they work.

3... Test and tweak.

4... Short form requires less "quality content", and more powerful one liners.

5... Long form requires real, quality content to be ON THE PAGE to work best (Usually, but you should test :) ). In other words, give a person a reason to read the letter (nuggets of info they can use right now)...

6... Test

7... Did I mention you should test?


Note: If you are looking for a good short form optin page (not a sales page with a buy button, but an optin) that is easy to tweak, easy to test, and use over and over on as many sites as you want.. you should check out....

http://xiosoftleadgenerator.com/demo/default.asp?x=0&may=yes

(***NOT an affiliate link... although I am an affiliate (because I am also a customer), so if you like this, and you want to acknowledge that I helped you out, let me know and I will send you my link :) )