5 Tips To Improve Your Web Site Conversion Rates If you want to increase the conversion rates on your web site or mini site, take a look at your sales letter. Often site owners spend more time worrying about how the letter looks than what it actually says. If that sounds like you, then here are some tips that can help give your letter back its power: 1. Beef Up Your Headline A good headline is worth its weight in gold. It’s the first thing your customers see and it needs to get their attention. To find out if your headline is doing its job, ask yourself these questions: Is it specific to the product or service you offer? Is it big and bold? Is it a complete message in its own right? Does it make a promise or invite the reader to do something? Does it engage the reader and make him want to read on? If the answer to any of these questions is NO, then you’ve got some work to do. Spend time making your headline as powerful and direct as you can. Otherwise you could be losing customers before you get a chance to introduce them to your product. 2. Address The Customer If someone were to walk into your house and ask about your product, you’d have no trouble explaining it to them. You’d probably ask them to sit down and have a friendly discussion about it. And yet when we write about our products on the web, we forget about the customer. But without him, your business is doomed. So write your sales letter with the customer in mind. The simplest way to remember this is to remove the words I, We, and Us from your text and replace it with the words You and Your. Naturally if you’re telling the customer a story, you’ll probably want to tell it in the first person. But make sure you preface it with references to the customer, to get him involved in the letter and give him a reason to read on. For example: “If you’ll give me 3 minutes of your time, I’d like to show you how you can create your own ready-to-hang artwork WITH THE TOOLS YOU ALREADY OWN!” 3. Keep Your Language Simple When someone arrives at your web page, they need to feel welcome and relaxed. They should read your copy and feel like you’re talking to them on their own terms, in language they can understand. Even if your site features the latest information on brain surgery or quantum physics, it’s not going to be of much use to anyone if no one sticks around long enough to read it. Try to use a conversational tone, as if you were chatting to a relative or a friend. Where appropriate use contractions and natural forms of speech, just as you would in an everyday conversation. These tactics help put the customer at ease and reassure him that you’re not talking down to him, that you’re treating him as an equal. One way to test your copy for its suitability is to read it out loud. If you notice any words that stick out or that you stumble over rewrite them until the whole thing flows smoothly. 4. Make It Easy To Read When your letter is completed, take a look at it. Don’t read it, just look at how it sits on the page. Is there plenty of white space? Are there enough subheads or headlines to guide the reader’s eye? Are your paragraphs too long? Do your bullet points go on forever? You might think these things are the graphic designer’s job. Not true. YOU decide how the letter should look. He can decide which fonts to use or what colors or graphics to include. But you should always be in control of the words. When in doubt, follow Hemingway’s advice: Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative. You may have written the best sales letter of all time. But if you haven’t made it easy for the customer to read, it might never get the exposure it deserves. 5. Highlight Benefits, Not Features In a sales letter, features have no meaning. A customer doesn’t care if your product is state-of

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