You make them work too hard

Wow! It certainly struck a nerve last week when I talked about that annoying marketing trick – and everyone agreed that it is indeed a “trick” – of leaving the price off the sales page for a program or a product.

But more so, people expressed their intense dislike of “long sales pages” even more than the pricing trick.

If you missed any of that discussion, you can find the article and the comments here: Annoying Marketing Trick

I hear all the time that people really dislike long sales pages and they usually just skip it all and scroll down to the bottom to see what the price is.

This usually happens when you already know someone, and are familiar with their products. Chances are, like it or not, you probably were hooked by the headline or the title of the product or program.

This proves the point that the headline and the title are absolutely essential to the success of anything you are selling online. Because, truth is, many people will NOT read your entire sales page.

Your attitude towards long sales copy vs. short copy kind of depends on which side of the fence you are on. As a consumer, I, too, am a little put off sometimes by long sales letters, but as a marketer I want to be able to tell the whole story. As a marketer, you’re going to want to tell the whole story, too.

Especially if your desire is to convince someone to attend your program or a live event, but equally so if you want them to buy your ebook or your coaching services.

The purpose of the sales page – whether long or short – is to present ALL of the information that a potential customer needs to make an informed buying decision ALL IN ONE PLACE.

If you recall from my article last week, the offending website for a live event required that you jump around from page to page to page to get all the information one would need to decide, and then they hid the price on a register page/order form.

It’s fine if you want to add multiple pages to your sales page – although they are totally unnecessary in most cases – so long as you still put all the information in ONE place so that people don’t have to work so hard.

It may sound rude to say, but people are lazy; especially in today’s wired world. We want our information and we want it now. We want it laid out before us so we can consume it, make a decision and move on. Fast!

It really is as simple as that.

I’ve never had anyone tell me that they refused to buy something they really wanted because the sales page was too long.

If you are truly interested in something because of a clever and enticing headline or title, you’ll do what most folks do, which is to skip all the parts you aren’t interested in reading – or feel no real need to do so – and get right to the price and the order form.

Your customers are going to do the same thing. So don’t be afraid to include everything you believe your potential customers need to make a decision to buy from you because you’re afraid they’ll be put off by a long sales page (just because you say YOU are).

And remember, there are those folks who WILL read every single word of a sales page, print it out, and compare what you said there with whatever it is they buy from you. Such is the life of the online entrepreneur.

So I’ll just invite you to reconsider your thinking about the long sales page when you are trying to sell something.

Above all else, make it easy-easy-easy for the customer to buy from you. If it’s too hard, they simply go to the next guy.

And, please, please, please! Don’t hide the price or force someone to click through to an order page to find out what it is.

Now that REALLY makes people mad!

So, what are your thoughts on this? Use the comment section below to speak your mind.