Boosting Sales with Letter-Style Pages!

Online copywriting guru Nick Osborne tells why the long, single-page approach might work better, regardless of what you're selling.

We have all seen those long, scrolling sales pages on information-product websites.

We have scrolled down those twenty screens of breathless text, reading about how we can make $50,000 by dinner time. "If Dolores from Widget City, Ohio did it, you can too!"

To web designers accustomed to creating a more sophisticated look, these long pages reek of the hard sales pitch.

And it's true, they are designed to sell. They take their form and approach from the world of direct marketing.

While we may accept that these long sales pages seem to work just fine for selling a certain type of impulse purchase, very few of us would consider taking the same approach with our blue chip employer or clients.

After all, part of a web page's role is to support the brand and credibility of the company.

Perhaps we have been too eager in our judgment...

Before we are too hasty in dismissing the letter-style, long-copy approach, let's take a look at why they work.

First, forget the types of products you have seen sold in this way. Imagine a very every-day kind of product, like a lawn mower.

On a conventional web page we might see a few images of the mower, maybe a hundred words of text and then some links to details on other pages, like the specifications of the engine.

Now think about the single-page approach.

Here are three reasons why the long, single-page approach might work better, regardless of what you're selling.

1. Copy length is no longer constrained by design

If you are selling something to a consumer that costs more than a hundred dollars or so, you need to give them sufficient reason to buy. In other words, the opportunity to write longer copy will give you the freedom to say more, for more detail visit www.sales-letter-secret.com use examples, share testimonials and generally paint a much more detailed, attractive and compelling picture of that lawn mower.

A single page of long copy frees you from worrying about how many words will fit into a fixed design template. You can write as many words as it takes.

2. The single column format holds attention

When you write "letter-style", you are writing in a single column format, from top to bottom.

If you write well, this gives you a tremendous advantage over traditional web page designs which tend to fragment information across two or more columns and multiple pages.

Whenever you fragment the information your reader is looking for, you run the risk of losing their attention. They grow tired of "searching" for information by scanning separate blocks of information on multiple pages. When you write in one fluid flow, for more detail visit www.the-gurus-apprentice.com from the top of the page to the bottom, you stand a much better chance of holding the reader's attention from beginning to end.

3. Your sale pitch unfolds in the best sequence

This is a close relative to point number two. When you write in a single column, and you write well enough the hold the reader's attention, then you are in complete control of the sequence of the sell.

Any sales person will tell you that there is nothing haphazard about the sequence in a strong sales pitch.

When you write a "letter" within one column you get to control that sequence.

With fragmented content, you don't.

4. You get to write in a more personal voice

If you take the letter format literally, then you are, indeed, writing a letter.

And when you do that, you can speak in less of a formal, commercial voice and more in your own voice.

This personal writing style can be enormously powerful when trying to close a sale.

To see what I mean, go through some of the direct mail you receive. Read through some of the longer letters.

You'll see how the writer has taken advantage of the letter format to write to you one-on-one. It works.

And while you're reading those letters, pay particular attention to the ones from credit card companies, banks, publishers and insurance companies.

Many of these are blue-chip companies. But they still write those long direct mail letters without any ill-effect to their brand.