A Copywriting Challenge

[WAHumor]

Can you help make this fly off the virtual shelves?

Or at least into the hands of the right people:





(Please forgive the mess...still setting up the publishing details in XSitePro to load up the "real" one")

[Bensettle]

Hey Dan,

You know, it's really not that bad of a sales letter.

Your opening is superb (I am assuming the mistakes you referred to are common mistakes most rat owners make?)

You might want to test different headlines, though. I'm not in the market, so I don't want to get too specific. But you could say something in the headline about how easy it is for a pet rat to die.

Maybe something like, "Why Most Pet Rats Don't Live Long" or "Why Your Pet Rat Is As Good As Dead The Second You Bring Him Home". I don't know -- but those types of headlines would go good with your opening which (again) is really quite good IMHO. You want to jolt the reader -- so they have to keep reading.

Also, put that picture of the cute little rats either at the very top or to the side somewhere in the copy. You don't want a photo right under a headline like that (there are several reasons why -- but just know tests have shown this to be a big mistake in space ads, at least).

It looks like you could use some more copy -- some more detail. If you can put more bullets in there that'd be good. Read through your book several times and anything that you know will be of great interest and/or shocking to your market turn those into bullets.

You might also want to put somewhere in the copy itself that it has been endorsed by the "American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association". It's a mistake to assume everyone reads testimonials (some do, some don't). But that seems like a good proof element to me (or at least sounds like one -- if not, just ignore this) and you want to make sure people see it. Maybe say, right after you introduce the book, "this is so important it was recently endorsed by the American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association..."

Anyway, there's more you can probably do, but I suspect the above should help strengthen your ad.

Ben

[techshaman]

Hi Dan,

Just found this post and had a few thoughts after reading your sales page.

While I don't have time to get into the content of the writing itself, there are a few obvious things as far as the layout that spring to mind.

You will definitely want to clearly state the price at the bottom before the "buy now" button. It's bad mojo and puts people off if they have to click to see the price and implies you're hiding something, or being dishonest in some way, or trying to manipulate people into buying--not that you are, obviously.

You might also want to more clearly separate your testimonials with a box around them and a light yellow background with black text. It helps break the page up and identifies specific types of content on the page. I can then read the testimonials or the info about the product. (also, if you can add pics of the people for testimonials, so much the better.)

Like Ben said above, I would move the large image of rats a little below the "fold" or at least shrink it. The reason this is bad is that it competes with the headline and detracts from the impact the headline might otherwise have. Also consider making the headline a separate color like blue or red or brown.

The body text is very small. Consider enlarging, adding more supporting smaller images.

The bullets under "You'll discover" should be much larger and bold.

Recap in large text with bullets what you get at the end where you now have plain text sentences in between the "buy now" buttons.
"What you'll get . . . "

OK that's just a quick and very limited review of the big things.

If you're not watching the page with a free program like crazyegg.com to see what people are clicking on, you may get some new insights by doing that.

HIH!

Best regards,
-Zack

[WAHumor]

Take a peek at it so far:





I've done other pages for other things, but never anything like this...it seems harder!

[Bensettle]

You may want to remove the "site map" link at the top, too.

Ben

[WAHumor]

Annoying, huh??

It seems that's an XSitePro thing...I made the changes using XSitePro and uploaded it. It looks right in my cPanel except for in the direct page link.

Working on it!

Anything else?

[Bensettle]

You might also want to put all your text into a box (maybe 600 px or so). That will keep the sentence lines shorter and easier to read.

Like this:



Ben