Introducing Daniel Lizurek Bring Business in Like Clockwork

[Christian Stock]

Ruth - I hope your still reading this. To answer you 'under construction page' follow this link:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11 ... oon-pages/

What I'd do is keep it simple, have a teaser headline to evoke interest and ask for email addresses!

[Daniel Lizurek]

Hi Daniel

A bit late to join the conversation, but I hope not too late. You got some great tips.

Here's a tricky question, which you may or may not have the answer:

I have to admit I am growing a bit bored with the conventional sales letter approach (ie long sales copy page) to the point where a long sales letter can make me leave a page. I may be an odd case as I've seen A LOT of these pages, but I feel there may be a danger that such pages are becoming too common to be effective.

An alternative approach is something like MailChimp, who use bold headlines and very well written short copy and effective graphics to drive visitors. Maybe this is a bit similar to what Frank Kern (to mention a name) does with simple landing pages that only feature video and a call to action.

My question:

Have you done any research into this or have any numbers which compares the classic long sales latter approach to the more modern short bold & big landing pages?

Hi Christian,

Great question. In one word - TEST. You need to test to see what will work for your market since, unfortunately, there is no one universal approach that works for everyone. Having said that, whatever works for you today, then it probably won't work as well 3 months or 6 months from now... welcome to the Internet! To help you figure out what sales copy (long vs short) to use for your target market you need to understand the level of MATURITY of the market. You must figure out how much people KNOW about your product and how much they’ve been TOLD about similar products and how much they CARE about both. That should help you understand what length/type/tone of copy should produce best results. Then you need to test your assumptions. In my experience, and by working with some of the best marketers in Australia, long copy usually out-pulls short copy AS LONG as it is well written and focuses on the reader... Even if you use a short sales page to capture people's emails... you still need to follow through with more emails/sales letters/etc. before you can make a sale... Hope that answers your question.

Thanks!
Daniel Lizurek
Linguistic Sales Strategist

[Daniel Lizurek]

Christian, that link you shared with us is a great resource of ideas... I had a brief look, and found an interesting comment by a reader there, I quote:

"Some great design points there but you forgot the number one rule of Coming Soon pages. Don’t let anyone see it twice. There’s nothing that puts me off a website more, even before I’ve seen it, than constantly being confronted with a coming soon page for months. It’s very important that people remember that a coming soon page is not a temporary/replacement site. Every effort should be made to get your project/site up and running asap because people won’t wait around on the Internet for too long and someone else will surely build it faster."

Well said.

Thanks!
Daniel Lizurek
Linguistic Sales Strategist

[Christian Stock]

Thanks very much Daniel. I guess you have a very good point about target audience. Much appreciate your input.

Christian

[Daniel Lizurek]

Clients change over time, and so do their needs.
You have to change with them - or risk losing them.

Thanks!
Daniel Lizurek
Linguistic Sales Strategist