Even in you keep the sales copy exactly the same, trying a slightly different page
layout can result in a tremendous increase in profitability.
For example, when I first started the SEO Book site, I only promoted this e-book
off to the side. I switched to promoting this e-book on every page right below the
page content posts and overnight the sales more than tripled.
Another good example of how page layout can really make a difference in a web
campaign is Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. During Howard Dean’s 2004
presidential campaign, they used their blog to cast a vote on whether or not their
campaign should accept matching funds. After people voted, they were sent to a
landing page. The first day saw 100,000 voters and raised $248,000.
They looked at the vote return landing page and noticed that the donate button
was at the bottom of the page. They moved it to the top of the page. On the
second day, another 100,000 people voted, but they raised $4,500,000.

Make it Flow

Small sentences and paragraphs with common words make writing flow easily. In
addition, you can make the text easy on the eyes by setting a line height (the area of
a line of text and the space above or below it) to at least 120% of the text height,
and by using the maximum contrast between your text and background.
Since you have no sales person on your site, the text is the sales person. It needs to
answer questions and arouse appeal toward your products.

Sell Upward

McDonald’s asks, “would you like fries with that?” Most major corporations know
it is easier to sell again to a person than it is to find a new prospect. After a person
contacts you or orders something, send them to a thank you page.
Give them small free gifts, strengthen their bond with you, make them feel good
about their decision, or try to sell them something else. It does not need to bring in
money to be a gain. If they subscribe to your mailing list, you have increased your
exposure FREE. Consider giving them options to read other journals that cross
promote you.
Or, you could reference affiliated companies. These links can hold discounts that
appear as gifts, when in actuality, they make you money. I recently purchased ink
cartridges and got 5% off for adding their site to my favorites list. It is much
cheaper to give me 5% off than to try to find me again later. The possibilities are
endless.

Focus on the User

The user focus must be on benefits offered to them. Writing the word you instead
of we is a must. The simpler and easier it is for users to see benefits from an
action, the better off they are and the more conversions you make.
Some techies might like features, but to general audiences it is usually best to rank
your priorities in the following manner:
1. Audience
2. Benefits
3. Features (if you are selling to a techie audience they may want the
features before the benefits).

Make it a Conversation

All the above tips pale in comparison to the following tip:
• Write in a conversational tone, as a person, not a company.
Fake fluffery does not go well on the web. People can smell it a mile away. Since
the Web started as a non-commercial entity, there are certain etiquettes (or
netiquettes) that dictate how we should act. When we go outside these basic ideas,
we not only avoid conversion, but also are likely to offend our readers.
Many of the people who have bought this e-book told me they bought it because I
sounded honest and real. Some of my blog posts are somewhat random, personal,
or humorous, and some people like that.

Rapid Feedback Loops

Blogs and websites such as Epinions and Planet Feedback make it easy for
customers to see what others have to say about you. Google Groups, Yahoo!
Groups, and MSN Groups are additional havens for complaints. A large portion
of the value of the Amazon experience is user reviews and the “X people
recommended blah instead of this” area. People have told me they have bought
my book due to it being mentioned on book lists on Amazon.
Just be honest. If you are not the best, work to improve! Work from your
strengths and focus on something you are the best at. You should also occasionally
look and see what others have to say about your service by checking search results.
If you solve problems and turn complainers into happy customers, you lower your
marketing costs.
Customer interaction should be personal, not corporate-speak driven. Sometimes
you will fall short (as I have many times), but honesty goes a long way. If you find
your way into the conversation and are human about it, you curb the rants and may
even spur on a few people who believe in you. An amazing book on how markets
are conversations is called The ClueTrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, Rick
Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger (ClueTrain is available free online).

Humans do the Buying

Inevitably, it will be human eyes that see your web page. For example, if my first
six chapters had no good advice, you would not read chapter seven.
I am unaware of any automated buying-bots that surf the web just to buy things.
(There are, however, automated clicking agents that defraud people, and the people
who create them should be shot.)

Copywriting Books

How do you write for human eyes? I recommend investing in a copywriting book.
Some of the books I have read are Net Words by Nick Usborne, The Online
Copywriter’s Handbook by Bob Bly, and Persuasive Online Copywriting by Bryan
Eisenberg. Of the three, I most highly recommend the third; Persuasive Online

Basics of Online Copywriting

• Use varying style. Lose the corporate speak.
• Be yourself.
• Make it a conversation.
• Make your point up front.
• Don’t use jargon.
• Use shorter text, or, as E.B. White would say, “omit needless words.”
• Break up text using headers, sub headers, bulleted lists, and other text
breaking devices.
• Stress benefits before features (unless it is a tech-heavy product).

My Trial & Error

I was a “hack-and-go” sort of person off the start. I have re-made thousands of
web pages, most of them by inefficient means. Some of my worst mistakes are:
using frames, trying to become an affiliate of over 1,000 websites, free money
scams, and generally creating garbage without learning about the web.

Business & Change

The Internet is a highly responsive, trackable medium. You should WANT to
change to evaluate consumer response. Successful businesses evolve. Successful
entrepreneurs keep learning. Few sites stay on top forever by being stagnant. It’s
hard to think of change before you even start building your site, but right now I
have thousands of pages that are reminding me of changes I still need to make.

Creating a Site Design

Seth Godin offered me some great advice for site design. He said, “The best way
to make a web page is to steal an outlay idea from another website that is not directly
competing with you.” When you go to make your first web page, do so as a sketch.
After you have a good idea (which is at least slightly different than the site you got
your idea from), recreate your home page as a picture in an editor such as Adobe
Photoshop. From there you can pay a design firm to create your page, or create it
yourself using a program such as Macromedia Dreamweaver.
Software such as Site Grinder and some companies like PSD2HTML and
XHTMLized convert Photoshop images to websites for affordable rates.
If you do not mind using an existing template, OSWD.org is a website that has a
bunch of free web designs you can chose from. Many content management
systems, such as blogs, also have free template galleries. You can start with one of
the designs and modify it to make it look unique.

Crafting Easy Site Wide Changes

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
How do you make it easy to change your site? One simple solution is to use
cascading style sheets to control the display of your information. When the Web
was created, the idea was to keep layout and information separate from one
another. Using external style sheets allows you to change virtually every aspect of
your site by making changes to one file. To do this, put the layout in a sheet called
‘yourchosenfilename.css’ and reference it in your other web pages. A code similar
to the following would go in the head section of your pages.

<link href=”/style.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css”>
For an example of how powerful CSS is, take a look at the CSS house. A couple of
the more popular resources on the web about cascading style sheets are the CSS
Zen Garden and W3 school’s CSS tutorial page. You may also want to view the
official W3C CSS guidance page.

Effects of Change on Branding

On a daily, weekly, or monthly basis you can choose to change your font type,
layout, colors…just about anything. You can do it in minutes and track the results.
Some branding experts, however, such as Rob Frankel, believe that changing too
frequently could hurt your brand.
Make sure you have a distinct idea of why and how you want to change before you
start altering things. If you realize many things are completely broken, then a
complete makeover might be in order, but typically it is best to change and test
only one thing at a time so you know the exact effects of any change.

How CSS Saves Time

You can link each page of your site to an external style sheet to control the display.
Many of the repetitive changes that would be made on every page can be done
simply by changing one file. This may not seem like a big deal while creating page
five or six, but if your site has 200 pages you will be glad that you used CSS!
CSS are not necessary for smaller sites, but are a great idea if you are building a
large content-based site. They also can help to improve the content-to-code ratio.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

Another technique to control the look and design of a site is to use a content
management system. There are many dynamic languages people use such as PHP,
ASP, and ColdFusion. However, most people do not need an expensive content
management system. Before you invest heavily in a content management system
or design, you should know what the goals of the website are. Make sure any
content management system you would consider using produces search-enginefriendly
pages. (More about making a site search engine friendly later.)

I am fascinated by search engines. I can build a site about search engines only
because I am extremely interested in them. Reflecting back upon my decisions, I
would probably be more successful today if I would have picked just a specific
engine (most likely Google) or a specific type and expanded from there.
My general rule of thumb is to search for what you want to promote, using your
favorite search engine. Click on the first listing. If it is not good enough, then you
should be there. If they know more than you, learn from them. If you devote
yourself to becoming a guru on a topic that you already love, there is no reason that
you cannot eventually be the first listing. You are only limited by your own
courage, creativity, and efforts.
You cannot learn too much about something that interests you. If someone
wanted to make a network of local sites, I would tell them to research Craigslist.
You need to know what worked and where your topic has been to be able to do
well with it going forward.