Are Bottlenecks Clogging Your Sales?

When a sales page is not per­form­ing or if it’s not per­form­ing up to your expec­ta­tions, the worst thing you can do is… nothing.

By tak­ing action and mak­ing changes, you can strengthen your copy quickly and improve your sales con­ver­sions. In most cases, there are rel­a­tively sim­ple steps you can take to alter the copy to improve your results immediately.

The key to this process is test­ing to boost your outcome.

The sad truth is, the vast major­ity of mar­keters don’t test. But if you are test­ing or about to, then con­grat­u­la­tions. Because you’re miles ahead of most peo­ple in this industry.

How­ever, when most peo­ple start test­ing, they imme­di­ately think of some­thing they can add or change. Or they’re con­fused as to what to test, par­tic­u­larly what to test first.

In my expe­ri­ence, I’ve found that the best and most effi­cient ele­ment to test is to actu­ally first remove the things that are stop­ping peo­ple from order­ing. In other words…

… Bot­tle­necks.

Sales copy is a greased slide that should take the reader seam­lessly and pain­lessly through your copy, from the moment they read the first few words to the com­ple­tion of their order. The eas­ier it is to read and take action, the more sales you will make.

Any­thing that blocks or slows down this greased-​​slide process should be eliminated.

There­fore, remov­ing any­thing that causes fric­tion should be your first objec­tive. And do you know what the biggest bot­tle­neck is? Before I tell you, first let’s cover a few things…

The Power of Split-​​Testing

Of course, you’ll want to ensure your test­ing is as accu­rate as pos­si­ble by track­ing your con­ver­sions from unique views, return­ing vis­i­tors, and email refer­rals separately.

If you want to imple­ment all your changes at once, or if you want to test mul­ti­ple vari­ables at the same time, you need to take advan­tage of mul­ti­vari­ate test­ing. Mul­ti­vari­ate test­ing allows you to test mul­ti­ple aspects of your copy, simul­ta­ne­ously, while deter­min­ing which vari­ables as well as the best com­bi­na­tions get the high­est response.

(I use Google Web­site Opti­mizer almost exclu­sively now, and I rec­om­mend it.)

Your first step in improv­ing con­ver­sion may be to review the sales page and elim­i­nate any visual embell­ish­ments or dis­trac­tions, includ­ing any over­sized graph­ics or flourishes.

You’ll find that elim­i­nat­ing poten­tial dis­trac­tions from the read­ing process to the deci­sion mak­ing process will increase con­ver­sion. Once you’ve trimmed the excess that may be imped­ing your results, then and only then can you begin to focus on the copy.

There are three major bot­tle­necks com­mon in sales let­ters that you will want to exper­i­ment with and focus your efforts on. They are, in order:

1. The head­line
2. The process
3. The offer

As one of the vital fac­tors in your copy, much has been writ­ten about the cre­ation of a strong head­line. It must be pow­er­ful enough to be com­pelling to the reader.

But the logic is sim­ple: the head­line is the “on-​​ramp” to your saleslet­ter. If peo­ple don’t read past your head­line, they won’t take action no mat­ter how good your copy or prod­uct is. And the head­line is often if not always the biggest bot­tle­neck in copy.

Some of my mar­ket­ing clients have improved their sales from 20% to 700% by sim­ply chang­ing and test­ing the head­line. (In some cases, it was as sim­ple as adding or remov­ing a few words.) This brings me to an impor­tant discussion.

Don’t Make Assumptions

Recently, a coach­ing client asked me for my opin­ion on this post from James Brausch, where James sub­mits that the head­line is not the most impor­tant part of a salesletter.

Now, I under­stand the mes­sage James is try­ing to con­vey. He makes a valid point.

But some peo­ple might mis­in­ter­pret his find­ings and con­clude that all head­lines are unim­por­tant. So let me clar­ify a few things. James pur­ports that head­lines are not the most impor­tant ele­ments of sales copy because of two log­i­cal arguments:

1. James tested a vari­ety of head­lines, and when “noth­ing­ness” — that is, no head­line at all — was included as a vari­able, it has increased response in some cases.
2. The order link is the most impor­tant ele­ment because, while sales copy can still work with­out a head­line, it cer­tainly can’t work with­out an order link.

First off, James’ premise is right. His argu­ment is based on how ele­ments directly affect actual, bot­tom line results. Are head­lines nec­es­sary to cre­at­ing sales? Of course not. Take away the head­line and you can still sell. But take away the order link and you can’t.

There­fore, order links are, in this com­par­i­son, more impor­tant than head­lines. But if you con­clude that head­lines are unim­por­tant based on this argu­ment, you would be wrong.

(By the way, in recent tests based on an idea I got from my friend Armand Morin, I found that a sim­ple, ugly, old-​​fashioned gray sub­mit but­ton — the browser’s native but­ton — out­per­formed a graphic one by 62%, even over tra­di­tional blue order links.)

But a head­line is the most impor­tant part of the copy, not because it is directly tied to sales but because it is indi­rectly tied to the sales process, i.e., the “greased slide.”

It’s all about fun­da­men­tal mar­ket­ing: it’s the famous AIDA for­mula, an acronym which means “Atten­tion,” “Inter­est,” “Desire,” and “Action.” The first part of the for­mula is the most crit­i­cal ele­ment, because you first need to grab people’s attention.

If you don’t first get their atten­tion, then the rest of the for­mula fails.

The Real Pur­pose of a Headline

A head­line has but one purpose.

The pur­pose of a head­line is to help cap­ture people’s atten­tion. Its pri­mary objec­tive is one thing and one thing only: to get them to start read­ing the next para­graph. (And the next paragraph’s job is to get peo­ple to read the sec­ond one. And so on.)

Sim­ply because remov­ing the head­line wins in some cases doesn’t mean that all head­lines don’t work at all, or that it’s safe to con­clude head­lines are unim­por­tant. Com­ing to that con­clu­sion is pre­ma­ture, mis­lead­ing, even costly.

It’s a cor­re­la­tion, not a cause.

(There is a dif­fer­ence, and I’ll come back to this in a moment.)

First of all, there are many other vari­ables here that are not taken into account:

• For one, the first para­graph — in a head­line­less saleslet­ter — can act as a head­line. Or any graph­ics (with copy on them), pop-​​ups, even the web page title (i.e., the text that appears in the top browser bar) can work as head­lines. Who knows?
• The reader’s mind­set may be “presold” before hit­ting the copy — such as com­ing from an affil­i­ate pro­mo­tion or another site. Even the anchor text (i.e., words linked from the other site). They’ve prob­a­bly cap­tured the read­ers’ atten­tion already.
• If the traf­fic came from a pay-​​per-​​click cam­paign, the ad (i.e., key­words and ad copy) acts like the head­line. Peo­ple read it and want more infor­ma­tion. So if they hit a saleslet­ter with­out a head­line, they’re tempted to read it anyway.
• Head­lines often scream “saleslet­ter!” Peo­ple may be pushed to scan the copy or leave when they see one. Espe­cially if the head­line has the tell-​​tale signs: red color, overex­ag­ger­ated claims, or unnec­es­sary bloat (i.e., need­lessly wordy headlines).
• Finally but most impor­tantly, they may not be tar­geted at all. Untar­geted traf­fic is often the biggest rea­son for copy to fail. But if they are tar­geted, a head­line may push them away. (Bet­ter said, a poor head­line will.)

Bad Head­lines Are Bottlenecks

While the head­line is the most impor­tant part of the sale­s­copy, it may also be its biggest stum­bling block. Because if peo­ple can’t read past it, they won’t read the rest — no mat­ter how great the copy, the offer, or the prod­uct really is.

So remov­ing a head­line in some cases may be like remov­ing the bottleneck.

As Dan Kennedy once said:

“The truth about long copy is that, first of all, there’s abun­dant, legit­i­mate, sta­tis­ti­cal research, split-​​testing research, to indi­cate that vir­tu­ally with­out excep­tion (…) that read­er­ship falls off dra­mat­i­cally at 300 words but does not again drop off until 3,000 words.” — Dan Kennedy in a Tim Paul­son Interview

In this case, Dan was talk­ing about long copy in that, if peo­ple are tar­geted, they will read it. All of it. But if they’re not, they won’t even get past the headline.

How­ever, Dan’s asser­tion applies to head­lines, too. In other words, if peo­ple are tar­geted and the head­line is right for them, they will read the rest. But if it’s wrong, then the head­line will actu­ally push peo­ple away. The head­line thus becomes a deterrent.

Nat­u­rally, there­fore, if the head­line is poor (and all other head­lines being tested are poor, too), then “noth­ing­ness” can cer­tainly win in this case because you are in essence remov­ing the bot­tle­neck — but you’re not nec­es­sar­ily remov­ing the cause.

Chances are, if a really good head­line was even­tu­ally found, it might win over “noth­ing­ness.” And I admit that, in some cases, find­ing the per­fect head­line might be a chal­lenge. So remov­ing the head­line can be an obvi­ous and imme­di­ate solution.

But it can also be the result of not hav­ing enough traf­fic or time to test more head­lines, or sim­ply being too lazy to come up with bet­ter ones. The lat­ter is often the case.

(My friend, top copy­writer Brian Keith Voiles, often talks about brain­storm­ing up to 100 head­lines or more before set­tling on the one he likes. You should do the same to fig­ure out not only the best head­line but also which head­lines to test, too.)

Causal­ity Vs. Correlation

Now, let’s go back to some­thing I men­tioned earlier.

There’s a dif­fer­ence between “causal­ity” and “correlation.”

In plain Eng­lish, it means that the win­ner in a split-​​test may be rel­a­tive. The win­ning vari­able may not have directly caused the boost in response. It may have won because other vari­ables tested weren’t good enough to pro­duce a bet­ter result.

If “noth­ing” was used as a vari­able and won, it is pos­si­ble that it was because the ele­ment tested was redun­dant and unnec­es­sary. But it is also pos­si­ble, and more than likely, that it may have been because all other vari­ables tested were bottlenecks.

In this par­tic­u­lar case, I believe — this is just an opin­ion — that remov­ing the head­line was not what caused a saleslet­ter to out­per­form. It was sim­ply the lack of a bot­tle­neck that led to the copy out­per­form­ing with “noth­ing­ness” in the end.

Specif­i­cally, all the other head­lines it was pit­ted against in that split-​​test were either not the right ones for that mar­ket or they were poor head­lines to begin with.

But com­ing to the con­clu­sion that remov­ing the head­line — any head­line, for that mat­ter — is the cause of your sales copy’s boost in response is premature.

For exam­ple, if you drink orange juice every day and you don’t have can­cer, does that mean that drink­ing orange juice pre­vents can­cer? If you used to have can­cer and you clip your toe­nails every day, does that mean clip­ping toe­nails cures cancer?

Obvi­ously, that’s an assump­tive leap, and it’s wrong. There may be a cor­re­la­tion there, but it’s likely not the cause. You need to con­duct more tests, dig deeper, and add more vari­ables into the mix to pin­point and val­i­date the cause.

And that’s the case, here.

No head­line win­ning in a split-​​test doesn’t mean that the lack of a head­line caused the copy to pull more. It may sim­ply be that “no head­line,” in rela­tion to all other head­lines it was tested against, won because the oth­ers were poor or weren’t right for that market.

So remov­ing the head­line sim­ply removed the bot­tle­neck.

But it’s also safe to say that, given more time or traf­fic, if you were to test more head­lines there would be one out there that could indeed out­per­form “noth­ing­ness” as well.

Now, I’m nei­ther a math­e­mati­cian or sta­tis­ti­cian, nor do I pre­tend to be one. But I do know that it’s often best to con­duct more tests to deter­mine the cause and if the win­ner is sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant. (Or, in this case, to come up with more head­lines to test with.)

Find The Right Mix

You will want to test sev­eral approaches to deter­mine what tests best for your mar­ket. You will only find the right mix through test­ing the ele­ments indi­vid­u­ally and collectively.

(That’s the power of mul­ti­vari­ate testing.)

Other than head­lines, the order­ing process and the offer are usu­ally the next biggest bot­tle­necks. They can cre­ate fric­tion, lower buyer con­fi­dence, and invite procrastination.

A more for­ward call to action may be what your prod­uct needs to over­come buyer hes­i­ta­tion and push them along the order­ing process. Or the order form may be too con­fus­ing, too dif­fi­cult to under­stand, or too cum­ber­some to fill out.

(We’ve dis­cov­ered that, the eas­ier you make it for your prospects to order from you, the greater the response will be. Often, the bump in response is sig­nif­i­cantly greater.)

Once you’ve removed any fric­tion from the order­ing process, next up is the offer. There are three com­po­nents to the offer you will want to exper­i­ment with. They are:

• Prices
• Pre­mi­ums
• Proof Ele­ments

They’re listed in no par­tic­u­lar order. How­ever, peo­ple often start by test­ing the price.

They do so because test­ing prices is the eas­i­est. With­out ques­tion, pric­ing should def­i­nitely be tested. But until you’ve removed the other bot­tle­necks, you won’t know whether a higher price point will increase sales or a lower one will.

Also, when most peo­ple test pre­mi­ums with their offers, they tend to do so by adding more. While alter­na­tive pre­mi­ums may be more appeal­ing, offer­ing too many bonuses — or sim­ply offer­ing some in the first place — may be a deterrent.

Fear is a Bot­tle­neck, Too

But often, the best one of the three is to increase the strength of your claims. Because your cred­i­bil­ity — or the lack thereof — is a major bot­tle­neck too. Bet­ter said, people’s inher­ent fear, inse­cu­rity, and dis­trust in you is a major bottleneck.

It all boils down to estab­lish­ing trust.

Any­thing you can add to estab­lish cred­i­bil­ity, boost believ­abil­ity, and reduce their fear in buy­ing from you will both strengthen your claims and increase your conversions.

You can increase trust through inter­nal cues and exter­nal sources. Tes­ti­mo­ni­als, case stud­ies, screen­shots, tours, guar­an­tees, sam­ples, and pho­tos (includ­ing sam­ple cov­ers, prod­uct shots, and even pack­ag­ing) are exam­ples of inter­nal proofs you can test.

Exter­nal ele­ments may include sta­tis­tics, clin­i­cal tri­als, con­sumer rat­ings, author­i­ta­tive endorse­ments, seals of approval, credit card logos, third-​​party indi­cia, and so on.

For exam­ple, Trust Guard and other safety fea­tures demon­strate secu­rity and the per­cep­tion of integrity. (I per­son­ally know Scott Bran­d­ley, the CEO of Trust Guard. I have used Trust Guard suc­cess­fully, and I highly rec­om­mend them.)

Once you are con­fi­dent in your offer, you’ll want to exper­i­ment with more and var­ied “rea­sons why,” which increase the per­ceived value of the prod­uct — from the rea­sons the prod­uct is per­fect for them, to the rea­sons they should buy and buy now.

Because lack­ing good, solid rea­sons why is another huge bottleneck.

Pump­ing up the story behind the prod­uct and the offer can give your copy more legs. If your prod­uct seems at first under­val­ued for the sell­ing price, then estab­lish a com­pelling rea­son why the prod­uct is being made avail­able at such a small price.

This is also where you will work on over­com­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and spelling out why the prod­uct is a “must-​​have” and “right-​​now” prod­uct for your audience.

In the final analy­sis, by address­ing these three areas — i.e., the head­line, the process (the read­ing and order­ing processes), and the offer — you will elim­i­nate many bot­tle­necks in your copy and enable your vis­i­tors to move from inter­est to sale.

By remov­ing bot­tle­necks first and through ade­quate test­ing, you can adjust your sales pitch quickly to ensure each change you make has a pos­i­tive effect on sales, pro­duc­ing imme­di­ate, mea­sur­able responses that can result in a stronger campaign.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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