The Demise of Dull, Drab, and Dingy

With “user-​​driven copy,” the fact is, peo­ple can choose what they want, how they want it and when they want it. And that is what’s work­ing really well right now, not because it’s new but because it’s natural.

The pro­gres­sion of the web (regard­less if you call it Web 2.0 or not) is sim­ply an exten­sion of how peo­ple behave. Busi­nesses and web­sites are finally wak­ing up. And they’re giv­ing their users what they want, ask for and prefer.

Here’s an example.

In Web 1.0, we were lim­ited by text, graph­ics and links. When cook­ies came along, they helped to cus­tomize the user’s expe­ri­ence to a degree. But cook­ies are still lim­it­ing. They are sta­tic in nature, require more pageviews to make them use­ful if at all, and as we all know carry risks such as pri­vacy and secu­rity issues.

With Web 2.0, we see the emer­gence of tools that not only allow but also encour­age inter­ac­tion with­out the use of cook­ies. If con­tent can load up dynam­i­cally on the same page, with­out refresh­ing it, the more com­fort­able, secure, effi­cient and inter­ac­tive the user’s expe­ri­ence will be, and there­fore the more apt the user will be to buy and enjoy the buy­ing experience.

As a result, we’re see­ing less pages, links and cook­ies, and more but­tons, forms, graph­ics and “con­trols” to serve up database-​​driven con­tent, on the fly.

The evo­lu­tion is part of the rev­o­lu­tion, too. It’s more than just a con­flu­ence. They are inde­pen­dent but also inter­de­pen­dent. They feed each other as well as allow the other to flour­ish. The more evolved the tools become, the more peo­ple will see a need for them and want to use them.

A good exam­ple of this is broad­band. In the days of dialup, web pages became so memory-​​intense, peo­ple were scream­ing for more band­width. Broad­band came along with its big­ger “pipes.” But now, video, audio and more are fill­ing up those pipes, which are start­ing to burst at the seams.

(Nature abhors a vac­uum, right?)

So is the case with saleslet­ters. See, the increas­ingly cyn­i­cal user (who’s tired of labor-​​intensive sales processes, stale or inflex­i­ble buy­ing expe­ri­ences, and the plethora of scams and hype) is demand­ing for bet­ter qual­ity, more con­tent and greater proof. What we’re see­ing is the wheat being cut from the chaff.

Read­ing long copy is labor-​​intensive, even more now because of the nature of the Inter­net. The greater the poten­tial dis­trac­tion is, the greater the need becomes to write bet­ter copy that grabs their atten­tion and gets them to start reading.

There­fore, the “death of the saleslet­ter” is not in any way a call to stop writ­ing copy or to stop learn­ing how to write good copy.

Actu­ally, it’s quite the opposite.

You not only need to learn copy­writ­ing for dif­fer­ent media (because it’s all copy, really), you now must learn good copy­wr­tit­ing if you want to keep up with the changes — and your prospect’s demands.

As a mem­ber of my now defunct copy­writ­ers forum said so eloquently:

“No ques­tion, in some instances a sales let­ter is the best pos­si­ble vehi­cle for con­vert­ing some­one… but the more audio-​​visual and inter­ac­tive the web becomes, the greater the need for direct response copy­writ­ers to be versatile.”

Peo­ple are not demand­ing more proof. They are scream­ing for it. And that proof is not just lim­ited to ele­ments added to the saleslet­ter to sub­stan­ti­ate your case. It also includes the saleslet­ter itself, the image it projects and the qual­ity of the copy over­all. It’s per­ceived proof — or bet­ter yet, per­ceived credibility.

(And yes, it’s all about perception.)

The UPA, if you recall, com­mu­ni­cates proof in the form of per­ceived qual­ity of your busi­ness or prod­uct based on the qual­ity of your sales expe­ri­ence. If the saleslet­ter is well-​​written and looks pro­fes­sional, not only does it make it eas­ier to read but also read­ers will assume that the qual­ity of your offer is equally high.

In 2006, we’ve seen a dra­matic increase in the num­ber of poorly designed, poorly writ­ten and poorly deliv­ered web­sites, let alone poorly cre­ated prod­ucts. It’s no won­der that long-​​scrolling web saleslet­ters are instantly regarded as “snake oil” by the major­ity of online users, nowa­days — even when the copy is perfect.

I believe we’ve hit crit­i­cal mass. But I don’t think long-​​copy saleslet­ters alone are to blame. Their preva­lence is unfor­tu­nately par­al­lel­ing the growth in spam and scams (just take a look at how phish­ing attempts have grown in the last year alone), which in turn makes any saleslet­ter instantly suspect.

Thus, long-​​copy saleslet­ters (or more specif­i­cally, saleslet­ters that look like a saleslet­ter) are slowly desen­si­tiz­ing neti­zens to auto­mat­i­cally assume they’re being sold, they might be scammed, they will be hounded with non-​​stop mar­ket­ing mes­sages, or they will be buy­ing low-​​quality or incom­plete products.

Don’t look at it as the begin­ning of Web 2.0 being the end of low-​​quality web­sites (most saleslet­ters fall into that cat­e­gory). Look at it this way: Web 2.0 is the Internet’s way of throw­ing up their arms in the air, shout­ing “we’ve had enough!” and implor­ing for bet­ter quality.

The ques­tion is, are you listening?

While John Reese pre­dicts the “death of ugly web­sites” (my friend Armand Morin calls these “car­toon­ish” saleslet­ters), they’re not the only ones. Mike Fil­saime wrote about it in his report, “The Death of Inter­net Mar­ket­ing.” John Barker, also known as “Mr. X,” wrote about it in his “Death of Crap” website.

All these “death of” reports, includ­ing mine, should tell you something.

The rev­o­lu­tion has started…

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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