In an ear­lier blog post, I talked about the fact that lately I’ve been lean­ing a lot more towards test­ing the reduc­tion in bottlenecks.

Some of the results are staggering!

In short, the more I increase the sense of secu­rity and trust, bet­ter the flow and ease of order­ing, and project a more con­gru­ent and pro­fes­sional image, the more sales I make.

Since that post, some read­ers have asked me for some exam­ples. I pre­fer not to reveal mine as they are pro­pri­etary. But I can say this…

One of the things that I’m start­ing to really like are ecom­merce sites that are less “saleslet­ter­ish” — i.e., less long-​​scrolling copy in a direct-​​mail for­mat, and more clus­tered lay­outs that are reader-​​focused, commerce-​​centric, and action-​​driven.

They still use com­pelling copy and a solid response mech­a­nism. If the user needs more details, a “more info” link then sends them to a typ­i­cal, long copy saleslet­ter. But these sites’ front-​​end are more action-​​oriented than they are scrolling-​​oriented.

I’ve decided to test this with our main web­site at Suc­cess Chef. I still use long copy. But I’ve con­verted the front-​​end into an ecom­merce, multi-​​product, catalog-​​like format.

And the results are in…

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They say that the head­line is the most impor­tant part of your online copy. But your deck and lead copy are just as impor­tant. These often make up the the sec­tion called “above the fold,” which is the top­most sec­tion of your website’s page, with­out any scrolling.

(Think of the front-​​page head­lines and pic­tures of a news­pa­per, folded on a news­stand. This sec­tion is vital, for it’s the sec­tion that sells papers.)

Online, it’s the first screen your vis­i­tors see when they hit your site. The deck copy is usu­ally the por­tion imme­di­ately fol­low­ing your head­line (also known as the “sub­head­line”), and the lead is the open­ing of your let­ter. (Usu­ally the first few para­graphs if not sen­tences of your body copy.)

There are many things you need to take into account when devel­op­ing your “above the fold” sec­tion. Adding a pic­ture, grab­bing atten­tion, per­haps even incor­po­rat­ing audio and video.

But for the pur­poses of this arti­cle, I want to explore the con­cept of com­mu­ni­cat­ing your core idea, ben­e­fit, claim or promise, and doing it in the most pow­er­ful, per­sua­sive, and pro­duc­tive way pos­si­ble, in that vital above-​​the-​​fold sec­tion. It’s called…

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