Website Makeover, Part II

Today, we’ll continue with Part II of my website makeover for Nelson Duffle. If you missed part I, you can see it here.

Nelson had already set up a ‘name squeeze’ page for his website to capture visitor’s names and email addresses. A ‘name squeeze’ page, in case you don’t know, is a page put up before the sales letter that forces visitors to opt-in in order to see the rest of the site.

Name squeeze pages can be very effective because they will get you more subscribers than many other opt-in tactics. However, many affiliates and joint venture partners don’t like them. That’s because they’re interested in making sales, not in having you build your mailing list.

A key to making a name squeeze work is offering the right incentive to get people to opt-in. Prior to coming to me, Nelson was merely offering a subscription to his free newsletter. That can work but it’s not nearly as effective as a freebie that delivers true value.

I recommended that Nelson let me interview him, asking key questions about what he’s teaching and about his book. We could then offer that interview free as an added incentive to get visitors to opt-in.

The interview also serves as a way for potential customers to get to know Nelson. Nelson’s a former newscaster and sounds good in an interview. Nelson tells his story and I ask questions that most visitors would like to ask Nelson themselves about the knowledge he’s sharing.

I Added an Unobtrusive Popup Offering a Free Audio Interview

I also suggested that Nelson create two versions of his sales page. One would use a squeeze page, the other would have an unobtrusive pop-up on the sales letter offering the interview. He’d use this latter page for affiliates and JV partners to promote and use the name squeeze version for his other forms of advertising like pay-per-click.

Nelson already owned two domain names so we decided he’d use one for the squeeze page version of the site and the other for the popup version. He could have just as easily setup both pages on the same domain, though.

Although Nelson already had a squeeze page created, I felt that it, too, needed work.

His name squeeze page was sparse-looking with too much space between lines. The headline font didn’t match what he’d used on the sales page and all the text on the page as centered rather than aligned with the left of the page.

Centered text is good for headlines, quotes and some testimonials but not for the actual copy. So I cleaned up the text, the fonts and added some copy promoting the interview.

Why promote a free interview? Good question.

Even though you’re giving something away that doesn’t mean every visitor automatically wants it. There are lots of free reports, interviews and ezines available. While visitors may not have to pay for the information, you are asking for something very valuable in return: their time.

So always present the benefits of consuming your freebie with perhaps a headline, a paragraph and maybe a few bullet points. Don’t overdo it, though. I like to keep the copy on a name-squeeze short enough so that the reader either can read the entire message on a single screen or with minimal scrolling.

One other area we needed to address was Nelson’s bonus items. I thought he’d assembled a nice bundle of six reports all relevant to his topic. Unfortunately, he didn’t convey that well in his sales letter.

The headline prior to the bonus section simply said, “Bonuses”. Not very compelling. He also used a different font for the headline, a mistake that was made quite a bit on this sales letter, and he used all-caps.

Old Bonus Headline

I prefer to keep the sub-headlines consistent throughout the letter using the same font, color and size throughout. If I want to call particular attention to a section of the letter, I might switch use red for that one headline but keep the font and type size the same.

Using too many fonts, colors and type sizes makes a sales letter difficult to read and makes a site look amateurish.

Another thing I like to do with bonuses is assign them a realistic value. Then I
can demonstrate the value I’m adding to an offer. If I can demonstrate that I’m truly offering $100 worth of products for $10, I’ll have lots of takers.Marlon Sanders calls this offering dollars for dimes and it’s a very effective copywriting technique. The key is to keep it real. If you say your free bonus ebook is worth $27 and your visitor has seen the same ebook given away on dozens of other websites, she’s not going to believe you. In fact, she might doubt the legitimacy of your entire offer.

New Improved Bonus Headline

Since Nelson hadn’t yet determined a value for his bonus reports, I couldn’t use an actual dollar value in the copy but I was still able to improve on his simple bonus headline. But I think it would be far more effective if we could say, for example, “Get $97 in Special Bonus Items When You Order in the Next 7 Days” (or however long your campaign is running).

Beyond what I’ve talked about in this series, most of the work I did on Nelson’s sales letter involved little tweaks to the copy here and there, rearranging parts of the sales letter for better flow and working on making the letter look consistent in terms of fonts, colors, etc.

Could we do more?

Absolutely! But then Nelson’s site would never get launched.

The reality is this. If we’re talking about a sales letter for a product you plan to sell for a long time, you should constantly be testing and tweaking your sales letter. The copy is never perfect.

Right now, though, considering Nelson has a unique product for a specific, established audience, his site is good enough to launch and begin to seek JV partners.

How should he go about doing that?

Well, that’s something we’ll cover in the next installment when you’ll be able to listen to a recording of an actual consultation call when I give Nelson a game plan for what he should do next to promote his website.

So, are you ready to see the finished website?

Go here to see it now: http://111659.com/nelson

Let me know what you think. You can post a comment below. Note: Your comment will appear as soon as it has been reviewed by a moderator so we know it’s not a spam post.