On last week’s episode, we talked about copywriting for your sales pages. Today we are talking about the DESIGN! I believe the design and copy work together to sell your course, membership, or coaching program. You need both to be strategic in order to convert. And, really I believe you need a design that lets the copywriting do the talking. I’m covering some common design mistakes I see on sales pages that you need to avoid at ALL COSTS because these mistakes could be costing you serious money! These are easy fixes when you pay attention to the design with more focus and a conversion-oriented approach.
And remember the Sales Funnel Kit templates are coming soon! These babies launch into the online world on April 7th, 2020! What are they you ask? These are sales page designs that also come with other essential website pages you’ll need to sell your course. I’m talking about a webinar page, a welcome page, lead magnet pages, and more! With your purchase, you’ll also get access to a new course that goes with these templates, the Compelling Copy Blueprint. This will guide you as you write copy for the sales page. Stay tuned for this launch! If you have questions, please email us at hello@elizabethmccravy.com! We are happy to help!
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Make sure you avoid these mistakes:
1. Call to action buttons all look different.
Ideally, you want matching call to action buttons throughout your whole website, especially on your sales page! This means that the background section and copywriting on the buttons might look different on different pieces of the page, but the button color, button shape, and the font is the same.
Again, the words can change, and I actually recommend the words on the buttons changing depending on where it is on the page. But, the buttons should still be uniform.
Consistency helps people know when to click. As soon as people land on your sales page they are establishing where things are and what’s what. Having consistent buttons helps with cohesion. We want the focus of your page to be on the copywriting and this helps with that!
2. The text is too small and in a light, difficult to read color.
This is a common mistake for ALL websites. Not just sales pages, but it especially makes things tough on a sales page because the copy matters so much here! It has to work WITH the design. You need both. You want the text to be close to black in color. It’s ok if it’s not actually black. I rarely use black on a website. I usually use off-colors to black. You really don’t want it to be a super light gray or light blue. It needs to look like black at a glance.
On that same note, this is not a time for tiny copy! Make your words normal-sized. You don’t want them to be too small and or too large. You want all of the fonts to be completely legible! My Sales Funnel Kit templates (coming to EM Shop April 7th) are going to help you with this.
3. Buttons that encourage users to leave the page.
Don’t link to outside pages or use pop-ups on your sales page. There are a few exceptions to this that are:
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- Your terms and conditions page in the footer or if you link to it when you mention your guarantee.
- A home button MAYBE. - this one really depends on the structure of your website. Listen to the full episode to hear examples of when you might want to link to your home page.
Your sales page should be a “one action” type of page experience. If you are selling something like an online course or membership, this is not a good time to link to your blog posts, about page, or some freebie. The goal is to tell users to take ONE specific action, which is to buy. Make all the buttons go to the same thing!
4. Having a bunch of things you have to click through to read all of the copy.
As you probably know, I use Showit and in Showit, you can use these cool things called canvas views that are a couple of different views and users can click a button to see the next thing in view. This is great on your main website for things like testimonials that go around in a slider, or images from a project. This is NOT something you want on a sales page.
Your sales page, for the most part, needs to be readable “hands-free”. Meaning you don’t have to click around to read the next thing. Think of it as a letter, you should just be able to scroll down.
It’s ok for it to be really long. Don’t get hung up on that and think “Oh! I’ll do buttons to let people read all the FAQs so it’s not just on the page.” Someone might have a big question that you answer on the 7th view but they don’t want to click through all of those questions.
Avoid using too many views that have to be clicked through to get all of your information!
5. It’s really BUSY.
Your sales page can be lengthy, but not busy. It doesn’t have to be short. Typically the more of an investment your offer is, the more sections the page will have on it, making it really long. Long is good, but busy is bad.
Your sales page is a place to let the copy shine and a very minimal design works great on these pages! You’ll see that in the Sales Funnel Kit templates, they are minimal with the look, and they are made to let the powerful copy shine through. This isn’t a time for clutter!
If you want more information on sales page copy, check out 3 Essential Copywriting Elements To Make Your Sales Page A Success.
6. It’s the same layout the whole time.
A mistake people make a lot on sales pages is not switching up the layout at all on the page.
The way our minds process things is so interesting! Our minds see sections that are the exact same and want to skip it because we think we already know what it says. So, if your sales page is just a bunch of repeating sections that all look the same, people will think they already read that information and skip it.
In 3 Essential Copywriting Elements To Make Your Sales Page A Success, we talked about how people are skimmers and you have to turn them into READERS. This is one way to do that. If everything looks the same, they really will skim and see it as the same information. You need different layouts that switch things up!
7. It’s not mobile-friendly
Many people are probably reading your sales page on their phone. Especially if you’re running social media ads to it. People are using Instagram on their phones. Remember not to just design for desktop view only and make sure the mobile site looks incredible too!
8. It’s just pretty. Not strategic for conversions.
If your sales page is designed only with the aesthetic in mind and not copywriting as well, it leaves out the strategy for conversion and doesn’t serve you very well. If your template is designed to just put things where they might “look good” and the sections don’t have a clear purpose to them, that is a problem!
When you think about sales pages, you need them to be designed FOR the copy and with purpose in each section of the page. In my Sales Funnel Kit templates, you’ll see this. Every single section has a clear purpose.
In the training materials, you get with your purchase, I even walk you through what the purpose is and help you with what to write for that purpose!
You certainly don’t have to use every single section. These were designed for offers that do need a lot of explaining and a lot of content in them. You can use only what you need for your offer.
The point is that it just being pretty won’t sell. Remember, the money is in the marketing.
The marketing on this page is the way you present the offer, which includes the design AND THE COPY.
Those are the 8 design mistakes you need to avoid on your course sales page! These are so important so take them seriously! If you need help with writing copy for your sales page, 3 Essential Copywriting Elements To Make Your Sales Page A Success has so many good tips to help you get started!
March 24, 2020
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