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The Power of A Headline

by RentItNow
12 replies
I know this is obvious to most but never has the importance of the headline spoke more to me than recently.

I made a small change on my sales page to the headline just to test it. The average visitor time on page went from 5 to 10 minutes down to around 3 seconds (just enough time to read the headline).

Put it back and sure enough it goes back up to 10 minutes.

Lesson learned? Watch the time on page stat when making headline changes. If low (very low) change the headline!

I just love the learning! Hard lessons but important to see it yourself.
#headline #power
  • Profile picture of the author tbarnby
    WOW! That is a powerful statement! Thanks for sharing.

    Tim

    Originally Posted by RentItNow View Post

    I know this is obvious to most but never has the importance of the headline spoke more to me than recently.

    I made a small change on my sales page to the headline just to test it. The average visitor time on page went from 5 to 10 minutes down to around 3 seconds (just enough time to read the headline).

    Put it back and sure enough it goes back up to 10 minutes.

    Lesson learned? Watch the time on page stat when making headline changes. If low (very low) change the headline!

    I just love the learning! Hard lessons but important to see it yourself.
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    • Profile picture of the author Ross Bowring
      Powerful stuff. A great lesson in why you should spend a disproportionate amount of time on your above-the-fold copy.
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      • Profile picture of the author markpocock
        I've used Statcounter.com to check different
        appeals ie. different headlines and visitor length
        on my own sites and clients' sites.

        It's a very interesting process....

        cheers

        Mark
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        And have the secrets A-List Copywriters - David Garfinkel & Parris Lampropoulos
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        www.markpocock.com

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  • Profile picture of the author raphaelgaga
    Thanks for reminding me about the need to be testing headlines, even on older web sales letters.

    Cheers.
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  • Profile picture of the author int-mark
    Whats that statistic something like one headline can pull literally 25 times more visitors but people don't pay much time and attention to their headlines. Cheers for this!
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    Best personal development blog on the internet!
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Hancox
    Hey John

    Any chance you'd be willing to share the two headlines?
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    PresellContent.com - How to sell without "selling"
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  • Profile picture of the author RentItNow
    Sorry about delay. Have not been on forum for some time.

    Original (and headline that keeps people reading is:

    Headline is: Rent Your House The Easy Way With These Expert 'House For Rent' Secrets...

    Subheadline is: Secrets That Rented 150+ Properties Making Their Owners $70,000 Per Month.

    Headline that sucked was: Your Decision To Rent Your House Out is Easy When Your Know The Secrets...

    Subhead was same: Secrets That Rented 150+ Properties Making Their Owners $70,000 Per Month.

    The reason I wanted to try this line was that most of my readers have never rented a place but have been forced (due to one reason or another) to rent their properties. Which makes my job double hard as I have to sell them on two things: renting their house and using my book to help them.

    One other interesting observation I have made using analytics is if a visitor comes to my page from organic search google, the average time on page is nearly zero seconds. If they come from my blog, articles or capture page (where they have read my free ebook) they stay an average of 5 minutes. So all my efforts are in building the content of the blog and articles to direct better qualified traffic instead of wasting time on SEO (which I was focusing 90% of my time).
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    I have no agenda but to help those in the same situation. This I feel will pay the bills.
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  • Profile picture of the author raj564
    good tip, john. What did you use to measure this? Google anlaytics bounce rate?
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    • Profile picture of the author RentItNow
      Originally Posted by raj564 View Post

      good tip, john. What did you use to measure this? Google anlaytics bounce rate?
      Yes i use Google Analytics.

      No, I don't really measure the bounce rate. I view the report for "Keywords" and sort it by "Avg. Time on Site."

      The other custom report I find valuable is "Keywords that completed Goal" Goal being my form of optin.

      Very very good tool. I am trying to use their Optimizer now but not sure if it is working right.

      I have a 30 to 90% conversion on my non-optin free book but I need to start building a list soon so may change it back to optin.
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      I have no agenda but to help those in the same situation. This I feel will pay the bills.
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      • Profile picture of the author Alex Cohen
        Headline is: Rent Your House The Easy Way With These Expert 'House For Rent' Secrets...

        Headline that sucked was: Your Decision To Rent Your House Out is Easy When Your Know The Secrets...
        Understandable. Using the phrase "Your Decision" was a sure-fire reading killer.

        Also, "The Secrets" is general; "House For Rent Secrets" is specific.

        Thanks for sharing John.

        Alex
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        • Profile picture of the author DavidO
          Good tip! For the benefit of others I would recommend using Google Analytics for this as Rentitnow explains.

          I've used Stat-Counter extensively and I find that some of their stats and reporting are very confusing and conflict with Google's. I'm sure Stat-Counter is accurate but they seem to operate differently and you can really be misled if you're not careful.

          I'm switching to Google Analytics.
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