Can someone give me some website advice?

[Sirago]

My first marketing site went live today. I did a review site which reviews each chapter of the product I'm trying to sell. If you could, can you tell me how you feel about it and let me know any mistakes I made?

Landing Page: http://www.optin-training.com

(So you don't have to opt-in, you can go to Free Opt-in Mailing Training - Optin-Training.com to see my material)

It's my first time so ANY feedback would be VERY appreciated...

-Nick

[JohnMcCabe]

Just a quick hit here...

I tried to look at this as a consumer would. If I opted in for a "free training" and found what you have here, I would be unlikely to buy anything from either you or the person you're promoting. I'd feel tricked and disrespected. The words "bait and switch" come to mind.

Since you also collected my email address before showing me your site, I'll assume that I'm going to get a similar pitch in my email box.

Being new is not a crime, and I commend you for seeking feedback. So here's an idea for tweaking what you have to avoid the impression I got.

First, be right up front with me. Tell me that you've found a product that fills in the blanks more completely than you can in a free course. Tell me you are giving me both a preview of the product and a look at the blueprint. Let me know that you respect my intelligence enough to tell me straight up what's going on.

Rather than ending each short page with a tepid call to action, tease with some specific tidbits of what the chapter holds. Copywriter Clayton Makepeace calls these little blurbs "fascinations" - if you go to his site at The Total Package and hunt around, you should find a free report with several formulas he uses to write these...

Nick, I think you have the underpinnings of a successful promotion. It just needs a little tweaking. Keep in mind this my opinion and it might be worth what you paid for it. Take what you feel is useful and ignore the rest...

[Sirago]

Hey John,

Thanks for going through it and writing that up for me! I see what you're saying about changing the text on the front page to read more like "I'm going to show you a preview of a product" rather than make them feel like they've been bait-and-switched once they get inside.

The emails that I'm sending out are actually on day 0 just to tell them how to get to the site, day 2 to see if they had any feedback or if I could answer questions and then day 4 to make sure they understood the information and a call to action to continue their learning by purchasing the product.

I'll definitely go through and not make the call to action on every page but rather make it flow more naturally.

I clearly have some more work to do. Thanks again for your insight -- it's appreciated.

[showbizvet]

JohnMcCabe is giving excellent advice. Often it's difficult to find exactly the pefect fit between giving too much information away free, measured against not enough. His idea of the paid one, being more through then the freebie is a perfect way to cover both bases.

Also, as you've no doubt seen here on WF, it's always better to give a customer even more than they expect, while it could be a loss leader on the frontend, as a rule it pays dividends down the road.

[Sirago]

Yeah, I agree showbizvet. It's tough because I actually worked really hard on writing that stuff up only to realize I need to change my angle. Oh well.. gotta do what you gotta do. =)

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Sirago

Hey John,

Thanks for going through it and writing that up for me! I see what you're saying about changing the text on the front page to read more like "I'm going to show you a preview of a product" rather than make them feel like they've been bait-and-switched once they get inside.

The emails that I'm sending out are actually on day 0 just to tell them how to get to the site, day 2 to see if they had any feedback or if I could answer questions and then day 4 to make sure they understood the information and a call to action to continue their learning by purchasing the product.

I'll definitely go through and not make the call to action on every page but rather make it flow more naturally.

I clearly have some more work to do. Thanks again for your insight -- it's appreciated.

I'm glad I could help, but I do want to correct something I might not have explained clearly enough.

I didn't mean to say "don't make a call to action on every page". You should have one, because you won't know in advance where in your presentation your reader will make the decision to buy.

What I meant to say was to vary the calls depending on the page content.

If you rework it so that I know in advance that I'm reading a product overview, you could say something like:

[Product] expands this idea by giving you 6 formulas for writing such and such, along with a list of 100 resources you can use to fill in the blanks. Pretty soon you'll be doing this-and-that pretty effectively.

I would link the product name, along with the 'doing this-and-that' key phrase to the sales page.

End by inviting the reader to continue to the next page if they want more of your preview, teasing what's coming next.

The link would look like Order now | Continue --->

Order now links to sales page, Continue to the next page. If you have the tech chops, I'd make the 'Order now' link a no-follow so you conserve your link juice. Do the same with the product name and key phrase links above.

I don't know if Blogger hosted blogs let you do that, so it's something to investigate.

Low key, but still there.

[Sirago]

Hey John,

Thanks again for helping me out and clarifying that stuff. I looked at some of the Clayton Makepeace copywriting stuff and it looks like it could be helpful so I'm going to go through more of that.

You've given me some good ideas. I really like the idea of having something like "Order Now | Continue -->" and keeping the main text focused mostly on what I'm trying to teach.

Thanks again.