What Am I Doing Wrong?

Yep, for starters the design could be improved:

Get rid of the text in the background.

Get a pro to do your header (or just scrap it).

Don't have your photo and headline next to each other like that.

Get a bigger photo of yourself.

Use a narrower layout.

Make your subheads stand out more.

Get some ecovers made.

Do more with your CTA (just scanning the letter I completely missed it).

Use a lighter blue for your testimonials (and give them headlines).

Use a guarantee certificate.

The pitch itself needs a complete re-think. It's not focused, I don't know what your big promise is, I don't know who your target market is, I don't know why you're different from everyone else, and you're not offering enough proof to convince me.

1. Specifically, where's your traffic coming from? What keywords are you targeting? Are you doing geo-targeting? And how much are you getting a day on average? Average CPC?


2. Have you installed ClickTale? Where are people bailing?


3. "I know people want this kind of info so, I'm guessing, my "message" to the market is somehow wrong. "

I believe your design is amatuerish/unprofessional and your message weak, untargeted and ultimately, uncompelling.

Your story as articulated is borderline irrelevant. It could be so much more riveting with the facts you've given. I don't think you spend enough time building it up.

That's for starters. But let's get the questions above answered first, so other copywriters can help you.

- Rick Duris

A couple of ideas.

First, Andrew's, Ken's and Primoquest's direction is spot on.

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Second, you may want to be even more targeted with your keywords and go long tail. Such as "how to lose weight fast" or "How to lose 10 pounds" (or stones, or however you say it in the UK.)

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Primoquest's advice about pulling in the prospect's emotions is particularly on point.

However, I would NOT twist and turn the knife. Instead, I'd focus on the feelings enjoyed from receiving the benefits. The market is already sensitive to their pain. Rubbing it in would be insulting.

To back up this line of reasoning, one only has to go to the grocery store and look at the headlines on the women's magazines.

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What was amazing to me is your metric of time spent on page. 9 minutes is A LOT. It's hard for me to fathom, based upon what we see.

I'd definitely get ClickTale installed and see what the prospect's behavior is on page. It'll be really insightful.

Good luck,

- Rick Duris

Its got too many words, the font size is too small, the grid is ugly, and it is not believable. There is a lot of evidence calorie restriction works - you are telling people to eat more?

Hi,

To start with your sales letter is too long, it was tiring to look at, even read it. I just scanned it so i did not read your CTA. Which I think should stand out and be easy to see. Your CTA should be visible at first look.

You need to get to the point on your fist two paragraphs so that the readers know what they are about to read and learn from you, and they would continue reading. Your not catching any attention from it.

Then add tags so that your intended market can easily find you from search engines.

I hope this will help you out.

Start with these...

1. Lose the header.
2. Lose your picture to the left (use it below signature).
3. Use narrow blocks of text. People don't like to read long lines of text.
4. Start with what you can do for them. That's important. People don't care who you are. This is not meant to reflect on you but its true for everyone. People just don't care who I am. People are only interested in what I can do for them. So start with what you can do for them.
5. I am in the weight loss niche but I deal with fat loss and six pack abs so while I'm not too familiar with the content I do think its a tad bit too long. People just don't have the time to read so much content unless you grab their attention and promise them something and then deliver on that promise in the sales letter i.e. share one trick that works for free and do it near the top of the letter (share a recipe in your case).
6. CTA needs to be given with a hook or a strong headline. You can give 2-3 of them and the first one can be after the first paragraph.

Cheers (again!)

Everything I've read from GKIC, John Carlton etc all say there's no such thing as being too long, if it's interesting. Maybe that's what I'm lacking..

On the calorie restriction side. If you've read the research you'll likely already know that metabolic slowdown is proportional to the amount of food eaten. So, you follow one of those ridiculous 500kcal per day diets for long enough and your natural production of T3/T4 shuts down and you stop losing weight. Then when you eat you re-gain it all. Calories are important, but the level to which governments and popular diet products (weight watchers, slimming world etc) promote calorie restriction is ridiculous.

My clients sometimes find it hard to eat all the foods I give them, yet, they get better results than they ever have. And they do it eating foods popular programs tell them they shouldn't.

Nutrition for both health and in particular fat loss is no longer about "a calorie is a calorie so just eat less" and much much more about the signalling effects of foods on the physiology of the body. For example (and being in the niche you'll know this), consumption of protein stimulates protein synthesis which is a very energetically expensive process. It stimulates building of lean tissue, re-generation of cells and enzymes as well as a host of other processes. Because any protein you eat that your body doesn't need gets turned into glucose via gluconeogenisis (yet another hugely expensive process in terms of energy), over consumption of protein is virtually impossible.

If calorie restriction was so "proven", how come most studies also show that those who follow the dietary advice of dietitians, governments or companies like weight watchers, mostly end up gaining back all the weight?

Unless you're talking about markers of ageing in general, in which case calorie restriction is valid because protein synthesis speeds up aging, then basic "calorie restriction" is an "old timers" method of reducing WEIGHT with no consideration given to maintenance of weight and reduction of FAT, which is ultimately the goal.

Again you've likely read all the same research as I have so you'll already be aware of all that.

That Sir, is a brilliant idea. I wouldn't have thought of simply approaching them but seen as you've seen a few do it, it sounds plausible and worth a shot! I am after all in this to help as many people changes their lives as possible. I know that sounds cliche, but, if my product wont help someone I'd really rather they didn't buy it. Simply trying to leverage my knowledge as opposed to my time though is proving not that straight forward. Crazily enough, that is my real address (no horse heads, please!), so any info you have I'd appreciate receiving it.

Thank you!

I would use optimizepress for you sales letter. Their sales pages just seem to convert better. They have great buy now/order now style buttons and great order boxes.

Mike,

Would you mind sending a note to laurakryza[at]gmail.com? I'd like to offer a few suggestions, and maybe we could work out a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Looks like you have some amazing tips here! I hope you get the turnover you want!

I think it couold do with some more graphics and testimonials

Tell your web guy to add more padding inside the content area. You need about 50px. That way the words don't go all the way to the edge and it will be narrower.

Ok. First off, I've not read other comments yet. Didn't want to skew my thoughts. So, much of this is probably going to be redundant. Maybe all of it. Or maybe none.

First thing that grabbed my attention when the page loaded was the site name: Metabolic Kitchen. I immediately thought of clicking away. Honest. It screams "work!" Then I realized why I was on the page, and stayed.

The cellpadding/cellspacing is bad. The text is way too close to the margins.

Your opening, the words right after the 'Dear Friend,' is too long. I have no idea what the opening says but just looking at the page makes me not want to read it.

The use of bullets in the headline banner is not appealing. I've not read a single word in those bullets. Too many words too small of text. On a dark background at that. Not good for us older folks.

Way too many paragraphs before presenting your first subhead to break up the page.

Your subheads are disconnected. For text skimmers, like me, reading the subheads do not tell a story. They do not make sense.

The image of the food items following 'For Example, Do You Think You Could Eat These Foods On A Daily Basis?' are confusing. 'For example' what? You have not given me anything to relate this subhead or these pictures to that's even remotely intriguing enough to warrant searching the text to understand what this is an example of.

Nothing tells at a glance if this is a printed guide for cooking metabolically balanced meals in your own kitchen, a mail order kit of prepackaged meals shipped to your door, training videos, or anything else obvious.

Gosh. 15,870 characters and 2854 words and still I have no clue what you are selling. Or trying to sell.

Why are your testimonials squeezed into single paragraphs? Impossible to read without eye and brain fatigue.

Everything about this sales letter screams 'effort'.

You want to make reading your message as easy as possible for your visitors. Otherwise they won't read the page. They'll click away.

I hope this is not the Adwords landing page you are sending clickers to(?). You are better off doing two step with a free frontend offer than this long page that does a horrible job of grabbing interest and horrible job of explaining what you are selling.

“Okay Mike – So What’s The Cost For This Incredible Toolkit?”

Incredible? How can it be incredible when we don't even know WTH it _is_?!?! :p

Maybe it is a good product. And maybe there are some good points buried in this page. IDK. Is too much text to read to try to find what you are selling. Way too much work.

Get rid of that dinky header. Get a web designer. The models are too tiny. The layout is bad. There isn't a shred of attention grabbing value in this banner. The girl is a bad example to use, on multiple levels. Image clearly photoshopped around her waist. Screams 'fraud'. And the banner further confuses because impossible to tell is this cooking or weightlifting or some system based on eating whole natural fruits and berry? The banner is way too confusing. Is trying to convey too much in too little of a space. None of it interesting.

If there's a shred of good copy in here, then print this to a continuous feed printer and take an xacto knife and cut the text into packets based on proper copywriting flow. Then reassemble the pieces into an order that makes sense from a copywriting standpoint. And by all means, make it clear what you are selling. Grab our attention. We have no idea at a glance what this is. The copy approach is bad.

"Needless to say, that’s where [your] big problem lies…"

I hope this helps and not hurts.

Andre

You're getting a lot of really detailed direction. Each post is valuable.

I particularly like jimbo13's newspaper idea. If you can get that column syndicated, even better.

- Rick Duris