People Don't Read Anymore, They Skim. Time To Write Sales Letters For A New Generation...

Yes I think you are probably right.

We have to accept that we are writing for a generation who think it's odd to use a whole word let alone a whole paragraph!

u no wt I mean, OMG Gr8 stuff - laters!

I have to admit, since Facebook and Texting I have become a skimmer.

I want to know the answer to a question in the quickest time possible so I can get on with more important stuff.

Interestingly, I am not from the younger generation.( Lets say Too young for HRT but too old for a bikini ). So I think it's safe to say we need to start writng for several generations of people. Those who have always known this world with Social Media and Iphones and those of us who remember marvelling at a mobile phone you had to carry in the boot of your car.

When I read a Sales Page/Advert I only want to know 2 things.

1) How will this product solve my problem/fulfill my needs? (Top of the Page)

2) How much is it? (Bottom of the Page)

Once I start seeing " reviews" from Doreen in Doncaster and Nigel from Norwich I click away. We all know that most of these reviews are made up.

Another thing that will cause me to click out is "Proof of incomes".

Google "Proof of Income ClickBank" ( I just did to make sure I'd got my facts straight ) and you'll see what I mean. Fakes are easy to come by.

In this age of texting and Facebook etc, we have become used to using a limited amount of characters in our messages and we start getting bored if anything waffles on for too long.

I don't want to know about the person who is selling me the product and how they've gone from "Rags to Riches" in 7 days.

Tell me, in as few words as possible, why my world is doomed if I dont buy the product and what I have to do to get my hands on it. Then I will go away and make some enquiries and if it's recommended by others I will come back with my credit card.

Prime example - This post has gone on for TOO long - sorry

People have always skimmed. That's why sales letter are set up the way they are.

The headline grabs your attention and draws you in. Some folks begin reading immediaely while others skim. The subheads should entice the skimmers to read.

the more things change, the more they stay the same

Hello,
I usually start at the bottom of the sales letter, I am sure many others do as well.

Dial up O_O such a thing still exist???
No pun intended but lol i honestly thought that would be a extinct species by now
Back to topic i have never ever "read" a sales page they all look the same red blue bla bla bla style and some hidden link at bottom that matters.
Skimmin is the only way to go

I am very much the same. I usually read a couple of bullet points to figure out what it is, jump to the bottom to see the price and if that is acceptable, I'll go back up to read more.

I fully agree with this. Your headline should draw in the reader and make them absolutely salivate to read more. The whole purpose of the headline is to get people to read the first sentence of the sales copy.

Therein lies the challenge. SEO tactics don't work all that well in Sales Pages, I'm struggling with getting targeted clicks to a site with no capture page yet, really sweating bullets over headlines, and trying to make articles the shortest, and most motivating they can be. We are all becoming ADHD, but I guess my own short attention span comes in handy, because I can look at my site and go, "Whoa, no pictures, boring!" and know that a headline sucks because I wouldn't read it myself. I'm learning!!!! me so proud

Yeah. I myself have skimmed and still made a purchase. But if the solid content is there, if people chose to skim read the solid content is there for the fine readers.

Edit: I usually only skim if I trust the provider and have heard reviews from other marketers. In which case I'm just getting a quick idea of the product before I press buy. I've even purchased without reading in the past, but only based on friends reviews and experience with the product.

I like this approach - don't know how difficult this would be to achieve but this may in fact cater to everyone.

Are many sales letters already not written this way?

That's really smart. You also need to test everything because different traffic sources behave differently and video really is indespenable when doing advertising. Why do you think TV ads are so successful?

TomG.

Also remember that when someone skims your sales letter, they will focus on different things. They look for testimonials from people they know and trust; they look for bullet points about things that matter to them.

So while you and I would each skim through a sales letter and see maybe two testimonials and four bullet points that matter to us, they wouldn't be the same two testimonials and four bullet points.

So the author of that sales letter, even though nobody cares about more than two of these and four of those, had better have at least four and eight of them respectively.

That's the real value of the long sales letter. You start at the top looking for something that matters, and you skim RAPIDLY down the page until you see something. Then you start paying attention. Each segment of the page is ensnaring a new and different audience. Once they are sold, they will skip the rest and click "Buy Now" - so each section should be a full-scale pitch for that audience, not a partial pitch you'll finish later.

Copywriters have always known that their prospects are likely to be skimming their sales letters.

That's why you use:

# Compelling headlines in bold type.

# Opening lines that drag your reader into the copy.

# Action images with captions that tell your reader to read further to find out more about what they saw in the picture or tell you to take a certain course of action.

# Subheads in bold that drag the reader into the copy.

etc etc.


It's important to understand that you shouldn't be designing sales letters based on theories so much as TESTING new ideas and models against old ones to see which ones work to increase sales in your particular case.

Every product and group of prospects is different so different approaches will work in different cases.

Split testing is the only way you'll have a reasonable idea of what is really working.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

Gee... reading for entertainment is somewhat different than reading sales pages. Haven't found an "entertaining" sales page yet. I skim them ... don't even bother with testimonials and all the hype ... just the product details and price.

On the other hand, I do have a kindle and when I buy a book to read and enjoy, I read it. It's not really about not having time to read ... it's about not wanting to spend a bunch of time reading crap.

Exactly!

If you are a "student" of sales letters, you may actually read the whole thing, possibly to learn something, IF it is a good sales letter. If you are, as mentioned by others, suffering from scroll-itis, and want the gist of the thing, then obviously you want to get to the end ASAP...


Truer words have not been spoken (or written) regarding a winning sales letter length...



Something to consider, if your sales letter is getting enough traffic, SPLIT TESTING...

Be Well!
ECS Dave

Seems nothing has changed since 1997...

Reading on the Web (Alertbox)

Marc

I used to work for a guy who openly admitted he "had a face made for radio and a voice that screamed for the return of silent movies." Yet he insisted on doing his own ads.

His hook?

The fact that on a good day he only looked like two miles of bad road and sounded worse. He used to wrap up the ads by saying something like "you know we keep our prices as low as possible because if you looked and sounded like me, would you do your own ads if you could hire someone else?"

I'm sure the fact the background always showed his real sales staff - mainly very attractive young women dressed very stylishly - didn't hurt any. I'm still not sure how I got hired...

Funny ... when I had broadband and watched many videos, I never noticed or considered it important how old the person was, how young they were, whether they were pretty enough or how their voice sounded as long as their accent wasn't so heavy that it couldn't be understood.

The info is what counts with me ... not the superficial stuff.

LOL Then how was it you were able to offer an intelligent and on-topic answer to this thread?