As an experienced copywriter, I'm often asked about the perfect sales letter length.
The definite answer is this: it should be just as long as you need to make the sale – and not one word longer.
Provided you follow that guideline, there is no such thing as a sales letter that is too long. But there is such a thing as a sales letter - long or short- that is boooring!
So make sure every line is directed to answering the central question in the reader's mind: what's in it for me?
To make sure of this put the sales letter aside for a day or two and then revisit it to carry out the "So what?" test. This is where you subject every statement to the question "So what?". If the statement doesn't answer that question, simply cut it out!
The reason you need long copy is because you are conducting a monologue and don't have the advantage of any feedback from the reader, as you would in a live situation. Therefore you need to cover every question and objection they might raise.
But what do you do if you fill the sales letter with answers to questions the reader doesn't ask.
Everyone is unique and will have their unique perspective on your letter. So here's how you allow them to zip to the parts that interest them and skip past the parts that don't.
You set up sub headlines throughout your sales letter.
These should act as stepping stones to allow the reader to pass as quickly as they wish to the logical conclusion of your sales letter – the "order now" button.
Each sub headline should summarize the contents of the section, in an eye catching way. That allows the reader to pass by sections of no interest and home directly in on sections that help to convince them to buy.
The test of a good sequence of subheadings is if you can get the gist of the whole sales message just from reading them.
Take almost as long over creating your sub headlines as you do over the main headline. You should create many, many main headlines and finally pick the best one or two for split testing. Some of the rest – provided they are relevant – may be used as sub headlines. That's the level of quality you should strive for: only slightly lower than a main headline.
The one thing you must never, ever do is break a long sales letter into separate parts, with a "click here to read on" button at the bottom. I guarantee that will lose you sales, because you're adding unnecessary barriers to the process. You must always make your sales letter a greased chute that takes the reader seamlessly from a compelling headline directly to the "order now" button, answering every question and objection on the way.
The idea of breaking up the sales letter is to make the page load faster. It's true this is a vital point and many factors effect load time. Chief of these is using fancy effects, such as flash and too many graphics.
In truth, using flash and other fancy animations not only slow load times, they also can be a barrier to getting a good search engine position, so it may pay you to reconsider them.
A picture can literally be worth a thousand words so certainly use them - but only sparingly, each having a definite purpose.
The important aspect of loading is how fast the first part of the letter appears on the screen when logging on. Keep this text only, as far as possible, and it will load fast. Then the rest of the webpage can quietly load, while the first part is being read.
Copyright © 2008 InternetMarketingMagician.com and Paul Hooper-Kelly
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