For an online entrepreneur like you or me, there’s nothing more frustrating than knowing that you have so much to give your clients but feeling like they don’t get that your offer is worth the money.

Whether you’re a life coach, health expert, social media wiz, graphic designer, or coder, you already know that you’re good at what you do (even if you sometimes suffer from waves of imposter syndrome… we all do!).

And yet the question remains:

How do you get people to see the value in what you do enough to get them to click “buy now” or “hire me!”?

This is THE QUESTION that drove me crazy enough to start my own copywriting business. Nothing is quite as satisfying as helping people doing good work and starting passion-focused, service-centered businesses to help more people.

From the dozens, and dozens (and dozens) of sales pages that I’ve read, revised, written, and reviewed, I’ve noticed that there are 3 big mistakes that almost every entrepreneur makes that are keeping people from buying their offers.

(By the way, I normally try to focus on the positive, but I do want you to pay attention to these sales page mistakes. Don’t worry — I also have a cheat sheet with tweaks you can make to your sales page to double your sales).

 

Mistake #1 – Your first impression is turning people off (instead of on!)

When someone lands on your sales page, they have an immediate gut reaction as to whether or not they want your offer, how much they think it’s worth, and what kind of person they think you are.

Look at your sales page with objectivity — what is your first impression?

There are two things you need to think about in terms of the first impression: copywriting and design.

In terms of copy, consider:

• Does the copy above the fold (what you see before you scroll down) compel you to keep reading?
• If you scan the page in 10 seconds, do you understand the offer being made?
• Does it feel like the copy is talking to you?
• Is the copy conversational and interesting to read?
• Can you tell what the sales page is for before you scroll down?

In terms of design, consider:

• Have you created a clean, cohesive brand for the page?
• Have you thoughtfully chosen the colors and fonts?
• Is there anything else to do on the page other than read the copy? (No sidebars, links to other pages, distractions)
• Is there an overwhelming amount of text? Are there sections breaking up the page and making it easy to scan?

 

Mistake #2 – When I scan the page, I don’t “get it”

You might be shocked to hear that most of the sales pages I read fail to answer the following question: What is included in the offer?

As it turns out, there are two reasons why you might not be giving enough information about your offer on your sales page:

Reason #1 – You haven’t made key decisions about what to include in your offer.

I am a huge advocate of creating well-packaged products and services. In fact, I believe that you should package up your offers so well that you can automate at least 50% of the process without having to make any decisions.

The key here is to decide what’s included in your offer so that you can paint a picture of the experience for your potential clients or customers.

Reason #2 – You’re too close to your offer and don’t know what details you need to put on the page.

We often forget to add information about our offers to our sales pages because we think the information is obvious.

Here’s a hint: Nothing is obvious about your offer!

Your sales page needs to include an in-depth outline of exactly what’s included and what the experience will look like from start to finish.

Mistake #3 – There’s not enough of an emotional connection

The first half of your sales page needs to reel the reader in by showing them that you intimately understand the specific challenges and desires that they have. You also need to show the reader that you’ve created a solution to help them get the result they want.

 

As we talked about in Mistake #1, a lot of this comes down to the first impression.

In one of my favorite copywriting books, Great Leads: The Six Easiest Ways to Start Any Sales Message, the authors write:

“About 80% of the emotional impact of any piece of advertising copy will be determined by the first 20% of the copy.”

That’s huge!

You have to show your readers that you understand exactly what they’re thinking, what they’re frustrated with, and how you can help them. The trick to doing this effectively is using the language that they’re using to talk about these things (rather than industry lingo or abstract terms like “confidence” or “overwhelm”).

You want to know what’s really exciting? When you stop making these sales page mistakes, you can double your sales. I’ve created a super extensive cheat sheet to show you 5 tweaks you can make to double your sales.

These 5 tweaks will take a little bit of work, but this cheat sheet is going to help you to make some really important decisions about your offer that you need to make in order to sell it.

Click here to get the cheat sheet and start implementing the tweaks so you can sell more of your offers ASAP!

 

Want to know exactly what to put on your sales page? I’ll show you at the “Outline Your Sales Page” workshop!