Web Site Profit

Writing Effectively -- Getting to the Heart of the Sale

Nothing sells like simple, easy-to-read advertising copy. Penning clever, articulate prose may be tempting, but busy prospects and customers will respond faster to short words and simple sentences. This is especially true for Web sites and sales letters.

You usually only have a few seconds to capture the attention of your customers in your writing. This means that you have to be brief in your message, and you have to cut to the important information early -- getting to the heart of the matter before your readers turn away. You should follow a few simple rules when writing in this quick style:

Keep your paragraphs short.

Sales copy should rarely use paragraphs longer than three sentences. One and two sentence paragraphs work great.

Why? Most readers are in a big hurry. Long paragraphs look intimidating and hard to read. Short chunks of copy separated by white space immediately say "get this information fast."

It also looks nicer on the page. Recently an editor of a major national magazine revealed that he favors articles with two and three sentence paragraphs. The look of the article is almost as important as what it is about.