Question about online ads and e-product websites?

Question

How come so many sites that I come across that are selling an ebook or some e-guide are always a single, long vertical web page with a narrow table full information usually consisting of someone standing in front of a car smiling, multiple quotes along the way, or proof of a check, etc...

I think it's too much of a coincidence that the hundreds of thousands of sites out there look very identical. But no single person can be designing all of these cookie cutter templates, so where are they coming from? Is this some type of standard for selling ebooks or eproducts?

I won't name any sites because then it will look like I am advertising.

Answer 1

Yeah, it's based on psychological principles on what works and what doesn't. For instance, you'll notice none of the paragraphs are more than maybe 3 sentences long at most, because people skim over long chunks of text.

Red catches the eye more than any other color, so it's used frequently.

They put headlines in quotes because subconsciously it's read as almost like a testimonial, as if someone outside the sales letter said that, giving it more subconscious credibility. That's also why there are always a whole bunch of actual testimonials on a sales letter too.

You'll also notice there will be one Big headline, a second headline in a smaller large text, and then the rest of the letter begins. The point of that is to "lead" people into the sales letter, one sentence at a time until they are "hooked in".

The sales letter is one long one column format because they want to avoid traffic "bleeding". They want the attention of the reader to stay on the sales letter and ONLY on the sales letter during their entire visit.

They will frequently put links to purchase throughout the sales letter because on average you have to ask for a sale a certain amount of times before a person accepts.

The images of checks or clickbank/paypal sales records, etc is to reassure skeptics that what they are saying is real. This is part of the "overcoming objections" part of sales, that actually applies to the sales of anything, online or offline. But since with a sales letter there's no back and forth discussions, they have to overcome all objections upfront all at once.

The person standing in front of a car is entirely an emotional appeal. You'll notice if you're looking for it that there are a lot of emotional references in sales letters. "I used to be so frustrated with this problem too, until I found this product," and they'll go into great detail about the frustrations/hardship/sadness, etc associated with a particular problem that the product claims it solves. People who are acting on emotions do not use logic nearly as much. That works in the sales person's favor, and is a factor in all sales pitches, online or offline.