Writing Effectively -- Getting to the Heart
of the Sale
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> Selling Products
or Services > Increasing
Sales > Copy
by
Kevin Nunley
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
told me he favors articles with two and three sentence paragraphs. The look of
the article is almost as important as what it is about.
