Howdy all,

I can use some help.

My page is boring the heck out of me and the more I look at it, the more I keep changing it.

The page is at Business-to-Business Insider Copywriting & Marketing Strategies (b2b)

I tried to incorporate a little:

- story telling (probably too much of this)
- problem/agitiate/solve
- reason-why
- limited availability
- be service oriented, altruistic
- use us-against-them position
- revealed a damaging omission and Achilles' Heal, etc

But the more I read the page, the more the thoughts look "disconnected" to me.

Oh, I see formatting errors in a couple of places too (the PSS should be left justified and there's a place the copy says to call, when it should say to complete the form below).

For now I'm so frustrated with the copy I'm thinking of starting from scratch or reverting back to one of my ugly controls that was fairly successful (but I hate having an ugly page. The ugly page turned off local corporate folks who visited the site, though was more effective with long distance visitors than anything else I ever tested).

Anyhow, your feedback is appreciated.

Andre

PS: Hey Abdellah, I appreciated what you wrote at http://www.copywritersboard.com/crit...eeds-help.html and would love to hear from you here too.

Last time you looked at my page you basically said the page was boring and I talked too much -- true

So I made some changes and could really use your feedback (this version is four pages shorter). Thanks.

I'm thinking about a rule: no crtiques on "single sentence paragraph" websites.

Stories have real paragraphs. Some with three, even four sentences. Over highlighting and single sentence wonders are getting to me. It's like you're talking in a continuous stutter. ...or they are all part of the William Shatner/Capt. Kirk school of using pauses and over emphasis.

Ok. Point #1, shorten the sentence lengths.

Next...?

Nope. Sentence length is fine. Use paragraphs.

Andre...

Is that a new picture? I like it

Lots of looong sentences too.

Chop 'em up!

I'll look at this in more detail and get you some meat, I just need a day or so Andre.

Cheers,

Mike

PS And as handsome as your pictue is... move it to the bottom. The letter is about your prospects, and you (your image) are a speedbump... until they get to know you. Then they get more of a warm fuzzy.

Andre, who cares if your page is ugly?

Who cares if your page is boring?

The only thing that matters is results.

You said you had an ugly, boring page that was effective.

So why mess with it?

Sometimes as copywriters, we're our own worse enemy.

Simply being bored with your copy is not a valid reason to change it.

If it tested well, and it's effective, leave it alone, unless some other copy outperforms it.

If you come here looking for critiques, that's exactly what you're going to get, even if there's nothing particularly wrong with your copy.

Having said that, if I were going to change anything at all, I'd get rid of that ugly brown template and go with blue.

Dale King

As stated above what is your conversion rate for the letter now? Do you
know what the rate is? So far I can only see two things quickly. One is that
the audio loaded too slow on my computer even with broadband. The other
thing you might test is to move the phrase about making a lot of money
now to leave to the top under the headline. You would create a curiosity
on the part of the reader right away which would cause them to look closer
to see waht you are doing that is diffferent.

Thanks Cy for the kind words. Yep, it's new. Setup a backdrop on Tuesday, set the digital camera timer and then posed away.

I got the layout idea from a message Mr Subtle posted a week or so ago.

If it wasn't for the subject in the pic this might not have turned out half bad

Andre

Thanks Mike for the help.

Yep, need to get rid of long sentences. And it's a good idea to move the pic away from the top. That avoids folks making a judgement based on the pic and not the info.

Thanks Dale.

Scott Haines told me to go back to the page that was working too even if it was ugly. Horrid is more accurate. I can't believe anyone ever responded to it because it looked like something a child could do better. But still, it got more responses from potential clients than any other page I tested.

How or why anyone responded to it is beyond me. Maybe it was nonthreatening or something.

So why'd I change it?

Because I was also getting a lot of inquiries from folks who wanted me to work for free. More than 100 emails saying stuff like, 'please work for me free for the next 12-18 months and if I make a profit in my business I will pay you $3,000 for your work.' many variations of the same message. Bottom line was all the same i.e. lots of 'please work for free' inquiries.

Was frustrating.

I don't want to start one of those negative threads about lamers or whatever they are called who want something for nothing. I just want to point out why I changed the page despite it being more effective at getting more people to respond.

Just trying to find a way to weed out the dishonest people and time wasters.

I think my pic or my copy is attracting them. No clue which yet. So I'm testing.

Bad idea?

Andre