It doesn’t matter what ways you use to get people to visit your massage website. Either they take action or they don’t. That action might be signing up for your free newsletter, buying a massage gift certificate, or calling for a massage appointment.

This ratio of actions to non-actions is known as your conversion rate. So if 1 person out of every 100 people who visit your site takes action, your site is converting at a 1% response rate.

You might not know it, but I’m a pretty serious fan of testing my marketing and tracking the results. That’s because it’s an easy way to increase your response rates.

If you are not testing your marketing, then you are leaving a lot of money on the table – I guarantee it. Testing doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, it’s quite easy to do online using one of the countless free or paid testing tools available.

Just start your testing with one of these 5 things and you could be pleasantly surprised by a boost in your conversion rates.

1.Your opening headline

70-80% of all readers will decide if they will read any more of your web page, strictly on the strength of your opening headline. Capture their attention and they’ll keep reading. Bore or confuse them and they’re gone.

I’m not going to start teaching you how to write copy in this article. I cover the basics of write good sales copy in the deluxe version of Help Your MASSAGE Practice but there are also many great copywriting books and courses available online.

Instead, I will give you one really simple headline tip that you can use today. Try adding the words “How To” to the front of your headlines.

So if your headline is “Stop Your Back Pain Fast!” then we could add “How To” to your headline to create a more compelling headline “How To Stop Your Back Pain Fast!”

One more quick headline tip. Many therapists try using mega-long headlines that are 30 words or more because they have a lot of benefits that they want to share. That’s a big mistake.

Unless you really know how to write copy and craft a headline that tells more than one benefit, don’t do it! Keep it simple and stick with one benefit per headline.

Many years ago, one of my first tests was on the headline for a marketing piece that was doing 3-4% conversion rate every month for me. I decided to test the headline and was shocked when the new version started pulling a 7% response rate—- almost doubling the old conversion rate.

That made me a testing fan for life.

2.‘From The Desk of’

Most people assume that putting your ‘From The Desk of:’ automatically goes on the left side of the sales letter.

Not true.

It depends on the niche. I’ve found that in some niches, like massage therapy, the right side placement actually converted 10-15% better than the traditional left margin.

3.Graphic signature files

It surprises me how many massage therapists don’t use a graphic as their signature at the end of a sales letter. I believe it’s because they may not know how to create one in their graphic design software.

The thing is, you don’t have to use graphic design software. Just use an online tool like one of these free sites instead. They can help you create your own signature graphic for free.

http://www.vletter.com/downloads.htm

http://www.mylivesignature.com/

Adding a signature graphic is an easy conversion rate booster because it draws more attention to the bottom of your webpage where the prospect will see your call to action.

4.Your Call To Action

On every page of your website you want the reader to take a specific action. So you need to prompt them in your sales copy to take action. This prompting is known as a call to action.

The action might be to sign up for your newsletter. Maybe it’s to order a gift certficate or a massage product from your site. Perhaps it’s to call your massage office for an appointment or to get more information.

Having a call to action can increase your response rates as much as 400%, so use them!

5.Graphic callouts

Using hand-drawn notes, arrows, and other graphic callouts on your sales letter is a proven response booster that has been used for decades.

Originally started in the offline direct response world, graphic callouts were added to marketing pieces to draw reader attention to specific spots on the page like a compelling subheadline or the order form. For many years, they could only be done with offset printing or print shops.

Fortunately, that’s no longer the case as a number of do-it-yourself options have been created from graphic design software to pre-created hand-drawn graphics.

Even though I know how to create my own hand-drawn graphics, I usually use pre-created callouts like CopyDoodles simply to save myself some time. I also feel like I can focus more on the writing copy process instead of futzing around with the graphic design software which I’m not real handy with.

The fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter whether you create your own callouts or not. You need to start using them and start using them right now.

One website of mine uses the hand-drawn notes to draw attention to the opt-in box on the page. Based on extensive testing of that site, the “Doodled up” version of the opt-in box out pulls the ordinary version by 300%!

In both my testing and other business friends, every one of us has confirmed that adding graphic callouts frequently boosts response rates for a sales letter.

Bonus Tip #6.Your readability

One of the first things I notice when I look at a sales letter is the layout and it’s readability. In plain English, that means how easy it is to read.

You see, you’re not paying prospects to read your sales letter. If it’s hard to read, then they won’t read it. They’ll take one look at your rainbow-colored sales letter and just close the browser and leave your site.

Take a look at your website logs and look at the average visitor duration. If most of your traffic is leaving within 15 seconds, then you may have bad sales copy, poor readability, or both on your site.

When I discovered the importance of readability, I looked at one of my infoproduct sites web logs that was losing money at the time. Sure enough, I was losing 85% of my website visitors within 15 seconds. I improved the layout of the page, and my fast exit numbers dropped to 60% and that site became immediately profitable.

How do you improve readability?

·Stick with 1-2 font colors throughout for your text.

·Go easy on the bright colors and highlighting.

·Use a table width of 650-750 pixels with 10-20 pixels of cell padding centered for your sales letter.

·Don’t jam all of your text and headlines together. Allow ample space between paragraphs and headlines so they are easy to read.

I consider readability and layout to be so important that I often will spend several hours on them at the beginning of every online sales letter that I write.

In closing, take the time to get educated about testing your online sales letters. By learning how to test correctly, you can literally add more money to your bank account. I guarantee it!

To Your Success,

Michael Humphreys