If You Want to Sell Something, Focus Your Buyer’s Attention!

My son Jeremy was 14 years old.  He needed shoes…badly. We walked in a Big 5 Sporting Goods store and froze in our tracks. The wall of shoes was overwhelming.  Every make and model of running shoes ever made was displayed on this running-shoe-hall-of-fame.  We walked out without new shoes.  Why?

There was too much choice.

Many blogs suffer from this same problem.  If you’ve created a page on your blog with the intent of selling a product, a service or a newsletter subscription, you’ve also got to think about reducing choice.

What do I mean?  I’m talking about removing anything that might distract from your copy. Specifically, I’m talking about landing pages and how to create them on your WordPress blog.

Landing pages are usually pages in your WordPress blog that are dedicated to a specific purpose.

Those purposes may include:

• sales pages for products or services.
• subscription pages for newsletters or memberships.
• anything else where you want to focus the attention of your reader.

Why Focus a Reader’s Attention?

There are many instances when focusing the attention of your reader will result in a greater chance of them doing what your page asks.

Usually this is accomplished by removing the sidebar from your blog’s page.  By removing the sidebar, you remove the distraction of widgets, photos of your smiling face, or anything else that competes for your reader’s attention.

Look at the Sidebar on this Page

Just glance over to the right and you’ll see what I mean.  In my sidebar you see options for subscribing, staying in touch with me in Twitter and Facebook, a list of recent post and comments…the list goes on.

But if my goal is to get you to by something right now, I don’t want any of those elements distracting you from my copy.

Examples of Landing Pages Without Distracting Elements

The following are examples of WordPress blog pages that have elements removed in order to focus the reader’s attention on the page copy.

• No Sidebar -  Look at my pages for my two books: Never Ask For Referrals…Ever and Becoming Irresistible. These are admittedly simple attempts to focus the reader’s attention on the copy for each book by removing the sidebar and keeping the blog header and footer in place. Ideally you want the page to look more balanced than these pages currently demonstrate.

• No Sidebar, Header, or Footer – Dave Navarro and Naomi Dunford’s site for their eBook, How To Launch the **** Out of Your eBook is an example of a WordPress blog page without the distracting elements of the header, sidebar, or footer.

Don’t Let Your Reader Leave Because of Too Many Shoes

If you want to sell a product or service, consider removing the sidebar from your blog page and you’ll focus your reader’s attention on the copy.  You’ll reduce the chance that they will succumb to the distraction of too many shoes.

In the next post, I’ll teach you how to go about doing this.