Take advantage of reading habits for graphic results

I've got news for you. Most people never read your sales page as completely as you'd like them to. And the reason they don't read it is because there's too much to read, right?

Wrong! They don't read it because they're doing what all humans do all the time.

We scan the horizon.

When we walk into a room, we scan.

When we walk out of the train station, we scan.

Even when we're an ice-cream shop and we know the exact flavour we want - we still scan.

So why would you expect a reader not to scan when they're on your sales page?

Of course, what the reader sees on your sales page is a waterfall of text.

And one of the ways for you to get the reader to slow down is to use subheads.

Because subheads are often in a different colour and different size and font, the reader is able to jump from subhead to subhead. But subheads are not always effective, because they are often sequential. This means the writer (that's you) can't just throw a subhead in anywhere; you have to place it in a logical progression of text.

And readers do slow down at subheads. They read a bit of the subhead, the text, and then it's scanning time again.

However, that scanning is dangerous for you as a seller.

You may have something really important to say. And you say it. But you've stated that important fact somewhere in the middle of your text. And the reader/prospect who's mostly scanning subheads jumped right over your important information and zoomed right past those crucial facts and figures.

This scanning behaviour is very dangerous for sales, because it creates an incomplete picture in the reader's brain. An incomplete picture in turn leads to a prospect putting off a purchase.

And while losing one sale is bad enough, you're probably losing a lot more than just one. It's common for a customer to buy one product/service and come back to buy a larger quantity or variety or products/services. So (gulp), you're losing a lot of sales because of this nasty human habit of scanning.

So the way around it is to harness another one of our nasty habits.

The habit of detecting change.

If you're scanning the horizon and a blue tweeting bird pops in, you notice it right away. That blue tweeting bird is the equivalent of a graphic.

A graphic puts instant brakes on the reader. The reader stops to examine the graphic. Suddenly you've slowed down the scanning, and they're actually reading. So yeah, let's chuck a whole lot of graphics on the sales page, right?

Ha, ha, you know the answer already, don't you?

Put in stock graphics like "globes" or "two people in suits shaking hands" or some clip-art kind of graphic, and the reader will just sail past it. But put in a graphic that explains the concept, or a graphic that gives information about your product and services, and you've got a winner.

But where do you find examples of such graphics on sales pages?

It depends what kind of sales pages you're looking at, of course. Some sales pages are as many as 15-20 pages long, but don't seem so long because of the graphics. Some pages are short, but built in layers so that you get locked into a section (see www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/#faces or www.apple.com/macosx/refinements).

And you'll find you're scanning - even with the pictures. But notice how the pictures are slowing you down.

You can't help it. You want to scan.

But the graphics are giving you critical information. And at the same time causing you to want to buy (yes, well-presented information has that kind of effect). And best of all, graphics don't always need to be sequential. They can be placed anywhere on the page, as long as they are interesting and have some sort of description in the form of a caption.

Don't take my word for it.

Test it for yourself.

Use a page with well-designed graphics versus one without well-designed graphics.

You'll quickly see the results for yourself. And no, crappy graphics don't count. Sean D'Souza is chief executive of Psychotactics and an international author and trainer.

www.psychotactics.com