Regardless of how good your product is, your website’s visitors won’t know it unless you get that information through to them in a way that puts the product in a good light. People by their nature are skeptical. It’s generally not enough to tell them “X is great, now hand me your credit card!”. You need to do a bit more than that. This is where copy writing comes in. An untrained writer won’t know the right buttons to push to get the visitor in a buying mood. A good copy writer can turn your visitor’s state of mind from “yeah, right…” to “WOW I need this!”.

Copy writing is an art, yet it’s not rocket science. A few simple tricks can turn your informative write-up into a sales copy. In this article I will explain the first one – how to use bulleted lists.

Why bulleted lists?

Lists present the information in a brief manner and show important topics your visitor should focus on. They are a great way to list details such as product benefits or features. Instead of burying the key points inside large chunks of text.  Bulleted lists can help you display your ideas clearly and concisely.

How to write your bulleted list

In no particular order, here are the main principles you should keep in mind when creating a sales copy or landing page.

• Place the items in order of importance. Start off with the most important topic and work your way through. Don’t bury your most important ideas down the list – they might not get read, and if they do they will seem less important.
• Make bullet points consistent in structure. Have a look at this list. Each topic starts with a bolded sentence and each begins with an action verb. Don’t mix and match and the list will flow smoothly and will be easier to scan.
• Keep each point brief. If you have to elaborate on an idea, use sections with appropriate headings. Each bullet point should be three to five sentences long. After all, the whole point of a list is to make the visitor quickly skim through the advantages of your product, stop for a moment on the Call to Action and finally click the BUY button.
• Limit the list to three to five points. Again, have a look at this list: it’s five points long and shouldn’t bore you to death. If you list 20 points, each will seem less important and your visitor may not even read them all.
• List similar ideas. Don’t explain a feature of a product and immediately below list a benefit. It will only confuse your readers and you might have them click away from your landing page.

Bulleted lists should serve a similar role to headlines. They are there to highlight key points and are brief and easy to scan. Keep this in mind when writing your sales copies and you should see a boost in conversions.