I was interested to read recently that famed blogger, Brian Clark re-wrote (or re-organized) the sales page of the hugely successful and highly regarded SEO Book.

And to be honest, it was about time. For such a highly-regarded and well-known ebook - Aaron Wall has done a wonderful branding job behind this - the actual sales page was, well, sub-standard.

Brian explains in quite good detail the reasons for some of the changes in his post - Introducing the New SEO Book Sales Letter.

The appearance of the previous sales letter was out of character with the rest of the site, and also didn’t fit the growing stature SEO Book has gained in very respectable circles. It was important to change fonts, colors and information architecture to create a more suitable presentation.

What intrigued me the most was the long/short sales copy talk.

In the world of long copy, this is pretty short. It’s only about 4 letter-sized pages of actual sales text (compare that to 30, 50 or even 100 pages for many Internet marketing promotions), followed by a Frequently Asked Questions section that provides additional information for the undecided.

I think this is about right. There is a balance that has to found here. Yes, Aaron is well-known in the SEO community so a relatively short sales page could be in order because his reputation precedes him. The balance comes in those that do not know of him - those coming around for the first time or through a Google search.

Hence, Brian could have easily cut down the sale copy by a massive amount, but smartly he didn’t.

I like the simple use of colors on the new sales copy. There’s no flashy graphics, it’s basically all just text and that’s what the prospects wants. Notice also the change from no colored boxes for testimonials - to me, that signifies a changing of presenting the long sales page - multi-colors are out. Less testimonials on the page from well-known folks with shorter copy and the rest on a separate pop-up. I also like that they have not piled on bonus after bonus, or given a time limit for ordering.

I have my own views of how I’d present the page - but I’ll leave that for later, maybe when I present my own products for sale at KickstartPress (shameless plug!). :-)

Visit the new sales page

Visit the old sales page

Read Brian dissecting the process (make sure you read the comments as there is some good discussions going on).