Retailers learned eons ago that attracting customers into their stores was a matter of having attractive and exciting display windows. The idea was to get shoppers to stop, admire the items in the windows, and then enter the store to see what more it had.

And so it should be with the sales page for your eCourse. Consider it your “display window.” The goal is to attract, engage, and compel your visitor to come in, take a deeper look, and make that purchase. Your eCourse must be “sold” just like any other product.

The Basics

Before you begin to craft your sales page, you must do a little work:

Who is your customer? You need to develop, at least in your mind, a persona of the typical user of your course. This will drive the language you use, and the selling points that you want to highlight. If, for example, your audience is young millennials, you will draft copy that is quite different than you would for C-level Gen X or even Baby Boomer potentials.

Clarify for yourself what value your course will bring to your potential participants. Your course should be solving a problem that a “customer” has – what is that problem and how is your course going to solve it? Generally, these are the types of problems that consumers want to solve when they take eCourses:

• More efficiency and time
• Preparation for a better career or lifestyle
• Improved personal life or relationships
• More skills in their current work
• A path to greater income
• New skills that can be used to impress or improve their personal or professional lives

So, identify those problems that your course solves and make certain that you will focus on those in your sales page.

Once you have clarified these two things, you are ready to start to craft the sales page copy.

Craft an Outline for Your Sales Page

Your sales page will be divided into sections, with headings and then detail. Why? Because people begin receiving information by skimming content. They want to see those bold headings to get a quick overview of what you offer before they read any detail.

If you have created a solid outline, you will have the sections to highlight in bold and then the detail that should fall under each of those headings.

Generally, your headings should present the following:

• A headline that is compelling. Journalists understand this. The headline is the initial draw. It should be intriguing, compelling and creatively written. Focus on value and creativity.
• What is the purpose of this course? Focus on the problems the course will solve for a participant. Who should enroll and why?
• Who you are. What gives you the right to offer such a course? What makes you an expert? Humanize this as much as possible – people like to relate to their course instructors on a personal level.
• The outline of the course. What are the key “units” that will be included? What will the enrollee know or be able to do at the end of each unit?
• How will the course content be delivered? Is it self-paced with flexibility or is it a more traditional course with specific times for real-time delivery and interaction among participants, etc.?
• What social proof do you have? If the course has been offered before, what are former students saying about your course? Are their “influencers” who endorse this course?
• Pricing. How much will this cost?
• Guarantees and Refund Terms – this is self-explanatory, but you do want your potential enrollees to have some comfort that there will be a means to request and acquire at least partial refunds.
• An FAQ section – develop a list of the most common questions that you believe potential enrollees may have.

It may help to review and study some examples of good sales pages. Check out the eCourse sales pages of Origym, a company that offers coursework to aspiring and existing personal trainers. They include all of these sections and present them in compelling ways.

Length Concerns

You may be concerned that your sales page is going to be too long. No, it is not. Readers will skim your headings and dig deeper into the details under those headings as they want. Length is really not a consideration or a worry. The more important thing is that you have covered all of the information that any potential enrollee might want. Let them pick and choose easily by dividing that information up for them to “snack” on it.

The Call to Action

This is a critical element of your sales page. After all, what is your goal? It is to get people to sign up. Consider carefully what you want to include in your CTA.

• Do you want a clean CTA that solicits a sign-up and payment without any other factors?
• Do you want to offer a “free trial” that includes the first unit or module before full payment is required?
• Do you want to offer a money-back guarantee?
• Do you want to offer some combination or options for enrollment? For example, can an enrollee pay a small amount now for the first module and then decide to continue or not?

You may need to do some testing here, to see which CTA is the most popular. There are many options to create compelling CTA’s and those CTA buttons – do some research and see what others use and recommend.

A Word About the FAQ Section

Develop this section carefully. Why? Because people skim. They don’t catch the details. Then, they develop questions and may not want to go back through all of your content to find the answers. The FAQ section can address this problem. Here is what this section should include:

• Who is the ideal enrollee?
• How does one enroll/register?
• What can enrollees expect to gain from this course?
• How much does the course cost?
• What is the delivery model?
• What are the enrollment timeframes?
• What happens if an enrollee is not happy with the course?

In the End, It All Comes Down to Value

No consumer is engaged unless and until they see personal value in a product or service. Every content marketer knows this. Your sales page has to show, above all else, the value it will bring to your audience – money is only spent when value is perceived.