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If you look at a page with graphics and visuals vs. a page without graphics and visuals, which one gets your
attention? Which page slows you down? Which page creates more curiosity? The answer is so obvious, that it
barely needs explanation.
And yet, not all visuals work towards creating greater conversion. Some visuals simply take up space. They
are useless, incredibly stupid visuals that do nothing to slow down or educate the reader. Your job is to under-
stand the role of visuals and how they help to create drama and curiosity. And how to distinguish between the
useless, stupid visuals and the smart visuals.
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of 1 14/01/2009 10:05
And in most cases, you do nothing to stop them. Nothing to slow them down. Or keep their attention. And
this can be a costly error. Because the more time the customer spends on your page, the more likely they are
to buy something. The more the customer gets an idea of what they’re really buying, the more likely they are
to step right up and swipe their credit card.
And visuals are one of the more effective ways to slow down the readers (or in our case, customers).
Visuals slow down customers.
They get the customers interested.
They drive home the important points.
And they do so, in a matter of seconds.
And we know this to be true, because you actually looked at the visual before you read this text. And text,
wonderful as it is, can be missed. Text can get buried under a mountain of more text. But visuals stand out.
And stop the skimming. And that’s the biggest reason why they’re so darned important in the business of at-
traction and conversion.
1) Photos.
2) Graphics
3) Videos.
Photos: Photos come in a whole range. Photos can be images of clients, of owners, of staff or people who
are somehow connected to your story or sales page. Or they can be images of your product. Or they can be
objects that tell a story. Let’s look at each one separately.
A photo tells an instant story. Therefore using photos is pretty important. Photos when coupled with captions,
become even more effective in telling a story. Even if you don’t read a word on this page, what does it start
to reveal? Your response will be exactly like everyone else’s response. You’ll know somehow it’s a diamond-
based site. You’ll get the feeling that it’s a company that seems to have been around for a few generations at
the very least. You’ll also get the feeling of trust even though you can’t figure out why.
And guess what? You haven’t read a single word on the page. The photos and the visuals created the impres-
sion in your brain long before you had the time to read anything.
And once you did read the photos and the cap-
tions, what message did you get?
This photo of an object gets your attention. When buying from a sales page, it’s a little
harder to feel and touch a product. Photos of the product from different angles help to get a
message and a feel across. There’s a reason why there’s a surfer on that laptop, you know.
It’s meant to make the laptop look cool. Do you think the laptop would look just as cool with
a blood-spattered murder victim?
This is the page on which the visual appeared. Notice how your eye is instantly drawn to
the salmon, then to Jeff’s image on the top right, and then to John’s image at the bottom
right of the page.
But what if you have a service and don’t have a product shot? How do you go about describing a workshop or
a consulting sequence with photos? This can be easily achieved by using graphics. No matter how abstract
your service (or product) you can explain one heck of a lot by using well-placed graphics. And if you use
graphics, you can quickly explain the following:
1) Sequence of events.
2) Technical facts.
3) Contents of a service/product.
4) Create a mood or setting.
When selling the product iLife, Apple.com uses photos—because it can. But when it comes to something more abstract,
Apple.com resorts to graphics without losing any of the punch or drama.
You may think it’s enough to just list the bonuses, but it’s not.
It’s important to have a complete list + a complete description
+ a complete set of graphics.
So there you go: With graphics, you can quickly create a sequence of events, demonstrate technical facts,
show contents of products or services, or set a mood.
Which takes us to the next part: The components of visuals. What criteria do you need to have when choos-
ing visuals? Not surprisingly, you’re about to find out.
For well over a century, newspapers and magazines have done just that. Day after day, they’ve got your atten-
tion with visuals that instantly get your attention. And you too can put in visuals that are very relevant and
explanatory. All you have to do is follow these three simple guidelines:
When you look at the page of just about any newspaper, you’ll find these rules (or should I say, guidelines) in
place. But does it only apply to editorial? No it doesn’t. In fact, some of the smartest companies in the world
use it on their sales page. And as result move thousands or even billions of dollars of their product. Product
and services that would be
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A burst of yellow,
blue and orange
in a sea of white Photo of victims
snow. The juxta- that stand out
position of colour because of the
and bare back- relative sizes. The
ground draws you bigger photo is
in instantly. more of a land-
scape, but this one
is more cropped in
for drama.
1 of 1 14/01/2009 09:55
Example: Apple MacBook
I’ve rarely seen businesses sell products like Apple. They make their sales pages luscious. A piece of alumin-
ium is turned into a thing of beauty. And here’s how they do it: With visuals. Stunning visuals. And captions.
And simplicity.
There may be nothing dramatic about a laptop. So Apple uses a dramatic image on the laptop itself. The image is simple, but it
tells a reasonable story. It shows colour and graphics. And not just any graphics, but ‘cool’ graphics. What’s also interesting, is
that if you’re into video, you’d very quickly see how the graphic seems to be telling a story about how you could possibly use ‘8
hours worth of video editing’ time on the road (then again, maybe it’s just me). But let’s not lose the point. The graphics are inter-
esting, and simple, and captioned.
Or captions can sit within the visual itself as it does with most of
the cartoons on the blog at http://www.psychotactics.com/blog
Now you see the salmon, now you don’t. If you cover the salmon, does the page reduce impact? Sure it does. The best way to
figure out if a visual is needed (or not needed) is to cover it with you palm. In this case, the salmon creates a factor of curiosity
and drives home a very, very important point.
When you uncover the salmon again, you’ll see that it does indeed create an impact of sorts. You can try the same test with the
rest of the visuals on the page. I’ve called it the palm test, but feel free to use anything (including green speech bubbles) to do
this simple, effective test.
If you took the salmon visual (on the previous page) and put it on just about any site or web page, you’d find
it doesn’t fit in. That’s the job of the visual: It needs to fit in and needs to be useful to the message on the page
itself. You can’t simply drop visuals in and expect them to work. They need to illustrate the message for that
specific product or service. This is why every single one of our products and services have unique visuals
(with very few exceptions). Sometimes you can indeed recycle an image, but in most cases, unique visuals
are not just appropriate to tell the story, but also important for differentiation from one offering to another.
Go to Google Images and you’ll find thousands of these ugh visuals that have no meaning at all. Don’t make this mistake.
For services, you may well use graphics as services such as consultancy or workshops are more abstract
and difficult to explain with photos. Therefore a series of well placed graphics work very well indeed to
show sequences, technical facts, contents of an offering or to create a mood.
Video is very effective in telling a visual story. Videos can’t stand alone, as they’re sequential in nature
and you often have to watch a video from one end to another. Therefore even if you have videos, you need
photos and graphics, and text to give snapshots of the story. You may personally detest video, but you are
NOT your customer. Give your customer what they want, not what you want.
Visuals need to be interesting, non-complex, and most importantly, they need captions. A visual
without a caption is not a good visual at all. Try and put captions on every visual including client photos,
objects and even video.
Visuals are very effective tools of conversion, but only if used well. Use the palm test to see if your
visual is helping tell the story. If it’s not helping to tell the story, get rid of the visual. And for heaven’s sake
stop using stupid, crappy generic visuals like ‘handshakes’. They have no intrinsic value and are a waste of
space.
What if you don’t consider yourself a writer? Can you still create
an information product that sells? And can that information
product then help you get increased revenue and time? The an-
swer lies in your ability to believe in yourself. Most of the clients
I deal with don’t believe they can create an info-product. And
then having created a single info-product believe that they’ve
put all they know into that product. And that they have nothing
else to give.
And from experience we know that those who follow this course,
and what it teaches, can create not one, but tens, even hundreds
of info-products. Which of course leads to another problem?
How do you get customers to buy? How do you create a distribu-
tion channel? How you do all of this without the hype and the
hoopla. How?
Find out at: http://www.psychotactics.com/homestudy-courses
That it’s not a bunch of bytes online, but actually a place where
customers congregate. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Well, find out
for yourself the difference between just having a website, and
having a website strategy that makes your business robust;
makes your clients happy, and makes you a more prosperous,
and far more relaxed business owner. Find out at:
http://www.psychotactics.com/homestudy-courses
Every business has not one, but about five hundred competi-
tors. And no matter how unique your business is today, you will
have competition lurking just around the corner. This leads us
to a dilemma. How you separate yourself from the herd? How
do you get customers to come to you, instead of you always
having to pitch to them?