5 Sales Page Formatting Tips That Will Seriously Level Up Your Copywriting 🚀

Unpopular opinion. The copywriting formulas you learn don't mean jack until you master the art of formatting. If you want to peek behind the scenes of what my sales pages look like before pushing publish, keep watching. What's up guys? It's Alex. I'm so glad you're here because this week I am doing something I have never done before. I'm going to share my screen and let you look over my shoulder as I show you how I edit, present and format all of my sales pages. To all of my posse peeps, I am so glad to see you again. Give me a thumbs up below to let me know you're here. And if you're new to the crew, welcome. Every single week I put out a new copywriting and marketing tutorial to give you the practical, tactical and inspirational tidbits you need to know to ignite your business or freelancing career. So if that sounds crazy cool to you, go ahead and hit subscribe below. And don't forget to ring that bell to be notified when my next video goes live. So you've been studying copywriting tips, techniques and templates for months now, and maybe you've even started writing some landing pages, emails or sales pages. But there is just one thing that's holding you back from adding that final piece to your portfolio or sending it over to your new client. Your copy looks like a hot mess. A brain dump of stories and headlines and benefits and bullets that, albeit genius find, follow no reel format or flow. And you're wondering how to make your final copy glossy, saucy and posse approved. Well, that is exactly what I'm going to show you today. But first, do not get me wrong. You guys have heard me say before, that copy is queen and should always, always, always come before design. And that is still 100% true. But what I'm talking about today is not website design. We're talking about the visual structure of your raw copy document. Which is just as important as the words you write. Because? Because in order to make an impact with your copywriting, you need to strategically highlight certain elements, increase readability, and use typography, design and layout to your advantage. So if you want to know exactly how I format and structure every single piece of copy that I write for both myself and my clients, then come along with me as I give you an insider peek at my Write and Ignite Challenge sales page before it was published. Okay guys, so here we are. This is the raw format of my Write and Ignite sales page document before it magically looked like this with the help of an awesome design and development team. The great thing about being a copywriter though, is that you don't need to worry about the final website design. This is not your job. All you have to do is send your copy over to your client or design team in a simple document like this. No need to get fancy. Your job isn't to make it look pretty. Your goal is to write powerful words and phrases in a way that flows and doesn't confuse or overwhelm the reader. So I write all of my copy in Google Drive. It makes it super easy to format, share and edit. Plus, Google autosaves everything you type in the the cloud, which you know is a freaking godsend if you've ever lost any of your work due to an unexpected computer crash or an Internet glitch. All right, so let's go through this little number step by step. So first things first, remember to keep your font simple. Use Arial or something similar that sans serif and really easy to read. Yes, I am calling out all of you Comic Sans fans out there to keep things simple. I'm going to break down my formatting tips into five sections, Headlines, section breaks, buttons and boxes, readability, and final editing. Okay, so first up, here are my headline tips. So I like to follow a maximum three headline rule, a pre headline, main headline and sub headline. Now I'll often have only one or two headlines, but I will never have more than three. That is just overkill in my opinion. So you want to make sure you size your headlines larger than the body text of your copy to make them, well, headlines obviously. So the pre headline, which is the text that comes before or above your main headline, should be around a 14 point font. Now the pre headline is great for opening a loop with a rhetorical question or a curiosity peaking statement. Then underneath your pre headline comes your main headline. This is your core hook, the big idea that communicates a strong benefit, pain point or mechanism so you want it to stand out. I usually make this about 20 point font and then underneath your main headline comes your sub headline which I like to size at 16 point font. So the sub headline is a great way to give the reader a short and quick explanation of what the page is all about. Without a good sub headline, the readers might not have enough context or interest to keep reading the rest of the page. So in this case my sub headline really sets up the call to action below, which I will talk about in just a moment. A second. As for the rest of your copy, anything that isn't a Headline, section opener or CTA should be in 12 point font. And in case you don't know what I call, section openers are basically the sub headlines that you place throughout the copy to. Yes, you guessed it, open each new section. You can see a section opener right here. And to make things simple, I've highlighted them all in green below. So section openers are important because they are what keep your readers engaged and interested in reading more. They open loops as to what's talked about in the next section, but they also make your sales page more skimmable and easy to read. Just like my sub headlines, I use 16 point font for section openers. Big enough to stand out and draw your attention in, but it doesn't overwhelm the eyes. So as I'm scrolling down the page here, you can see that these really stand out, capture attention and keep you reading. Okay, so I know I just threw out a bunch of different font sizes at you guys, and I know that trying to remember all of those can be overwhelming. But if you're using Google Drive, there's actually a super simple and easy trick. They have some something that's called a heading menu right here with plenty of options available for formatting headlines. So for your Pre headlines, use heading 3. For your main headline, use heading 1. For your sub headline, and section openers, use heading 2. And then for the rest of your copy, just use normal text at a font size of 12. So if you can just remember those four heading options, you will be all set. All right, moving on to the next section. Section breaks. All right, so another thing that's really important when formatting your copy is to make sure that you're visually breaking up the text. I cannot stress enough how important this is, you guys, especially if you're passing your copy to a web designer, because it really helps convey the vision you have for your sales page. And as I said before, while your job isn't to design the page, you definitely write it with a specific flow, look and feel in your mind whether you're aware of it or not. And trust me, nothing is worse than seeing your final copy designed on a website. And you realize, oh my God, that is not how I wanted it to look. So. So don't leave any room for confusion. You want to make it as easy as possible for your client or your web designer to understand the intended layout of your page so it can make the biggest impact possible. So one of the best ways to do this is to visually break up the sections of text. And I like to do this by adding horizontal lines throughout my copy, which is super simple to do in Google Drive. All you have to do to add a horizontal line is go up here and click insert in the menu and then select horizontal line, like so. So if we scroll through this page, you'll see that I added a line between each section to signal to the web designer that these sections should and can be visually distinguished from one another. And you'll notice on the live sales page that this is where all the obvious section breaks happen. All right, moving on to the next section. Buttons and boxes. All right, so let's talk about buttons real quick, because your sales page must have at least one button or else what is the point of it? Now, once again, your job is not to design the button. However, it is your job as the copywriter to decide where the buttons are located and what they should say. Say. So to mark my buttons, I actually just put square brackets around the CTA like this. And by the way, you guys, when it comes to CTAs, I like to follow the sandwich rule. I like to have a CTA at the top for all of those eager beavers, a CTA at the very bottom for all those fast scrollers and a few CTAs sprinkled throughout the rest of the page, but obviously only where and when it makes sense. So on this page, I made all the CTA buttons pink so that you can see them really easily. You can see that we have a CTA at the top above the fold, and then we have a few more throughout the page. So there's one right here after the indoctrination, another one right here after the program breakdown, and then another one further down after we presented the offer. And then of course, we have an order box after the social proof value stack and bonuses are introduced. And then we have one more final CTA down at the very, very bottom after the faq. Because so often, you guys, the very first thing that people do when they decide it's time to buy is scroll right to the bottom. So you really want to make sure a CTA is the last thing they see on the page. All right, now let's talk about boxes. I like to highlight testimonials, bonuses, and the order section in boxes like so. Now, that way the web designer knows to add a little extra design element here to make it seem stand out from the copy above and below it. So to add a box, it's really easy. You just go back up to insert, select table and then select the single one by one box, and Then, voila, you just simply type your copy inside of it. So this little stuff is so simple, you guys, but it really goes a long way for making sure that the copy and design mesh well together. All right, so let's talk about tips for increasing readability. Alright, so we just talked about the basics of formatting your sales page in a Google Doc, and it's ridiculously easy, right? But now I want to talk about a few more things that you can really do to skyrocket the readability of your sales page and make a huge difference in your conversion rates. So when it comes to readability, big walls of text are never a good idea. It's overwhelming to the eye, and most people won't get past the first couple of sentences, or like me, they'll just skip over it altogether. So notice how basically all of my text is broken up into small paragraphs and each paragraph only has really a few sentences in it. So I always try to keep the total number of sentences in any paragraph to a maximum of three. So you go from something like this to this, which, as you can see, is 100 times easier to read and way less intimidating to the reader. So as a copywriter, you want to keep in mind that the human brain has a lot going on inside of it, like all the time. So it's really easy for people to get distracted and just completely lose interest in what they're reading. So remember, we are in the attention and retention business, so it's really your job to keep your reader well reading by helping guide them through the rest of the page. This is why I love coherence markers. Ellipses and a well placed bolded word. Now, if you're like, oh my gosh, Alex, what in the heck are coherence markers? They're basically bridge words or transition sentences that connect two ideas or concepts together and keep people engaged with a more conversational tone and flow. So using coherence markers like and. But in fact, that's why, you see, here's the thing, all of those add clarity and contribute to more persuasive messaging. So multiple studies have shown that using coherence markers actually improve cognitive fluency. And even though they might not have the nicest syntax or be grammatically correct, by academic standards, they make copy clean, clear and easy to understand. So here are some examples of coherence markers that I used throughout this sales page. And again, to make it easy for you, I have highlighted them in yellow. And yes, you can see that I use a lot of ellipses or dot dot dots rather than full stops to keep the flow rolling and the reader scrolling. So let's talk about bolding for a second, because obviously when you see something in bold, it really grabs your attention. So it can and should be strategically used to convey key messages or takeaways that you really want your audience to see and read. But just like anything else, there is such thing as too much. So do not go crazy with bolding anything and everything. Otherwise it really loses its effectiveness. See what I mean? All right, so let's move on to my final editing tips. So after you finish your sales page and you formatted it using the tips I've shared above, you are not quite done just yet. There are a couple of extra steps that you can take to make sure that your copy is looking legit enough to call a final first draft. The first thing I always like to do is double check my copy's readability with, yes, you guessed it, the Hemingway Editor. You guys have heard me talk about this tool a million times before. Hemingway Editor rates the readability of your page based on grade level and you should always aim to be at a grade 8 or below because believe it or not, the average person person reads at the seventh or eighth grade level. Now that is of course, unless you're writing to a more professional audience that you know has a higher level of education. Then of course you can aim for a higher grade level readability. Now if you have any run on sentences, big walls of text, or excessive adverbs, the Hemingway Editor will highlight it accordingly. So just head over to hemingwayapp.com it's free to use. You copy and paste your entire sales page into the editor like so. So you can see that the readability of my page is at a seventh grade level, which is great. Now if you do score higher, just make some adjustments to your page as necessary to get that readability score down to an eight or below. And once you've done that, always, always, always view your document on your mobile device. Trust me, the majority of people will view your sales page on their mobile device. So you might think that you have great readability and you don't have any big sections of text, but you might be typing your document on a desktop and the formatting won't look the exact same same on mobile. So there's actually two ways you can check the readability of your mobile version. The first is just to view the document on your actual phone. You can download the Google Doc app and open the document directly on your iPhone and give it a once over or you can do the margin trick. Just change the margins of your document in the Google Doc on your desktop. I usually go to four or somewhere around the midway mark to get an idea of how this might look on mobile. And the very last thing that I definitely always do is probably proofread. I move very fast when I write copy, which means I often make typos or skip words, which is why I absolutely love using Grammarly. I actually have it installed right on my computer and it automatically checks the document for spelling and grammar errors. And when it does notice an error it just underlines it in red and then all you have to do is hover over the word to see the suggested substitution. All right, so now that your sales page has fire formatting, rad readability and checks out on the spelling front, you are done and ready to share your document with your team, team or your client for feedback. So you can go ahead and share your document with them. And whatever you do guys, do not forget to give them access. Otherwise if you send them the link they might not have access to it and then they have to request access and then it's super annoying and it looks pretty unprofessional. All right guys, so there you have it. The formatting tips and tricks that I always follow anytime I'm writing copy for myself or a client. Give me a thumbs up below if you found this video helpful. And if you're ready to put your newfound formatting tips into practice for following a proven high converting sales page formula that breaks down everything I just talked about into a super streamlined writing process. Be sure to check out my five day Write and Ignite challenge by clicking the link below. And as always guys, I will see you back here next week with a brand new copywriting tutorial. Until then, I'm Alex. Ciao for now. Then come along with.