Don't create or modify your web site until you have read this list !

Until they tasted it! Yes, "Beer-Tank-Goo" (it's not alcoholic) makes great sandwiches! Really! (I'm not kidding.) I'll explain what I mean a bit further down....

Hi Mel, Jesse, and everyone.... :)

> Websites (which is maybe (I get confused)
> what this was about) are a whole different
> ball of wax. Or bucket of monkeys. Or
> something. :)

Wow, this is an interesting thread. :) The web is still a relatively "new" medium so I guess that's why we're having this discussion!

Perhaps what we might say from all this discussion is that there may be different rules for different characteristics of different products....

Is a product easy to understand? Difficult? Is there a lot of education involved in learning exactly what the product is?

In Australia, there's this black gooey substance that a lot of Aussies love to spread on their toast. In fact, its taste is extremely salty, and it's made from the goo that's scraped off the bottom of the tanks that beer is made in. (I'm not kidding!) It's "concentrated yeast extract."

It's called "Vegemite."

If I wanted to sell "Vegemite" to Aussies outside of Australia (where it might be hard to get), I don't need much of an ad at all. Probably "Vegemite - $2 a jar + P&H" would be enough. I wouldn't need to educate them, since they already know what it is....

But, if I want to sell "Vegemite" to Americans, it would be a tougher sales job. I'd probably have to at least write some paragraphs on what an exotic taste of Australia "Vegemite" is -- that is, I'd need to educate some more about what it really is, and why they should buy it.....

I'd probably explain how Vegemite is full of vitamin B. How in Australia, it's practically a "national" food (if you can have such a thing).

How the taste from a small scoop of Vegemite is so strong that you should spread it very thin, but if you do, the taste can be tempting.

How versatile it is.... While most people spread it on toast or use it in sandwiches, others use it curries, soups, on lamb chops, and a zillion different ways!

How Australians' love of vegemite is so strong that if you do a search for "vegemite" on the web, you'll find over 15,000 different links to the web pages of die-hard Vegemite fans.... Web pages all devoted to their love of Vegemite! And so on....

I wouldn't mention the part about "beer-tank-goo"! Though, to the right crowd, that could be a plus too! :)

I guess the point is, some products targeted at some audiences require more education to sell them than other products do.... A good sales letter (in my opinion) also educates about the product as well as its benefits.... But it depends on who it's targeted at, and some of the characteristics of the product....

I have read looooong single pages on web sites purely for interest, though admittedly I don't do it very often.... I guess it all depends on how interesting the topic is to me, and whether it's been written in an exciting way or not!

Would you sit through a whole infomercial (knowing exactly that it's an ad)?

If you're like me, you have, but only for the type of products (and benefits) that interest you. :) Most people probably wouldn't sit through most infomercials, but enough people do to make it profitable for the advertiser....

I guess my opinion here (without having tested it) is that the more difficult your product is to understand and the more expensive it is, the more difficult it is to sell it through a web page.

And the more difficult it is to sell, the more information you need to give about it to a potential buyer in order to make a sale....

I read through all of the sales letter Jesse Horowitz linked to, and I found it fascinating! But then, that's probably because it gave a lot of good tips about traffic generation, a very interesting topic to someone with a web site (like me and like many of us here)! As well as being a sales letter, it educated me too.... :)

Well, that's my two cents of opinion.... :)

What do you think? This explanation seems sensible to me -- but as always, I'm still a student of marketing.... An excited student, riveted about the topic, but as always, I'm still learning.... :)

- Dien