Lesson 42: A quick refresher on writing like you talk

All about not making your website "that guy"

Or, “If landing pages were people — three nasty habits that drive Sam away.”

I’ve talked about how you should write. But it may be helpful to refresh your memory, or perhaps augment your memory, by now looking at some obvious things you should not do. These apply generally, of course, but especially to your opt-in page.

They also begin to illuminate some important design principles, which is what we’ll be looking at next — making sure your page looks right.

Landing pages and people are not as different as you might think. That’s because landing pages are written by people. Sounds obvious now I mention it — but the fact is, it can sometimes be hard to keep the worst parts of ourselves out of what we create. Here are three very bad habits common to landing pages which tend to depress conversion rates. You’ll notice that these all wreck candor, clarity, connectivity, or contrast in various ways.