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Nothing screams “Don’t buy” like having an old date on your sales page, especially when the date displayed is many months or even years ago even though the information you provide may be just as valid today as it was when you wrote it. Here’s a few tips to help keep your sales pages looking fresh and up to date.

You may be thinking that I’m going to just give you the code to display todays date on your sales letter. That’s nothing new. As a matter of fact, I think most people immediately start distrusting your sales copy knowing you didn’t just write the sales letter today. That worked at one point but people are becoming more and more internet savy so it’s time to make a few small changes and see if that will help your conversions. Ah.. I didn’t completely answer your question about whether I’m going to give you some code, the answer is yes with a, but..

As I just said, nobody, (unless they just hooked up to the internet yesterday), believes you wrote your sales letter this morning and you may start losing credibility before they’ve even ready anything past your headline so why don’t you try to use a more believable date.

Instead of…

From The Desk Of: Your Name
Date: 11/16/2011

Try…

From The Desk Of: Your Name
Date: 10/30/2011

Which one looks more realistic to you?

Here’s the code to show a previous date. Just change the bolded red number below to “increase the age” of your sales page.

<script>
var mydate=new Date()
mydate.setDate(mydate.getDate()-3)
var year=mydate.getYear()
if (year < 1000)
year+=1900
var day=mydate.getDay()
var month=mydate.getMonth()
var daym=mydate.getDate()
if (daym<10)
daym=”0″+daym
var dayarray=new Array(“Sunday”,”Monday”,”Tuesday”,”Wednesday”,”Thursday”,”Friday”,”Saturday”)
var montharray=new Array(“January”,”February”,”March”,”April”,”May”,”June”,”July”,”August”,”September”,”October”,”November”,”December”)
document.write(“<font color=’000000‘>”+dayarray[day]+”, “+montharray[month]+” “+daym+”, “+year+”</font>”)
</script>

Another thing that has to make your visitors BS alarms go haywire is seeing the obligatory “Offer expires Midnight, 11/16/2011″. Yeah right. Who is that really going to fool? People bookmark the page and come back the next day and, guess what… that’s right, now the offer expires at midnight tonight.

Why don’t you try re-wording that just a bit and throw in a more believable future date like…

(This special offer is guaranteed through 11/17/2011)

You’re not saying the offer expires at midnight TONIGHT. You are not saying you will raise the price and midnight TONIGHT, you are only saying that the price they see is only guaranteed through the date shown. This will let their own imagination work against them since you didn’t specifically say what would happen on the date shown, they may not want to take the chance to see what happens.

And guess what? You didn’t lose any credibility.

Here’s the code to show a future date. Just change the bolded red number below to “increase the length” of your guaranteed price period.

Optional: You may also change the font color if you like. It is currently set as black.

<script>
var mydate=new Date()
mydate.setDate(mydate.getDate()+1)
var year=mydate.getYear()
if (year < 1000)
year+=1900
var day=mydate.getDay()
var month=mydate.getMonth()
var daym=mydate.getDate()
if (daym<10)
daym=”0″+daym
var dayarray=new Array(“Sunday”,”Monday”,”Tuesday”,”Wednesday”,”Thursday”,”Friday”,”Saturday”)
var montharray=new Array(“January”,”February”,”March”,”April”,”May”,”June”,”July”,”August”,”September”,”October”,”November”,”December”)
document.write(“<font color=’000000‘>”+dayarray[day]+”, “+montharray[month]+” “+daym+”, “+year+”</font>”)
</script>

Another thing to keep in mind is your websites or sales letter copyright. It’s not going to go very far towards building your credibility when your sales letter displays a date only a few weeks old while your copyright shows 2006.

You can use the following code to display a copyright message with the current year. Change the bolded red text to your domain or preferred copyright holder.

<p align=”center”>Copyright &copy;
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var theDate=new Date()
document.write(theDate.getFullYear())
</script> YourSite.com - All Rights Reserved.
</p>

If you would like to use php instead, here ya go.

Todays Date

</?php
echo date(“m/d/Y”);
?>

Previous Date

</?php
$previous = mktime(0,0,0,date(“m”),date(“d”)-17,date(“Y”));echo “Date: “.date(“m/d/Y”, $previous);
?>

Future Date

</?php
$future = mktime(0,0,0,date(“m”),date(“d”)+1,date(“Y”));echo “Date: “.date(“m/d/Y”, $future);
?>

Of course, as always… test, test, test!!

Keeping your sales pages looking fresh is only one aspect of getting your sales page conversions rates up. It’s important if not critical to continually try and out perform your current sales letter.

Using a Split Testing Script such as The Split Test Accelerator you can adjust your dates and see what performs the best, todays date? 3 days ago? 17 days ago? Which offer guaranteed through date is best? Today? Tomorrow, 3 days from now?

Not only that but you are able to test headlines, bullet points, calls to action and practically every part of your sales copy using “fractional-factorial” testing ( “Taguchi” testing). Very important to test if I haven’t made the clear already. One of the easiest ways to put extra money in your pocket without increasing your advertising costs is to simply convert more of your visitors to paying customers.

In my next post I’m planning to go over some reverse pricing strategies for your sales letters and the integration of coupon codes to help motivate your visitors so stay tuned!

Till next time,
Gail

PS. I know the code above is wrapping across the column on the right but I would rather have the code in unbroken, copy & paste form for you rather than look pretty even though it does kind of drive me a little nutso looking at it.