When Anna- the overwhelmed, exhausted single mother of three arrives at your sales page, she is either:

Searching for some free information to help her cope or
Looking to pay someone to get her life under grips once and for all because she-just-can’t-take-this--stress-anymore-for-the-love-of-God-she’s-had-ENOUGH!

For a sales page that brings in actual crisp cash, you need to cater to the later mental state- the state where the need is so real and palpable that your solution seems like a God send.
Your marketing and traffic generation tools therefore should focus on keywords that show this purchase intent.
Purchase intent: The explicit intent of your target audience to open their wallets to alleviate a certain pain point
Because lets accept it, it is 100 times harder to sell to someone who is positive that a little bit of creative googling can help solve any problem.
We all know that person- the one who thinks stuff sold online is either utterly expensive or can be effortlessly DIYed (that last one reflects a veritable mental disorder fueled further by all the DIY Pinterest boards out there!)
So let’s agree right here right now that your sales page will only aim to sell to people who are in a buying mood.
People who have a clear and explicit need- a burning desire.
And have made up their mind to solve that need no matter what it takes
Capiche?
So your laser focused, lose-it-and-die aim is:
Getting her to punch in that credit card number-- happily excitedly, eagerly.

So how does that happen?
1. Start with a Dream:
People don’t buy things because they like those things, they buy things because of how those things make them feel.
If your headline cannot pull in Jenny with a promise that satisfies her deep core desire, you can lose all hopes of ever selling to her.
Your headline should address at least one of the six basic human desires:

People want to feel certain- an assurance that they can avoid pain and gain pleasure, a guarantee that their lives would remain safe, healthy and happy.
People want Variety- the need for change, challenge, adventure, new stimuli
People want to feel Significant- irresistibly beautiful, insanely rich, enviably happy, seductively thin, powerfully
People want to feel a Connection, to be Loved- a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something
People want to feel like they are Growing- an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding
People want to feel like they are Contributing- the feeling of being of service and a focus on helping, giving to and supporting others.

2. The Red Hot Burning Pain:
Once you have stirred the desire, it’s time for some fear mongering.
How?
By pointing out what your offering is saving them from.

Going through another annual appraisal without a raise while that pimply 22 year old YOU hired zips past you?
Having to pretend you hate swimming because the thought of yourself in a swim suit makes you die a little?
Pretending you aren’t home every time someone wants to visit because you just hate the way your place looks?

For these to be truly effective, the words used here should come straight out of your ideal buyer’s mouth. That’s where your market research comes in handy. Sort through actual words of how people describe the specific problem (The more intense the words the better) and use them here.
The results will surprise you---pleasantly!
3. No Shiny Things:
Keep your sales page as visually clean as possible.
This means no navigation, minimal header, no sidebars, no images except testimonials, no Icons or social sharing options.
Remember, all you want her to do is focus on being sold to.
4. A Narrative that Hooks and Pulls:
No one will take one look at your headline and buy.
Instead if they are intrigued enough, they will scroll down the page and scan what you are talking about.
If its crap, they click away and this means….**light bulb moment** no sale!
So, you need to keep them on the page and keep reading so that they can see the light.
The page layout then should be such that it changes a:

Visitor Into Scanner
Scanner into Reader and
Reader into Buyer

This means that your narrative, your story, your journey is written with a beginning, a middle, and an end. One sentence leads the reader to the next. One paragraph leads the reader to the next.
This also means that the narrative is designed to position your offering as a life changing miracle cure.
5. Make it Tangible, Substantial, Real:
People love to see things in action and the human brain processes information and makes decisions much faster when it can actually see, feel and experience a certain thing.
People don’t buy things, they buy results.
In the absence of an actual physical demo, you words, images or videos have to do this job of showing them the results.

Have a software that solves specific problems? See how Help Scout is using Video to make it tangible.
Offering a service that helps people eat healthy? Put up pictures of some of the actual meals (NOT stock photos)

6. Single Call to Action:
Don’t ask them to like, share or do any of the things that will take the attention away from your primary objective. Let me remind you in case it has slipped out of your precious grey matter:
Getting her to punch in that credit card number-- happily excitedly, eagerly.
Let her save her energies. DO NOT ask her to do anything else. Period!
7. The Feature Box:
Anything that needs to be highlighted away from the main content. It could include juicy morsels of what you are offering, most pertinent benefits of your product basically anything that you really really REALLY wish no one misses.
Use it smartly!
8. Proof of the Pudding:
One word: Testimonials
But not just any testimonials, you want people who are so similar to Jenny that she can actually relate to their struggles, their challenges and be inspired by their eventual victories (as a result of your offering).
9. Frequently Annoying Fears (FARs):
Dedicate at least one section of your sales page to addressing the FARs. The section should be like a series of arguments that build on each other and it also follows the same pattern that a skeptical buyer would have going on in his or her head. The sequence could go something like this:

Why should I trust you?
Why should I care?
How is that possible?
How will it work?
Why can’t I just buy any other similar product or service?
How can I be sure this will work for me?
Has anyone else done this?
How much does it cost?
How is this different from your other competitor products or services?

Bottom Line: Overcome objections faster than Jenny can think of them.

10. The Jolt:
So you have laid out the value, the benefits, the testimonials everything and if the person still doesn’t click that button to make the purchase, here’s your last ditch attempt at making him wake up from his stupor.
Jolt him!
Shock him with a surprise; a polarizing statement, a juicy irresistible bonus etc. Some common and very effective jolts could be:

Don’t buy this (If you aren’t….)
An Us vs them with a popular or cheaper comparison
This isn’t for (if you ….)
This program won’t work for you (if------)
Get it within the next --- and I will also throw in ----
This could mean the difference between sulking over another bill or taking your kids to Disney just because.

Bonus Ingredient:
People trust authority, they trust credentials and they trust public opinion. If you have any of these markers of authority, display them tall and proud on the page where they are unmissable!
With these 10 weapons of mass persuasion, you can take your sales page from “eh whatever” to “wow I gotta get this AND tell the world”.
Try it to revamp your sales page and let me know how it goes.
and here is a handy little sheet with all ingredients in one place.
10 Ingredients of a Sales Page that Makes People Dream, Drool and Buy