How so? I’m sure you’ll agree with me that a website has a very short time to make a first impression. When I am surfing the net, I can usually tell whether I like or dislike a website in seconds, and I’m not shy to press the back button right away.
If you are trying to drive sales or build a list through a more traditional landing page, or even on a simple website, then the headline is your first, and probably best chance at capturing a visitor’s attention, and getting them to read on. If you can’t give off a good impression, say goodbye to that visitor, and to your potential sale.
Read more for an interesting free tool you can use to analyze what kind of impression your headline is sending out.
The tool is called the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer. It takes your headline, checks the language you use, and assigns it an emotional marketing value, or EMV.
It gives you a percentage rating, which is how much of the headline consists of these powerful “emotional” words, that most commonly evoke people to stick around, as well as an emotional area your headline appeals to.
The emotional areas are:
Neutral - No emotional impact
Intellectual - Words which are especially effective when offering products and services that require reasoning or careful evaluation.
Empathetic - Words which resonate in with Empathetic impact often bring out profound and strong positive emotional reactions in people.
Spiritual - Words which have the strongest potential for influence and often appeal to people at a very deep emotional level.
You can actually get an even better description of these when you enter a headline which resonates in these emotional areas, and can actually help you make it even better.
The tool can help, but should not necessarily be taken as an absolute rating; for example, an EMV of 40% may not actually perform better than one of 20%. That’s why split testing is always recommended in finding the best headline for your specific landing page.
Of course, this can give you a nice solid base to start with, and will help you create better headlines to test.
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Some say a headlines is responsible for as much as 90% of the success (or failure) of the respective article, sales letter, or ad. So yes, definitely, a headline can make or brake a sale.
~Marcus
I have to admit that I scan the title of the post, if I am interested I will read the first sentence or paragraph, at that time I walk away or continue to read. Having a good title is key.
I have been experimenting with headlines, but mainly the teaser variety. Plus I have tried to make them as short as possible just for the sake of theme being short. That’s a great tool you found.
I tried a few of my headlines. They scored mainly on an intellectual level, which is interesting, since every time I test the reading level of my posts, I get Junior High.
A step at a time I guess.
With all the sites, blogs and information on the web there is no way you can read it all so that makes a good headline all that more important. You need to catch attention on the first casting.
SS
nice article. this can be useful, even someon’s will only use for curiosity purposes.
Hey, great work with this site. I’ve been here a few times but I thought I’d drop by and say hi.
Best of luck to you website,
Richard from http://www.hedgeagainstspeculation.com
Excellent! I learned of this tool aways back on a forum, used it a few times, then bookmarked and forgot about it (don’t we all) lol.
Thanks for reminding me, great post.
Thanks for commenting everyone. You guys are all right on the money; your first and best chance to keep a visitor around is with a good headline, and while this is more of a curiosity tool really, it can help you find a good base to start testing with
Nice post here. I agree catchy headlines can make a sale for u, people don’t read a bad headline. Mostly I read the headline then to the article.
and a good headline does just that. You need to give them a reason to click, stay and read your article. I particularly agree with the importance of “emotional” words when composing effective headlines.