Improve Your Copywriting with Speed Bumps
Jeff Baas

I went back one day over some pages I had written for a client a year before. They were very much focused on the customer, and they covered all the points they needed to cover, but something just didn't seem right about them.

Then it hit me. They were too predictable. The way I had presented all the benefits and covered all the potential customer doubts was so smoothly crafted that you could just about slide right through them without reading them. There was nothing to make people stop and seriously consider what they were reading. In other words, there were no speed bumps to keep them from zipping through the page and moving off somewhere else.

So I built some speed bumps in. Previously, the text had mentioned the high quality workmanship of the products. I had worked into the text a subtle link to more details on what steps had been taken to achieve this high quality. But the link was so subtle that it was only natural to glide right over it into where I talked about how to select one of the products for themselves.

So I changed it so that after mentioning the quality, I threw a big speed bump right in front of them in the form of a headline that reads, Don't believe us? And I followed that by specifically telling them to click the link that led to the details about what made the products so high quality.

And, while I had them slowed down, I urged them to check out our testimonials to see what glowing things our customers have said about our products.

What had been a smooth slide through the page now forces them to confront their own skepticism with facts and with the favorable opinions of others. What had been a predictible block of text that could be dismissed as hype now challenges them to test what it said and diffuse their doubts.

You need to include speed bumps in your copywriting. Your readers will always approach what you say expecting you to have a high opinion of your product and skeptical of your glowing assessment of it.

If you let them zip through your copywriting with nothing to slow them down, they'll have so much momentum going that they'll fly off somewhere else without giving you a second thought. Give them a speed bump that makes them actually think about your product and you have a much better chance of getting the sale.