What is a Sales Page?
Internet Marketing Dictionary | Sales Pages

A sales page is simply a web page written to generate sales. It is a bit like an online advertisement coupled with a Call To Action such as a "Buy Now" button or a link to an ecommerce system for order processing.

The design of a sales page is crucial to the success of an online business and well written web copy can dramatically increase the sales conversion rate of a sale page. Indeed simple small elements on a sales page will make a difference to conversion rates.  For example, including images that imply the site is secure for ecommerce and therefor ok to send your credit card details to generally does improve conversion rates.

Some sales pages are very lengthy whereas others are extremely short. The ideal length will depend very much on the type of product you are selling and the extent to which traffic coming to the page is already pre-sold on the product or service.

Consider as an illustration a page where members of an online community can buy a short report about something that is valuable and useful to them and where they are likely to have been a member of the community a while before they get told about it, perhaps via a delayed autoresponder message.  In such a situation the visitors to the sales page are going to be knowledgeable purchasers who know what they are buying and so they won't need to be sold to much on the page.

In contrast if you were taken to a web page where you could buy an effective search engine optimisation tool that cost $99 a month and was difficult to explain, you'd need a lengthy detailed page to make you buy it - unless you came via a very strong recommendation from someone you trusted.

The overall effectiveness of a sales page will depend on the offer being made - the price and the deal structure (bonus, delayed payment options etc), the product or service, the reputation of the product owner and the knowledge of the product the visitor has before they land on the sales page. Internet marketing technology can also improve the effectiveness of a sales page.