Have you ever opened a sales page and been confronted with a glow-in-the-dark hot pink background that proceeded to burn your eyes out? Or, have you opened a page that had a black background and glowing green text that did the same to your poor eyes? These are just a couple of examples of things that turn-off a reader who might have otherwise stayed on your sales page and possibly bought something from you.

A little color and originality is great when capturing the reader's attention and trying to keep him there. But, the temptation to add all kinds of bells and whistles to the page must be resisted. A sales page must be business like and get to the point of explaining why your product is the one to buy. An effective sales page should be geared toward the dial-up internet service user. Why is this? A large portion of readers online are using slow speed internet service and if you structure your page with high speed users in mind by using videos and fancy graphics, you are going to lose the chance to sell to them.

Many sales pages contain music. Music may be acceptable for other type of sites, but for sales pages, it is nothing but a distraction. It slows down the page and may even irritate the reader. If you are selling music on your sales page, consider making links to the samples rather than having the page automatically play music.

Another error is making the sales page such a large file that it takes too long to load for the dial-up user. You only have about 5 seconds to get at least something on the page. The remainder should not exceed 20 seconds to load. Try to open your page from a dial-up service connection to test.

One of the most serious mistakes is having a block of ads or othe text that is bright colored and flashing rapidly at the reader. Many people will click away immediately upon seeing this.

Mispelled words are another common mistake in sales pages. No matter how great a speller you think you are, use your computer's spell-checking features and even have another person read your sales page and look for errors. Sometimes a word may pass the spell-check but be the wrong form or tense.

Avoid the very long salepage. Take all the room to make your point. Make a summary of the major points to refresh the reader. Repeating the whole sales pitch 3 or 4 times is pointless. They aren't going to read it but once anyway.