For years, sales and landing pages have been a great "first step" on someone's journey from being a lead to becoming one of your paid, loyal customers. But at the same time, it's important to acknowledge that the chasm between a good sales page and a great one is deep, indeed.

Thankfully, all hope is not lost. In fact, there are not one but eight small sales page tweaks that literally anyone can do right now. They may not seem like much on their own, but when taken together they can absolutely increase your conversions and return on investment moving forward.

By far, one of the most important tweaks that you can make to your sales pages to increase conversions involves making sure that your headlines are as balanced as possible. This includes not only paying close attention to the main headline, but anything written immediately beneath that in the form of an H2 or H3 as well.

Visually speaking, you want to create as much balance on the page as you can. You want someone to quickly glance at your page and have absolute clarity about where their eyes should be looking at any given moment. If both your headline and your sub-headline are the same font size, or if they have roughly the same number of words, you risk creating confusion during a time when you can't really afford it.

Instead, make sure that everything on the page looks balanced and symmetrical to create the best possible experience for your readers.

People aren't just going to take your word for it that you can do what you say you can or live up to your promises. They want proof, beyond the shadow of a doubt. They also want that proof quickly - which is why "the proof above the scroll" is so important.

Even something as simple as saying "join X number of people who have successfully..." in terms of your product or service will go a long way towards creating as must trust in someone as early on in your experience with them as possible.

These days, the vast majority of all people won't take the time to digest every last word on your sales pages. Instead, they prefer to skim - and it's up to you not to shy away from this, but to make it as easy as possible moving forward.

Therefore, you need to provide as many visual cues to get them to stop and read important information as possible. Bullet points are a great way to do this, as are using many subheadlines, putting key phrases entirely in capital letters and similar techniques.

You may have heard this technique referred to as a "stack" in the past, but the main point remains the same. With the marketing "receipt," you're dedicating an entire section of your page to helping people get a quick snapshot understanding of what they're about to buy. Essentially, you're giving them the entire experience in just a few seconds, so they can go into greater detail at their leisure.

Your marketing "receipt" should include a wide range of different elements, including but not limited to visual graphics, an overview of your features and the value those features bring with them, an outline of "the deal" you're making with your leads, a well-written call-to-action along with a button that can entice people to take your desired next step. Whether that next step involves making a purchase or reaching out to contact you and your team for more information is entirely up to you.

To unlock the best possible results with your calls-to-action, there are two main rules you need to follow. First, you need to use some type of visual cue to get people to pay close attention to this particular part of your sales page. For most organizations, that means inserting your call-to-action in the form of a button or some other graphic.

Secondly, you need to include copy that matches where they actually are on your sales page. So if the CTA is at the bottom of the page, your copy can refer to all the information they've just learned. If it's at the top of the page, however, it should tease all the information they're about to learn, instead. The point is that it should closely line up with exactly where in the buyer's journey they experience the CTA for the first time.

One of the most important things to understand about selling virtually anything is that you will always sell more if the price is lower than what your customers expect.

That, in essence, is why playing "The Price Expectation Game" is so important. If your customers feel like you're offering them $200 worth of value but you're really only selling your product or service for $49.99, you need to highlight that and call it to their attention. At a bare minimum, it will allow them to realize how much your product is actually worth. It also creates excitement because people suddenly feel like they're getting a bargain, which is really what will drive your sales.

It's also important not to forget those logical buyers when you're designing your sales pages - that is to say, the ones who think with their brains, not their wallets.

This is why including a bulleted list of benefits or something like an FAQ section on your sales pages is critically important. Proactively outline what people might be worried about, and definitively state how your product or service accomplishes the opposite.

State your information as an emotional benefit and include a logical answer. Truly, you'd be surprised by what a major difference this one technique alone can make when it comes to conversions.

Finally, we return to the idea of proof - in other words, people really, REALLY want to be beyond certain that you can do what you say you can before they're willing to even think about parting with their hard-earned money.

Testimonials and screen captures from real customers on social media are invaluable to that end, but if you're going to use them be sure you use a highlighter to call attention to relevant portions. Likewise, you should put testimonials in strategic places throughout the page - like near calls-to-action. Those testimonials should also always match the copy they're immediately placed around for the best possible results moving forward.