It’s the Copy that sells your product or Service
Gregg Kell, March
2005
Kell Solutions
How much did you spend on website
copywriting? I’m
betting not very much.
But did you know that getting
thousands of visitors to your website doesn’t guarantee sales!
Did you know the key to turning
those thousands of visitors into customers is effective web
copywriting? Did
you know it’s the copy that sells your product or service?
An effective on-line business
begins with a clear understanding of what the goals are for your website. Remember, you are trying to get someone you have never
met to take a step towards building a relationship with you.
You website
copy should be
created with a clear understanding of “who is your target customer”. You should
also identify what problems your product or service solves for the market, what
benefit are most important, and what the primary message you want visitors to
get from reading your material.
Your web copy should pre-sell your product or
service to the visitor.
Once you achieve this, your web site will become very profitable.
Here are ten fundamental for
effective website
copywriting.
1. Know your customer; Who is the customer most likely
to buy your products? Are they male or female? How old are they? How much money
do they make? The more information you can gather on your target customer, the
better you can create web copy that will get them to buy.
2. Benefits, Benefits, Benefits
When a visitor lands on
your site, he wants to know one thing, how will they benefit from buying your
product or using your service. If that is not answered right up front, clearly
and briefly, you will lose that visitor.
3. Write in a friendly personal manner; You’re in the relationship
business, talk to your customers in an honest pleasant voice. Let them know you
really understand and care about their problems and, have the solution. If you
make the customer feel you really care, he will want to buy from you again, and
again, and again.
4. Keep your sentences short and simple; a copywriter writes to communicate not to
impress. The average visitor reads at a 6th grade level. Choose
strong verbs over weak ones. Talk to your visitors not at them. Keep your
sentences short and avoid large words.
5. Include searchable keywords – use targeted keywords in
your web copy that will allow the search
engines to find your
site. Include these keywords in your meta tags, links
and
file names also.
6. Eliminate clichés – avoid the temptation to be cute, slick, and
entertaining. You will only bore your visitors and they will click off your
site.
7.
Create a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – In 2-3
sentences, explain to your visitors that this is the only product or service
for you and, this is the only place you can get it.
8.
Testimonials – simply, these are third party
endorsements that support all the claims you make in your website
copy. The more testimonials you have the
more credibility you have.
9.
Proof read your web copy – errors in your web copy give the impression of being unprofessional or sloppy.
Read the copy aloud to yourself or get someone else to proof read it.
10.
Easy navigation – your site should be easy for visitors
to find the main sections of your site and, easy to buy and check out.
Gregg Kell is President of Kell Solutions, a website design firm and search engine optimization firm based in Laguna Niguel, CA. Permission
is granted to re-publish this article providing it is published in its entirety
without exclusion including this Author’s Block and imbedded links. The author may be contacted via email.