Onsite Copywriting Style

Yesterday we looked at the best practice for structure and format on your site; today we explore the copywriting style. Most Internet surfers are constantly showered with very aggressive promotional messages and advertising. As they become immune, they start to disregard all sales tactics, simply as a basic defense mechanism. As a result, you may have to be a little over the top, even hysterical to get them to your landing page.

Once visitors arrive, however, you need to tone it down. You won; they picked you over all the competing websites, so shift your focus to the task they’re trying to accomplish. Your visitors at this point are not interested in marketing lingo – they want you to get to the point.

Marketing lingo is probably all over your promotional material. You see it in press releases for trying to puff up a company and accomplishments. Claims are made, hopes built up and promises given, just to get the click. Continuing with this tactics once back at the landing page, however, can spell disaster.

Your marketing copy requires work on the part of your visitor. They have to spend energy and time separating the content from the hype. It also results in much longer word counts! They need a break, which is one reason you need a fluff-free zone on your landing page.

Things to remember on your landing page include:

• Leave out the adjectives – they get enough of that from your ads.
• Provide only objective information – they will quickly see through subterfuge.
• Focus on the needs of your audience – they are waiting for you to prove that you were the right choice.

Save your visitors exasperating moments of scanning your pages trying to figure out if they made the right click.

Tell them what they want to hear, and keep your style honest. You should remain:

• Factual: Stop with the subjective statements. Focus on the real and material. You’ll be astounded with how much more effective your copywriting is. Your visitor aren’t there for entertainment or for a bunch of fancy talk. They’re trying to deal with a specific need or problem, and need objective information.
• Task-oriented: Focus on the tasks and steps needed to move your visitors through the conversion action. Start by organizing your text in the order that the visitor is most likely to need it. A high end consumer product site lays out the following high-level steps for the buying process: research, compare, customize, purchase.
• Precise: You have to be clear in your web content. Your audience may be diverse and bring a variety of cultural backgrounds to their interpretation of your words, so careful about your exact choice of vocabulary. This is even more important for link text or button text. Your visitors should have a clear understanding of exactly what will happen when they take the action of clicking on something, so they don’t encounter unnecessary stress and anxiety as they try to figure out the threat or opportunity presented by your button!
• Opportunistic: Unhelpful link labels such as “click here” are a wasted opportunity! You can and should use all link text to focus the visitor’s awareness on an important available option, and bring their presence to the attention of the search engines. Using good link text will help you on both fronts. Buttons should accurately describe the intended action, so pay attention and don’t use “Buy It Now!” when the actual action is “Add to Cart.” or “Order Now” when you really mean “Proceed to Checkout.”. You don’t want them to feel that clicking a button to advance is scary and irrevocable – assure them instead that taking each step is a small and safe action.
• Concise: Always ask yourself, “Can I make this even shorter? Do I need to communicate this – is it really necessary at all?” Brevity has several distinct advantages. It increases cognizance and the subsequent recall of information. It shortens the time that visitors spend reading it, so they are less likely to become frustrated or impatient.

When you pay attention to your style, you allow your visitors to catch their collective breath and feel comfortable as they begin to explore your site. When you visit a store, you hate the ubiquitous salesperson who hovers and keeps pushing the sale – you want to be able to browse, and ask for help that will be promptly given when you need it and not pushed in your face. Show the same courtesy to your site’s visitors, and they will become customers.

admin