image courtesy of Kittikun Atsawintarangkul/freedigitalphotos.net
The First Key: Projecting an Image of Truth
Your website visitor is different from a local resident entering your brick and mortar store. Online, she found you because she searched Google for an answer. When she arrives on your website, she may never have heard of you.
When she drives to your brick and mortar store, she can see by your building that you exist and can infer that you can deliver on your promises.
Not so your website visitor. To relieve her anxiety about your ability to deliver, write text that projects unassailable truths about your company.
Don’t write this: “Our company has been in business for many years.”
Write this: “My grandfather, Gregory Burns, founded The Burns Agency in 1919, and we have been at this same location ever since.”
The specifics in the second sentence cause the reader to nod, “Yes, that’s true and I believe it absolutely.” Strive to convey absolute, specific truths to help prove that you can deliver.
The Second Key: Clarity
There is really no concept in selling online as undeniable, forceful, and potentially profitable for your business as clarity. You don’t want to let any other component of your communication interfere with clarity.
If you are unclear, you’ll transmit messages that are unintelligible. And with such little time to engage your visitor, fuzzy messages kill momentum. Your visitors will either click away baffled or interpret your messages incorrectly. This stops the intended action you want visitors to take, which will unfortunately cut into your profits.
Unclear:
Thinning hair…
We Guarantee it!
Clear:
Get thicker hair…
We Guarantee it!
The Third Key: Benefit
If your website is to be successful, everything you do should cause an action: a call, purchase, subscription, donation, or email sign up. So how do you get someone who has never heard of you to do what you want them to?
By specifying benefits.
This is the difference between technical writing and sales writing. Technical writing, parroting “corporate think,” tells the reader what the service is. Sales writing mirrors “customer think,” telling the reader what the service will do for them.
Corporate think: “We manufacture several different part sizes for the same project.”
Customer think: “We manufacture several different part sizes for the same project to keep colors consistent, lowering your costs.”
The writing on your website should immediately tell the customer the benefit of the product.
The most difficult but intriguing job of your website copy is to get people to act, so incorporate these three keys of success into your Web writing. And you can always give me a call for some quick help monetizing your site with winning Web content.
Until next time,
Nick
Nick Burns is a Web writer specializing in persuasive copywriting and content marketing. Nick’s services include SEO Web writing, website information architecture, content marketing, consulting, and publishing. He provides clients a winning online strategy plus the content writing to make it work. You can contact him here.
