Copy Life

With three to five seconds to capture your potential customer’s attention, you’ve barely any time to work your magic. This is why it is absolutely vital that in addition to proper site design you take the time to really develop your copy.

Imagine your site’s visitors as wild animals. You’ve set out the bait by marketing your site properly, by submitting your site to search engines, by practicing your SEO training (or paying someone else to do it for you), but a wild animal’s curiosity only takes it so far before its instinct is to bolt. If you don’t make the risk all that much more enticing, the wild animal will sniff at the offering, but they won’t stick around. Before you know it, you’ll be staring at their furry little hindquarters as they bound back into the dense cover of the World Wide Web. This is where igniting their interest comes into play.

Grammar: Not Just Someone to Have Around During the Holidays

I’ll be honest. I don’t continue reading a site’s content if I come across poorly constructed sentences, misspelled words, improper use of words, etc. It establishes a particular image in my mind of who the owner of the site is, and I don’t want to make an important decision such as purchasing an item, donating money, or registering for something when I think the wizard behind the curtain is Bubba from the Bayou with a second grade education (no offense, Bubba). I’d much rather associate myself with an educated individual; someone who can back up their claims.

Make certain that you are properly represented. If you write the copy yourself, have it proofed by someone who knows. If you are absolutely enlightened and realize that you don’t have what it takes to put together a sentence correctly, God bless. Hire a professional. The money you’ll spend is worth the PR, trust me.

The First Shall Be Last, and the Last Shall Be First

During my education, I took a series of speed-reading courses. One of the methods for quickly surmising the message of a paragraph was to read the first sentence, or two, and then jump to the last sentence.

My friends, people do this. It is a cold, hard fact of life, so take advantage of it. Your first sentence in a new section, or paragraph, should designate the purpose of the message you’re attempting to deliver. The last sentence should restate the message using different language.

Short, but Sweet

Bear with me while I return briefly to my previous analogy. The wild animal will sniff, sniff, and then, if they become intimidated, they’ll dart. This is why you need to provide your visitors with just enough to give them reason to bite, and then offer them a method for obtaining additional information. Don’t overwhelm them with an absurd amount of content right off the bat. Give them a taste of what it is you’re offering, and then present them with a way to get more information whether by following a link, expanding hidden content, or contacting you directly (the best method in most cases, really).

Flava, Baby!

Last, but not least: write with character. Don’t present bone dry information unless you absolutely have to. Make your content enjoyable to read. It’s hard enough to sit there and stare at a screen emanating light while being oppressed by fluorescent overheads filling out TPS reports; don’t make it any more difficult for your readers to stay awake than necessary. Provide your readers with an enjoyable experience and you’ll not only retain readership, but you’ll make it memorable.

Who knows! Maybe you’re site will be the next water cooler topic.

When it comes to filling our web sites with words, we tend to lean towards what I like to call the “cocktail party approach to web site copy.” What do I mean by this? Well, let’s pretend you’re at a cocktail party, you’re huddled with a group of friends gabbing about everything under the sun, around you hundreds of other conversations are mingling with your own making the voices sound like a “hum” to anyone just observing this party. That’s what it’s like to a web site visitor when you’re cramming a whole bunch of cocktail party copy onto your home page. It’s confusing and it’s white noise and chances are good that it will result in a “click” signaling that the party’s over and your visitor is long gone.

Two of my personal pet peeves are 1) people who want to give me every piece of instruction under the sun on their site. I don’t care if I’m developing cold-fusion. If you give me more than 300 words of directives I’m outta there. And 2) don’t yell at me. That’s my mother’s job. When you use lots of CAPS OR EXCLAMATION POINTS (!!!)I feel like you’re yelling at me and frankly, lots of exclamation points scare me. I mean let’s be honest, no one can be that excited about anything. When I spoke to AME’s Internet expert, Nancy Hendrickson (she’s also one of the top copywriters in the country), she told me about the elements of good copy. “The Internet has made ‘brochure-style’ writing obsolete,” Hendrickson told me. “Studies have clearly shown that people do not read web sites – they skim them. That means your copy must be written to catch the eye – and keep the visitor on your site. How do you write scannable web site copy? By incorporating:

lots of white space
bullet points
highlighted and bolded words
images

In addition, your copy needs to use simple words, short sentences, and include the keywords your site visitor probably used to find your site in a search engine.

Writing Great Web Site Sales Copy
When it comes to the Net, “maybe’s” rule. Unlike storefront businesses you don’t have to get a “yes” or “no” answer, you can get a maybe and still make the sale. “Maybe I’ll sign up for the newsletter now and decide if I want the book later” or “Maybe I’ll just get one of the reports and come back later for the book.” On the Net you may be dealing with more maybe’s than you are yes’s or no’s, so your site (and your web copy) should reflect this sales strategy. We’ll go more into depth about selling on the Net in another issue, but for now start thinking about everything you could sell (besides your book) that will help address the “maybe” visitors out there. Before you put pen to paper to write your sales copy, be clear about your goals. While you may be building the site to sell your book, as you start to look at the broader reach of your message, your goals might change.

Regardless of these goals, one of the best things you can do for your site is add a means to capture a name and email address so you can market to your visitors again and again and again. At AME, our newsletter (the one you’re reading) goes out bi-weekly. While the newsletter may require a lot of time to write and create, it’s worth its weight in gold because it allows us to stay on the radar screen of our customers and web visitors. “Marketing wisdom,” offers Hendrickson, “shows us that your best customer is your current customer. That means if someone is interested enough to visit your site, they’re probably interested enough to learn more about your current book and your next book. How do you notify them? By capturing their e-mail address.”

When it comes to sales copy, the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) is more important than ever. Says Hendrickson: “People want to know what benefit they’ll receive from buying your book. Don’t be shy – tell them! Will they get an inscribed book plate, will they laugh for 6 hours, will they learn something fascinating, or will they be applauded at Christmas for all their cool book gifts? Although visitors want to know you, the person, sales copy is much more about telling them how their life will be better, safer, happier, funnier once they’ve bought your book.”

Once your sales copy is written, do NOT make your visitor search all over your site in order to buy your book! Put your BUY THE BOOK button in an obvious, easy-to-find space. You may be laughing now, but we’ve worked with authors who buried the BUY link so deep in the site it was impossible to find! The reality, of course, is that most authors don’t really like writing sales copy, and that’s okay. However, unless the world is filled with your relatives, you’re going to need sales copy to sell your book. So, if you feel you don’t have the skill or desire to write good sales copy, hire a professional and let them write the words that will help you strike web site copy gold.