Relevant webcopy is the key to engaging your website’s visitors and converting more sales.
US consumers alone will spend upwards of $340 billion (U.S.) online in 2010. Meanwhile, Internet World Stats reports more than 70% of US and Canadian consumers are using the Internet.
So what’s the quickest and most effective way to connect with your audience and convert them into full-fledged customers? Address their real needs, and make it easy for them to find what they want.
Be sure to employ the following webcopy tactics to establish trust and credibility with your visitors:
- Promote benefits — Focus on your customers and emphasize benefits rather than features. Tell visitors how your product or service is going save them time or money, keep them safer, make them happier, healthier, more attractive and so on.
- Be objective — Don’t make subjective claims without evidence. Vague marketing hype like “We’re the best in the business!!!” will only kill your credibility. When you make a point, back it up with facts and figures.
- Strong introduction — Take a page from journalists; make your introductory sentences strong and meaningful. Don’t bury important information in the middle or at the end of your pages.
- Scan-friendly — Studies indicate Internet users generally scan webcopy, so keep it lean and clean. Use relevant headlines, subheads, bullet points and short, one-topic paragraphs. As a general rule, web writing should be less than half the length of copy you would use in traditional print media, such as brochures.
- Organized structure — Ensure information is intuitively accessible. And remember that your visitors may arrive on pages other than the homepage, so every page must be written with an introduction and links to the rest of the site.
- Keep it fresh — Frequently updated webcopy will score points with returning visitors. Give them a reason to keep coming back.
- Use ‘calls to action’ — Requests such as ‘call us today’ and ‘e-mail us now’ should be strategically placed throughout your webcopy. Sales experts suggest you need to include several calls to action within your webcopy to trigger a sale. There should be at least one call to action on every page.
Whatever marketing trends and technologies emerge, relevant and informative webcopy will remain a key ingredient to convincing your online visitors to purchase your product or service.
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