Knowing your audience is imperative to achieve high conversion rates with your web content.

As you attempt to define your reader, pay heed to his knowledge of the subject. If he’s informed, get right to the key facts and figures. Otherwise, you’ll bore him and turn him off with generic information.

If he’s not well versed with the subject, ensure you provide some basic, high-level information, and offer plenty of references to helpful background material. Sidebars can also be an effective tool in this case.

If you need to cater to a mixed crowd, which is common on the Web, provide high-level material, but include clearly labeled links to all the particulars. This is a web content strategy called link layering, and it’s an incredibly effective way to provide online visitors information that’s relevant to their specific needs.

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Keywords are the foundation to successful web content.

Use the right ones, and your business can thrive. Use the wrong ones, and your website will reap you few rewards, if any. The trick is to ensure your web content writer or writers use the same language as your target audience.

Business executives and managers are often surprised when they find out internal lingo isn’t used by prospects and customers. “Talk shop” with consumers and you risk alienating them.

For instance, airline executives religiously use the term “reduced fares.” But that term is used in search engines less than 10 times a day — and that’s on a global scale.

Meanwhile, “cheap flights” is plugged into search engines by Internet users more than 10,000 times a day.

If you were running an airline, which search term would you want to target?

Purposefully written web content that effectively tells your prospects why they should buy from you can really help your business on the sales front. In fact, if done right, it can completely disqualify your competitors.

As noted in the article Brand strategy: distinct or extinct, you should leverage your business’ unique points and strengths, which may entail your:

• Selection
• Experience
• Knowledge
• Credentials
• Expediency
• Style
• Technology
• Geography
• Alliances
• Tools
• Customer service

But when you do, make sure you nail the point on the head. Don’t be subtle. Use clear, short and relevant web content to drive the message home.

And don’t be afraid to repeat your most potent points. It will drill the facts and ideas into your prospect’s brain, and make it memorable.

It’s a sound way to exclude your competitors from the final decision-making process.

Author and super marketer Seth Godin made a good point on his blog, where he touches on the fact that the closer you are to the point of need, the more you can charge clients.

In one example, he cites pizza at the airport costs five times more than pizza on the way to the airport. That’s true in most cases, including Frankfurt and London Heathrow, where the price for a hot dog and a beer will give you the impression you’re fine dining.

However, some airports choose not to charge premium. The Vancouver International Airport is a prime example.  Tenants are required to offer “street pricing,” which means franchises like Flying Wedge Pizza can’t inflate their prices. A big mama’s bacon special will cost you $4.99 on the east side of town, and it’ll cost you $4.99 as you’re running for the departure gate.

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Web content is not about you. It’s about your prospect or customer.

This is critical to making web content successful. However, based on frequent discussions with business clients and students alike, it’s a concept that’s often not recognized and appreciated.

The digital world has sped things up. Television and billboards have much less impact and ability to influence the masses. There are more choices, more noise. Less time, less patience. As a result, consumers are now exceptionally proficient at ignoring marketing messages.

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A Forrester survey revealed what’s really no surprise: almost one-quarter of online shoppers leave websites without registering or purchasing when they are required to register.

The research firm suggests the missed conversions and lost revenues can be minimized by making registration optional, and clearly explaining the benefits customers will get if they do sign up.

“The right incentives can also be helpful — online shoppers are most likely to hand over personal data in exchange for discounts,” suggested Forrester’s Megan Burns.

Additionally, Webcopyplus has found an effective way to achieve registration is to introduce it late in a process, once online visitors have invested time in a task. However, even at a late stage, if too much information is required, it can still lead to both frustration and abandonment.

The key to successful conversion rates is getting information to the right people at the right time.

Internet technology provides businesses the ability to pin-point markets at precise moments. However, if you’re not delivering the right information, the entire effort, investment and process is severely flawed.

The Web is a fantastic medium to determine what web writing works and what doesn’t. Recent A/B split tests targeting US and European audiences helped Webcopyplus establish how web writing approaches and styles influence online consumers’ behavior.

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While there are numerous elements to successful web pages, three are absolute musts and are straightforward:

• Begin every web page with a unique, accurate and explanatory headline.
• Your conclusion must follow. To deliver effective web writing, your web page’s summary, description or key message should be at the beginning of your main copy.
• Use several subheadings or kickers. They should be descriptive, just like headlines, to help your visitors zone in on information relevant to their needs.

Your homepage is one of the key pages on your website. It’s often the starting point for visitors and therefore viewed most often. So what should your homepage communicate?

Your homepage should:

• Introduce the purpose and scope of your website
• Set the tone and build credibility

Important homepage elements:

• Header and footer
• Logo and tagline
• Clear menu and table of contents
• Company overview
• Key benefits you offer
• News, events and announcements

Like other pages, keep the design and messages simple, and use small images so the homepage loads quickly. Also, use direct, simple sentences.

Every slight improvement to your homepage’s web content will help you create a good first — and lasting — impression.

While discussing a client’s project, one of the web copywriters at Webcopyplus suggested breaking up web content does a lot more than promote scanability.

It started a discussion about the additional benefits of segmenting web content into digestible chunks. Here’s what we came up with.

One-topic sentences and paragraphs help web copywriters:

• Deliver scannable web content
• Layer information (small blocks of text can link to other blocks)
• Organize information effectively (easy to arrange and view)
• Join similar topics
• Provide content that’s easier to remember
• Reduce or eliminate scrolling

Concise web content doesn’t just happen. You need to plan your topics and approach. And once you complete the initial draft, keep cutting away all those dead words!

The extra time you spend or invest in your web content will help ensure your online guests enjoy their stay, complete their tasks and keep coming back for more.