Your website is one of the cornerstones of your business. It’s where you educate customers about your product, persuade them it’s worth buying, and most importantly - complete the sale!
When creating a website, businesses tend to put the majority of their resources into design. A high-quality design is a necessity, but focusing too much on how it looks can mean its copy turns into an afterthought.
This is a problem - without strong copy, your website won’t be effective at converting leads. Your design and copy should complement each other, working in sync to guide visitors towards the desired action.
With that in mind, here are five tips for writing website copy that will get visitors itching to press “Buy”!
When it comes to writing website copy, clarity is key.
According to eye-tracking studies, visitors only spend an average of 5.59 seconds reading written content on a webpage. That doesn’t give you much time to get your point across, so it’s important your copy stays direct and concise.
There are a few crucial points you need to include: what you're offering, why your visitor should buy it, and what they should do next. Without including these elements, you risk confusing visitors and putting them off from investigating further.
Remember: visitors want to learn the facts with as little effort as possible. Keep it short and sweet.
The image above shows the homepage of RightMessage, a website personalisation platform. The copy above the fold on their website is effective because it includes all three aforementioned points:
What they offer: “Beautiful, personalised surveys, quizzes, and opt-in forms”
How it benefits the visitor: “RightMessage helps you uncover who’s on your website, what they do, and what they’re looking for from you – and then shows highly personalised, non-invasive CTAs and lead magnets that convert 22% better than before.”
How to proceed: “Try for free”
When people are shopping for something, they’re not actually looking for a product - they’re searching for a solution to the problem they’re facing.
For example, someone looking to buy a vacuum cleaner isn’t interested in the physical object itself; what they really want is a clean, comfortable house to live in. The vacuum is simply the catalyst they will use to achieve this.
Your copy should emphasise the problem-solving potential of your product, rather than the product itself. This allows visitors to imagine how their future will improve thanks to the product.
It’s useful to consider the visitor’s pain points. Explore their fears or frustrations and explain how your product helps to alleviate them.
As shown above, the website for Hello Fresh addresses common concerns people have about cooking - the time commitment required, the high price of ingredients, and the potential for waste - and explains how their service solves them.
Audiences are drawn to buy from companies with a similar personality to their own, so it’s important your copy communicates your brand personality well.
The language you use in your copy affects how visitors perceive your brand. A casual, easy-going tone implies a vastly different personality than a serious one does.
The website for Rolex (pictured above) uses terms like “prestigious” and “classic” to give the impression of refinement and sophistication - and hint that if the reader purchases a Rolex, they’ll embody those traits too.
It’s not just the words you use that matter. It’s also where those words are placed.
Rather than one long block of text, website copy should be split dynamically into small sections. This makes it easy to read and appealing to look at, particularly when paired with appropriate visuals
An example of engaging text layout can be seen on the website of Ring, pictured above. It features expander arrows, which expand when clicked on to reveal snippets of relevant information. This lets visitors access the information they want at their own pace.
A/B testing your copy is the best way to see what’s working well.
Create several variations of your key webpages, then run them concurrently in a split test.
Good things to experiment with are:
Once you’ve run the variants for a while, check to see which is converting the most leads. Chances are, one will be more successful than the other.
Use this more successful copy going forward, continuing to edit and refine it as time goes on. Eventually, you’ll be left with a highly effective webpage with copy that gets scores of people interested in buying!
In short, your website copy should:
Incorporating these tips will let you write copy that's crisp, powerful, and easy to read - all the traits you need for a high rate of conversions.
Now you’re ready to start writing website copy that makes an impact!