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How to attract and keep more visitors with your website copy
Your website is an online representation of you and your business 24/7. It’s like your online visit card. Every business reaches a point when it needs to have a website. Nowadays it’s so much easier to create a website even if you’re not a professional web developer or a web designer. I absolutely believe that it’s possible to create it by yourself, even if there is a learning curve.
You just need to decide for yourself if you’re willing to dedicate time and effort in learning all possible tech staff, design basics, website strategy, copywriting, or if you prefer to focus more on your work and have somebody that will do it for you.
It took me some time to start seeing the strategy and carefully written web copy on some really good websites. Websites are so much more than just beautiful designs. Good web design is important and it helps to attract more people, but it’s a well-written copy that keeps visitors’ attention on your website. You should never neglect it and focus exclusively on design.
It’s exactly a compelling web copy that makes your prospects stop, fall in love with your work, and take action on your website. It dictates how visitors see you, what they know about you, and most importantly how they feel about you, your brand and your business.
A website is a tool. It should be built and used for a specific reason, it should have an objective. You should know exactly what is the objective or objectives of your website. It will help to lead your design and web copy in the right direction.
BE VERY SPECIFIC WHO YOU SPEAK TO
A well-written web copy helps you to start building relationships with your visitors. It allows you to serve your audience with valuable content and answer their questions. It allows you to build trust, establish authority and create long term relationships with your prospects. And if you want to create real relationships and provide value there are several questions you need to answer before you start creating an actual copy.
Who are you speaking to? Who is your ideal customer? Who do you want to serve?
It will help you to choose the right tone and voice of your writing. You won’t be creating generic content for everybody, speaking to everybody. Speaking to everybody seems like a good strategy in the beginning. But speaking to everybody means speaking to nobody.
And people from this specific group of people you’re speaking to will spend so much more time reading your website, blog, and content in general. They will be learning with you, they will start feeling like you understand them and speak directly to them. It’s exactly when you start building a long term relationship it will help you to start generating long term revenue for your business.
What are the benefits of your business, and why people should care
It can be very easy to turn your website into an ode to your ego where you speak about yourself all the time. But let’s be honest, nobody wants to read that. It’s like when you have a conversation with somebody and she doesn’t let you even say a word. I have doubts that you will find a conversation like this interesting and exciting. Most likely you won’t want to engage in conversation with this person ever again. The same is true about the websites.
In your website copy, you should directly address your visitor, use more ”you” instead of “I”. Define clearly what are the benefits of working with you. What problems do you solve? How can you help to make your prospects’ lives easier? Explain why people should care? What are your whys?
Don’t just describe the features of your business, and speak about you. People don’t care. They want to know what is there for them and why they should care. How can you make their lives easier?
Be crystal clear on what you offer
It’s vital to define what you offer. What do you want your business to be about? What value do you want to provide with your work?
This one can be a hard task to accomplish, especially when you’re not quite sure what you want your business to be about. When you don’t know yourself. When you don’t know what you enjoy doing. If there is no clarity in your mind, it’s the time when you should dig deeper into yourself and find out these things.
Use simple language to describe benefits, maybe some features of your offer. Be very specific, and clear. Make sure that it’s easy to find and that visitors can access your offer from any page of your website.
Create a smooth user experience
Nowadays good usability is a must if you want your website to survive. If people can’t find what they search for, they leave. If it’s not clear what people can do on the website, if it’s not clear what you offer, they leave. If people are lost on the website, they leave. If the information is hard to understand, and don’t answer their questions, they leave.
To help you to improve the usability of your website you can ask yourself several main questions:
- What do you want your visitors to do when they land on your website? What is the objective of every single page?
- Is it easy to use? For example, do your buttons look like buttons and look always the same? Does your search bar look like a search bar and whether it’s situated in a place where people expect it to be?
- Will it be easy to use your website again when visitors decide to return to your website? Or they will be obliged to spend some time to understand how to use it?
- Can they find all the necessary information easily? For example, if you have an e-commerce website and people can’t find your products, most likely they won’t be able to buy them.
- Does your design create a pleasant overall experience?
- Think about the things that sometimes annoy you and make you leave the website. Maybe you use too many popups? Maybe it’s too difficult to use? Maybe the copy is too vague?
If you want to learn more about what creates a small user experience, don’t hesitate to learn from the biggest website on user experience.
Provide value with the content
Usually, when people are searching for something in Google, they want to find an answer to their question, a solution to their problems. It’s more likely that new visitors will land on your service page, or about page, or a blog page, but not your home page.
People are tired of sales pitches everywhere, they’re searching for valuable and inspirational information. You’re not obliged to have a blog on your website if you don’t want to. But it’s still important that you do have some valuable content on your website. It creates more trust, builds relations, and make your potential clients spend more time on your website, receive value and make them want to come back. The more value they receive, the more likely they will become a part of your community and buy your products or services.
Don’t push your services too hard, concentrate on what your visitors want. I love this example that I found in the checklist of Enchanting Marketing of the Swedish Cancer Society shifted focus away from organizational goals (more donations) towards web visitor goals (understanding cancer symptoms and treatment), donations increased massively (source).
Mind the language you use in your copy
Don’t forget who you’re speaking to when you write your web copy when you create content for both your website and your social media. Having your ideal client in mind while creating the content can help a lot.
Don’t use too formal language. It should be simple, easy to understand. Write as you speak. You don’t create content for PhD professors, but for regular people. The easier to understand the better.
Final thoughts
It’s important to have a beautiful design. It helps to attract visitors, but it’s not images and design that keep visitors on your website – it’s the copy.
Never neglect the importance of the copy for your website and business. It keeps visitors on your website, it sells, it makes visitors take action, it leads them throughout the website.