Writing Effective Web Content
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - By: Brian D
- Good Writing captures, informs, entertains, motivates people to buy, etc.
- Define Your Target Audience –
- Define your goal – getting leads
- “Benefit-laced” copy makes customers feel safe providing you with their information, even anticipatory in hearing from you
- Unique Selling Point
- Place needed information at the top of your article
- Write in a style suiting day-to-day commerce
- Include keywords throughout copy
- Use an economy of words – get rid of the filler
- Proofread your writing
- Use relevant images and explain them well
Too often, readers wade through tedious copy to reach only a paltry portion of the information originally sought. Furthermore, your readers may not have made it that far, simply throwing their hands up in frustration, clicking the back button on their browser to return to their Google results. When this turn-off factor strikes, your site could just as easily be written in ancient Greek, be a manual for an Apple IIe, or both. Your potential customers would rather eat ding-dongs than pay a return visit to your site. How then do we prevent ding-dong defections and keep customers on your site?
Good web writing captures your customer’s attention, keeps them entertained while the site informs them why they cannot live without your product, and finally, motivates clients to buy, or at least leave lead information.
Define Your Target Audience
Neglected often, defining your target audience shapes your message more than does your product. The education, experience, and goals of your audience determine a variety of factors in your writing from diction to concepts discussed. For example, you probably do cram your copy full of technical jargon for group of people new to the Internet. Conversely, a group of doctors may find something sounding penned for primary grades insulting their intelligence. As a seller of homes, your audience is homebuyers. And as everyone needs a home, your audience, potentially, could be a cross-section of the general population.
Define Your Goals
The next important step in creating good web copy is determining your goal. While this may seem fairly obvious, this is surprisingly often neglected. Much to the same end as determining your audience, you determine your goal to avoid awkwardness. For example, you might find it a little awkward to visit an auto website and then find a dissertation on Middle-Eastern Peace. Similarly, a customer visiting your site for current real estate information might think it odd if your site contains a page entirely devoted to beanie babies. Your goal in presenting a website is to gather leads. Everything written on your site should further this end.
Unique Selling Point
Why should anyone buy from you? Can’t think of a good reason? More than likely, your customers can’t either. With the low barrier to entry, and subsequent competition in the real estate industry, homebuyers and sellers require some additional motivation to contact you. While good advertisement and word-of-mouth are key factors in the contact equation, getting a customer’s contact information on a lead form relies heavily on how you distinguish yourself from the competition on your website. Mention a unique area of expertise, designation or property specialty to capture your visitor’s attention.
Place needed information at the top of your article.
Nothing frustrates a web visitor more than wading through volumes of content before reaching desired information. In your first paragraph of your first page, you should mention the “5 W’s”: who, what, when, where, why and how for good measure. An example of this would resemble the following paragraph:
“If you are looking for real estate bargains in the Cape Coral/Fort Myers area, call me, Kathy Agent. I specialize in North Cape properties, especially affordable new condo developments. Call or e-mail me today so I can find the property right for you.”
This paragraph gives all 5 W’s plus how in three sentences. You can identify the who, Kathy Agent, what, real estate, when, now, why, looking for real estate bargains, where, Cape Coral, and how so I can find the right property for you.
Jimmy Househunter sees this and knows within seconds that this page, at least on first glance, is germane to his home-buying efforts. Web visitors often browse away from an uninteresting page after viewing only for 30 seconds. If a visitor cannot find needed information in that amount of time, you safely assume that your visitor will go elsewhere.
Write in a style suiting daily commerce
Simple sentences convey your points quickly and effectively. Say what you need to say, and nothing more. You are selling real estate to a cross-section of Americana, not defending a thesis at Harvard. Again, see the 30-second rule.
Include keywords in your copy
You may know from previous articles that major search engines like Google and Yahoo! use specialized algorithms to rank websites. Instead of analyzing Meta Data, search engines look to content of the entire site for relevance.
Proofread Your Site
Nothing presents an unprofessional image like a proliferation of typos. This not only reveals an inattention to detail, but conveys a generally unpolished appearance.
