The WORDS On Your Website Are More Important Than The Design Itself
Why is it that so many people fail to recognize this important truth?
Because, to many people, the idea of words and reading and writing is boring. They’d much rather invest in flashy bells and whistles and things they believe they need to succeed because they see others flaunting all their bells and whistles.
It’s really quite simple, good sales copy will help you sell more products or services.
What most websites lack these days is honest, persuasive, informative and interesting content.
Business owners want features & functions and gadgets. They want Flash Intros on their websites to supposedly impress their visitors but don’t realize that people ignore them (and that means the owner wasted their money).
They want things that will in essence support their own egos and pride. (Yeah, sometimes I’m really blunt about things like that – please take no offense). They want to boast about themselves and show everyone that they are the best.
Unfortunately, it’s been proven that bells and whistles and self-boasting don’t sell anything to anyone.
They may impress people for a short while but once the flash-factor has worn off, people will be looking for what they need. If you can’t convince them quickly that you have what they need, you’ll lose them.
Good copy takes the place of your best salesperson and unleashes their powers of influence on your visitors. Copywriting is part art, part science. The mastery of copywriting has earned many people a fortune for every piece they create.
Copywriting for the web isn’t all that much different than copywriting for mail order or print – in other words Direct Mail.
One caveat though, I’m not talking about content for your website as in articles and case studies and about us pages. These items help attract visitors through search engines and provide people with valuable information to help them learn.
What I am talking about are sales pages – pages on your websites that intend to sell the product or service you have. The words you write for those pages are the words that will create your long term success or make you lose every visitor that comes to your page.
In writing successful copy or sales letters, everything counts. Everything is important, starting with your headline.
The Headline will capture your ideal target market’s attention. There are headlines you can use to try to capture more visitors and readers but if they aren’t interested in what you really have to offer, it will be a waste to try to get more readers instead of getting more interested readers.
Once you attract the attention of your ideal target market with your captivating headline, there is of course the sub-headline.
The content of the rest of the page will not just be about your product or service. It’s not just going to be about your company either. It will be about your visitor.
The biggest mistake people make is trying to sell themselves instead of the product. People don’t really care about you, they care about themselves. It’s called self-interest and once you realize this little tidbit of information, you will have a major shift in perspective. If all your sales pages are about you and how great you are, people just won’t care.
When you make the content of your copy or sales letter about your visitor, things will magically start to change.
Good copywriting will clearly demonstrate to your reader all the benefits s/he has to gain from your product or service. They will start to see “What’s In It For Me” and they will start to picture their lives improving as a result of buying your product or service. Features just inform, benefits sell.
In other words; Features Tell, Benefits Sell
You must also include elements that add to your credibility and that increase the trust factor of your readers.
Testimonials that show how people just like your visitor have benefited from your product will help do that. People need some Social Proof and sometimes having a testimonial from a credible source can make all the difference in your visitors’ eyes.
Understanding human psychology will benefit you greatly as you learn more about copywriting. There are so many aspects of the human condition that can be catered to in your copy that will help you sell more to more people. Curiosity, ego, pride, belonging, status, are all human conditions that can stimulated with your words.
There are many proven psychological devices that have helped people sell since the first days of advertising.
Here’s a little exercise for you to do in the next couple of weeks.
Think about the last new purchase you made (a product you’ve never purchased before).
- What got you to buy that item?
- Do you remember the first time you heard of that item?
- Do you remember if it was a friend telling you about it, a commercial, a website?
- What did you need and how did it become clear to you that the product you wanted to buy will fulfill that need?
Another exercise you can do to learn more about copywriting is to read through magazines and websites that are known to be good advertising media.
Start learning from those who’ve been doing it for ages.
Research some of these names on the internet and learn from them:
- Jim Edwards,
- Yanik Silver,
- Joe Vitale,
- Carl Galletti,
- Mike Jezek, and
- Dan Kennedy.
I could keep going on and on but these players have proved to be experts at the written word. If you follow from their examples, you will learn a lot.
I hope this article has made it clear that it’s extremely important to learn and use effective copywriting if you want to sell anything (online or offline).
