The Basics of Effective Website Copywriting Part I: Laying the Foundation

Published March 27, 2010
 
No matter how well optimized and well functioning your site is, or how attractive its design features are, your site’s ability to make conversions depends on effective your copywriting is. So important is the skill of copywriting, that writers who are capable of creating words that sell make thousands of dollars for creating a single sales page. Many online business owners choose not to hire professional writers because of these fees; those who attempt to do their own copywriting often end up very disappointed with the results. This series of articles will provide you with the basic principles which are required to create effective copyrighting.

Principle #1: Connecting Your Offer with Your Audience

No matter how good your copywriting skills are, it's essential that you have a clear picture of who your audience is and how your product is going to add value to their life. This can be accomplished by proper market and keyword research and even by creating mock ads to test whether or not your product is going to be popular before you actually create the product. This step is so important that if you get it wrong none of your other copywriting skills are going to matter. So before you begin your copywriting process, be sure that you have a strong connection between your offer and your audience and that you understand who you are talking to.

Principle #2: Brainstorming Your Sales Copy

One of the biggest reasons why any kind of writer becomes paralyzed by “writer’s block” is failure to understand how the process of writing works. The Writer Earnest Hemingway once said: “My work habits are simple: long periods of thinking in short periods of writing.” The same is true when writing a sales letter. Instead of down trying to complete a finished and polished copy on the first take, spend a considerable amount of time brainstorming and writing down (or typing) everything that comes to mind about your product your offer.

These ideas don't have to be organized, in fact the more you try to organize them the more it will interrupt your creative process. The brainstorming process is much like thinking out loud, only instead of speaking her thoughts you type them. This will give you enough creative fodder to begin crafting a strong sales letter.

Principle #3: Structuring Your Sales Copy

Many beginning copywriters have problems determining exactly how long their sales copy should be. The problem with this type of approach is that good writing is almost never created according to the rules of how long or short it should be. Instead, good writing begins with a strong structure such as an outline for a book, or a format for sales letter. There are two popular types of structural concepts which are used in writing sales copy, both of which can be very effective for building a sales letter or website copy:

AIDA Structure: this structure is simpler, but less thorough for helping a person to construct all the components of the sales letter. This approach often works best for inexpensive offers or offers which involve a free product in exchange for the customers contact information:

       1.       Attention: This section of the copy gets the attention of the reader and identifies the problem which would be solved by the product.

       2.       Interest: This section talks about features and benefits, with an emphasis on how the benefits are going to solve the customer’s problem.

       3.       Desire: This section uses testimonials, statistics and facts in addition to strong emotional words in order to generate a desire to purchase.

       4.       Action: This section gives details about the offer: bonuses, descriptions of the value of the product compared to the actual price as well as a call to action which uses urgency to compel the customer to buy now.

Seven Part Structure: this structure makes it much easier to organize the sales letter into compartments and streamlined the writing process. This approach often works best for offers for more expensive products or complex products which require more explanation:

       1.       Attention: the sole purpose of this section is to grab the customer’s attention.

       2.       Problem: this is the section where the problem is in which the product is going to solve, often accompanied by emotional language which describes the pain caused by the problem.

       3.       Solution: this section is where the solution of the problem is sold to the customer, but before the actual product details are revealed.

       4.       Product: this section includes just enough details about the product to give the customer idea of what they are purchasing, while still leaving them curious about many of its features.

       5.       Proof: this section consists of product testimonials as well as statistics and facts which support the claims made by the product. This is also where potential objections are dealt with.

       6.       Offer: this section justifies the price of the product and offers limited time bonuses as well as overcoming the customer’s desire to delay the purchase.

       7.       Action: this section tells the customer four things: what to do next, what will happen when they do it, why they need to do it (by reminding them the benefit) and gives an additional PS at the bottom of the letter to remind them of the urgency of the offer.

Once you have chosen the outline for your sales letter, the next step is organizing the ideas which you came up with during your brainstorming. The easiest way to do this is to create a file with either four or seven headings (depending on the type of structure you used) and paste ALL of your brainstorming ideas under each one of the headings.

So you should have either four or seven headings in your file, each of which contains ALL of your brainstorming ideas underneath them. Once this is done, you simply go through each section of your sales letter and delete the brainstorming ideas which do not support that particular section. Now you will have all of your rough ideas organized according to which section of your sales letter they belong to.

This will make it easy to progress to the next stage of writing your sales letter.


Continue to part II of this series

 Additional Reading For Marketing Your Site

Creating Your Marketing Funnel

5 Common Marketing Errors

Marketing Your Site With PPC

To gain access to the most up-to-date SEO strategies, fill out the form below to sign up for our newsletter. This newsletter will help you know what Google's up to as well as how you can get your website ranking higher without raising any red flags.



{"http://www.seositecheckup.com/articles/68":{"data":[]}}
Read Related Articles About SEO Content Creation

All Categories:

RSS/XML Feed RSS
Article Categories
Most Recent
Most Popular
Basic SEO
Online Marketing Tips
On Page SEO
Off Page SEO
Social Media Marketing
Seo Product Reviews
SEO News
SEO Content Creation
SEO Programming Topics
How to Avoid SEO Pitfalls
SEO Outsourcing
How to Get More Traffic
Advanced SEO Strategies