How to Write Web Pages that Turn Visitors into Buyers

A 17-minute writing formula that will help your website sell your products

Why is the text on your website so important?

When it comes to websites, it's often said that the site with the best content wins. By providing quality content, you show potential clients that you are an expert that can be trusted.

Your content also differentiates you from your competitors. It allows you to show why you are more professional, more knowledgeable, and ultimately why you are a better choice. The content on your site tells your visitors why your products are superior to anything else they're going to find. Your content is your one big chance to convince your visitors that you are the best choice to meet their needs.

The content you put on your website becomes your silent sales person. Make sure it's saying something compelling.

Write Compelling Copy that Makes You Money

If you're selling products, your most important goal is to prove that you are an expert on what you sell. Your website should reflect that.

First, take a moment to understand your prospects' concerns. They need something. They know a little something about a product, but want to know more so they can make the best decision.

The most important factors to your prospects are results and education. They want their purchase to meet their expectations. They also want to learn more about the item and what options are available. It's all about offering good selection and options.

The biggest problem is lack of info or doubt of the info provided by sales reps. Inferior selection can also be a problem.

So how do you prove to your prospects that your product will meet their expectations? How do you show that they can trust you?

To do this, you must build a strong case in your website copy that begins with your prospects' needs and ends with proof that you can meet them with minimal risk. There are four steps to this process:

• Solve their problem.
• Provide proof.
• Remove risk.
• Give them a reason to buy now.

Solve their problem. You've already explored the possible problems your prospects may have before coming to you. You know that your visitors are coming to your website either to be educated and to find out their options.

If your copy doesn't address the reason why they came to your website, they'll leave and keep surfing until they find one that does.

Take an art supplies retailer for example. Imagine an artist searching the web for the best quality erasers that won't damage the paper they draw on. There are loads of products out there and they're having a hard time figuring out which eraser will match their needs.

Imagine how much more likely the artist is to buy an eraser if a company actually wrote some articles on issues dealing with art supplies, like what types of erasers work best on different surfaces or paper products that degrade due to acid content.

Provide proof. People are still skeptical about trusting things they read on the web. They're scared of the inherent risks in dealing with a stranger through a website. To get beyond these hurdles, you need to show your visitor that you can help them and that they will be satisfied with the results.

You can provide proof in a number of ways:

• List of testimonials (with pictures is even better!)
• Portfolio of work
• Third party endorsements
• List of awards received
• List of professional organizations belonged to
• Case studies

The more proof you provide, the easier you make it for someone to hire you.

Remove risk. Since we've already established that most people are skeptical of the copy on a website, you may want to offer some sort of guarantee to back up your claims. Or for industries where a guarantee is unrealistic, consider offering a risk-free way of trying out your services. You must remove as much risk as possible so the client will be confident doing business with you.

Guarantees work. If they didn't, then why would all the big companies offer them? They come in different formats:

• 100% money back guarantees
• Service level guarantees
• Performance guarantees
• Delivery guarantees
• Make It Right guarantees

If it's not appropriate for you to offer a guarantee in your industry, you may want to consider offering a risk-free trial or assessment. To continue with the earlier example of the art supplies retailer, they could offer to send a free sample so the customer can try it out on the paper they draw on.

Give them a reason to buy now. Research shows that the average consumer takes 2 weeks to make a purchase from the moment they start looking for a supplier till the time they buy. Since you never know if your visitor will come back to your site, you have to give them a reason to buy now while you have them.

Common tools used to get visitors to buy now include:

• Limited time discount
• Bonuses
• Extended service plans

Writing Style

Before you start writing, there are 6 important points for you to consider that will make your website copy more effective:

• You vs. I
• Informal and Concise
• Benefits vs. Features
• Objective Language
• Headlines
• Emphasis and Organization Tools
• Keyword Density

You vs. I. Most websites focus their entire content on themselves. This may sound reasonable at first, but customers don't want to hear about how great you are. They want to know how great your services will be for them. This is true for all marketing copy.

Informal and Concise. Generally, it takes people 25-30% longer to read text on a computer screen than off a printed page. So you should write in a way that is easy to read quickly. Concise, informal language speeds up the reading process.

Writing informally is simply writing the way people talk. In conversation, we favor contractions, short sentences and simple language. Apply this to your copy.

Your words should be:

• Familiar, not obscure
• Concrete, not abstract
• Short, not lengthy

When you read back what you've written, read it aloud. If it's hard for you to say, it's hard for people to read it.

Many people think being concise is the same as being brief. Not so. You can provide a longer argument if you need it to make your case, but do so with the least amount of words possible.

Once you have written the first draft of your copy, go over it and get rid of any text that's not vital to your main points. This may involve cutting single words, phrases, entire sentences, even paragraphs in some cases.

Benefits vs. Features. Talk about benefits as much as possible.

Objective Language. As a service professional, the case you make for yourself and the info you provide your visitors should stand on their own. Rather than boosting your image with subjective, boastful language, stick to objective wording. Using too much promotional language will cause your visitors to spend time filtering out the exaggeration to get at the facts.

Headlines. You need powerful headlines to grab the attention of your visitors. They should relate to the needs and concerns that your prospects have when hiring someone in your profession.

Consider the way that you'll make your case in the body text and try to choose a headline to match. Here are 2 main slants that work in the retail industry, with examples that the art supplies retailer from before might use:

Emphasis and Organization Tools. Help your visitor "hear" your tone while reading by using bold, italics, ALL CAPS, or (parentheses). Avoid underlining as people expect underlined text to be a link.

Organization tools make website copy easier to scan, which is the way most people read online. Use bullets to break down descriptions or for making lists. Tables can help you make comparisons more clearly.