Donnie Bryant: How to Avoid Fool’s Gold Copy on Your Website (Part II)

Last week I started to tell you about how to avoid Fool’s Gold copy on your website. Here are more concepts to consider with your

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website.

Magnetism

Great web copy is attractive. Visitors to your site want to know what you have to say, and once they get started, they want to keep reading. Beginning with a powerful headline, the story you tell should pull eyeballs down through the body of the copy. Each paragraph should make the reader want to read the next.

It’s also important to make your website as attractive to search engines as possible, as well. Strategic use of SEO is important to maximize the amount and quality of traffic your site receives.

• Have you crafted a headline that is impossible to ignore?
• Is your copy written in such a way that readers won’t dare click away for fear of missing out on something important?
• Do you know what keywords you want to target? Are you using them appropriately?

Transparency

Good copy doesn’t call attention to itself. Sales copy should showcase the benefits people will enjoy when they become customers. Copy is just a vehicle to present your product or service.

Clarity is absolutely essential. The reader should gain a clear understanding of what’s being presented and how their lives will improve once they get their hands on it.

• Is the language you use easy to understand?
• Visually, how legible is the font?
• Do you use the kind of language that your ideal customers are likely to use?
• When people read your copy, will they be impressed with the way it was written or with the service it was written about?

Elasticity

“How long should my sales copy be?” This is the perpetual advertising debate.

Good sales copy is as long as it needs to be – and not one word longer. Prospects shopping around to buy million-dollar yachts will probably want to see more than a clever tagline. On the other hand, it doesn’t take a 20-page sales letter to sell a whoopee cushion.

Copy stretches or contracts to whatever length it needs to be to get the job done.

• Have you covered every point that is likely to make your prospects more likely to buy from you?
• Is your copy focused? Or does it wander around on tangents that won’t matter to readers?
• Have you cut out everything that doesn’t serve a specific purpose? Has every word earned its place on the sales page?
• Have you tested different lengths to see what works best?

Fool’s gold copy is lacking one or all of these characteristics. As a business owner or webmaster, there are few better investments you can make than to make sure that the copy on your website is as pure as possible.

Most of the websites I see miss multiple opportunities to improve conversion rates, help more people and, ultimately, earn higher revenues. Take some time today to make sure your sales copy is real gold, not pyrite.