So, you’ve built a website that looks amazing. On top of spanking design, it’s also filled with the latest gadgets and apps to encourage engagement, collect info on what prospective customers want, and lots more.
The only problem? You’ve asked AI to create the content (after all, it’s free right?), and the lifelessness of your website’s copy is now sending prospects away from all your shiny ‘buy now’ buttons…… and drifting into dreamland.
The solution? It’s simple: COMPELLING COPYWRITING.
Ok, I’ll admit that’s a lot easier said than done. But, there are some frameworks you can use to spice up any copy. (Yes, even if it sounds robotic because it was written by a robot.)
Here are some quick and dirty tips for jazzing up your website copywriting.
Photo credit: Girl with red hat on Unsplash
Tip 1: Stories sell, so be a storyteller!
You’ve probably heard of the term, “a picture’s worth a thousand words”. Well, I believe that a story’s worth a thousand pictures. Maybe I’m old and remember the good old days of reading paperbacks and being drawn in by storytelling of geniuses like Roald Dahl, but I’ve got a soft spot for good stories – and whether they know it or not, your prospective customers do too.
So use your words to weave interesting stories. Draw your prospects into your brand’s vision, have them visualise how your products will change their life, and use your words to paint vivid pictures of how your solutions will bring amazing benefits to their business.
Stories sell. So, if you’re in the business of selling, tell stories. And tell them brilliantly.
Photo credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash
Tip 2: Simplify, not dumb-ify (aka shorten, not obliterate)
While it’s tempting to jump on the ‘everything must be as simple and concise as possible!’ bandwagon, sales figures don't lie. In fact, speak to any successful salesperson and (unless they’re selling an extremely low value item, like a packet of candy) they’ll tell you that the length of the sales pitch is typically the last thing on their mind.
Instead, speak (and write) in terms that your prospects can easily understand. But don’t insult their intelligence by thinking that they’ll be excited about spending their hard-earned money on a product that only has 5 lines of copy written on your product page. If anything, the more valuable the product/solution, the more people will demand information about it, before feeling comfortable placing an order.
Find a happy medium between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’, ‘long copy’ and ‘short copy’ (depending on the medium you’re using, the product/solution you’re selling, and your target audience).
Simply put, it’s alright to simplify your website copywriting. It’s (almost) never ok to dumb-ify it.
Photo credit: Andrew Seaman on Unsplash
Tip 3: Inject a dose (or two) of personality!
If your website was a person, how would it look like? I’m serious, ignore the visuals, read the text on your website, and imagine it as a person.
Does it look like a corporate executive, all dressed up in a fancy suit, while standing tall and proud? Perhaps your website takes on the persona of a best friend – someone who wants to hang out and have a good time with you? Or does it look like an ogre that just crawled out of a dungeon that it’s been imprisoned in for the past 50 years?
(Note: That last sentence was an example of visual storytelling, i.e., Tip 1. Works pretty well, yeah?)
Most importantly…… is this how you want your brand to appear?
After all, there’s nothing wrong with your website/brand looking like a corporate executive who’d refuse to dip his luxury shoes into a little mud on rainy days, nor is it inappropriate for your copywriting to sound like ‘your best pal’, ‘the next door neighbour’ or even an 'ogre’ – as long as that’s the brand image you want to portray to your prospective customers.
The issue is when the copywriting on your website, reads nothing like how you want your brand to be perceived. (And unfortunately, this is an all-too-common problem – especially if you’ve tried to save a few dollars on engaging a professional freelance copywriter to craft compelling copy for you.)
Take these 3 copywriting tips and run with them!
Alright, I’m not going to bore you with a 'top 10 tips' article that's jammed packed with keywords and an artificially beefed up word count for ‘SEO purposes’. I think three's a sweet spot for today.
Between diving into these three tips, looking into your website’s existing copy and tinkering with it, you could already have weeks of (albeit pretty fun) homework ahead of you. Really take these tips to heart, and I guarantee that you’ll have a much more compelling website – which will translate into compelling leads and sales figures!
Or you could skip the homework and simply ask a freelance copywriter in Singapore to get it done for you. It’s up to you. (See what I did that? Of course you did.)
Have fun tinkering!
Additional photo credit: Jonathan Fink on Unsplash (Article feature photo)