Etips is a publication of:
Your Guide to Professional Web
Site Design and Development
Hello,
Welcome to this week's edition of Etips.
Are you selling a product or service
online? Are you truly satisfied with your sales? If not, maybe it's time
to give your sales copy a makeover. Even the best copy can become stale over
time. In this week's edition of Etips, I will be featuring part one
of a two part article titled, Copywriting Makeover: Know Where Your Customers
Are In The Buying Process, written by Karon Thackston.
I hope you'll enjoy the publication.
To your success!
Sponsor Message
 Copywriting Makeover: Know
Where Your Customers Are In The Buying Process Part 1 of 2
By
Karon
Thackston Copyright © 2004
When you begin to write copy for
any product or service, there are a few things you have to take into
consideration. The first is always your target audience: who you'll be writing
to. Finding out about the needs and wants of the audience members, their
communication styles, their lifestyles, and a multitude of other elements
are "musts" before writing one word of copy.
But something most people neglect is giving due attention to the buying process
as a whole and where your target audience is within their own process.
Understanding this can, oftentimes, make or break the success of your copy.
When AEwebworks (an online, dating-site software developer) approached me
about rewriting their website copy, it became immediately apparent that their
copy could benefit from paying some due diligence to the buying processes
of their customers.
The Problems
My primary concerns with the copywriting on this site included the lack of
synergy within the copy, the use of testimonials, the lack of focus on the
target customer's buying process, and the inability for the copy to support
the search engine goals of AEwebworks. In its present state, the copy contained
few mentions of keyphrases.
You can view the old copy in PDF form at this link:
http://www.copywritingcourse.com/AEWebWorks-Original.pdf.
When I first read the copy, it felt as though I was being pitched to from
all sides. The headline spoke to someone thinking of entering the online
dating site industry. The body copy did not support that headline; rather
it spoke to someone who had already made the decision to launch or improve
a dating site.
The use of testimonials at the bottom of the home page posed a challenge
for two reasons. The first was the sheer location. The design of the site
was such that it appeared nothing fell "below the fold" (what was first seen
when the home page loaded onto a browser). The second challenge was that
many of the testimonials were from people asking questions or stating they
were considering trying the dating software. Not actual customers attesting
to the benefits they'd personally experienced.
In addition, while the information included in the body copy was good, the
information given on the home page needed to outline why AEwebworks was better
than the competition. In its present state, it did not. That meant finding
those aspects of buying dating software that were most important to the customer
and highlighting them within the copy.
Lastly, I needed to focus the home page copy on only two or three keyphrases
and increase keyword saturation for those phrases. This also meant creating
a copy strategy that would allow me to use the keyphrases effectively without
making the text sound stiff.
The Solution
As always, I started the project by gaining a good understanding of who the
target customers were, what they wanted, their fears, their likes, their
dislikes, and anything else I could discover. After a good bit of research,
and after reading the completed target audience analysis from AEwebworks,
I felt I had a good understanding of those I would be writing to.
In order to combat the lack of synergy within the copy and the lack of focus
on the target customer's buying process, I created a copywriting plan. From
my research I found that installation, upgrade policies, and support were
the three most common gripes buyers had about dating software. I decided
to make overcoming those obstacles the focal point of the copy instead of
the actual features and benefits.
That may sound like an odd choice, but that's where recognition of the buying
process comes in. Considering that the majority of visitors to the site had
already made the decision to launch a new site or had chosen to upgrade an
existing site, they were already well versed in the features of dating-site
software and their associated benefits. Yes. the benefits did need to be
mentioned; however, other issues proved to be more pressing to this particular
group of customers.
The use of testimonials on the home page was easily corrected by simply deleting
the ones that did not directly apply to actual users of the software. I chose
two for use within the copy and suggested that, as AEwebworks gets more
testimonials, they create an entire page that visitors can read.
That left me with overcoming the inability of the current copy to support
the search engine goals of the site. I suggested AEwebworks review their
keyword choices to be sure they were targeting the ones most likely to bring
in qualified customers. After a review, they provided me with a revised list
to choose from.
I selected three keyphrases for each page in order to allow an adequate level
of both keyword saturation and natural language. For the home page, the terms
"dating software," "online dating software," and "dating script" were used.
After all the hoopla with Google, AEwebworks was in foul shape as far as
search engine rankings were concerned. I had to pay particular attention
to creating copy that impressed the search engines AND their site visitors
in order to help them regain ground with their positioning and sales
efforts.
The plan was in place. Now "all" I had to do was write the copy. In part
two of this series, you'll get all the details on how I turned "OK" into
"Wow!"
About the Author:
|
Sponsor Message
| Web Design
Course |
 |
FR*EE Intensive 10-Day Web Site Design
Email Course. Learn how to design a professional web site.
|
| Tip of
the Week |
|
To increase your ezine
subscriptions, exchange subscription ads with fellow ezine publishers. Ezine
advertising is one of the best forms of advertising on the Internet. By swapping
ads with fellow publishers, you can advertise in other publications free
of charge.
Today's tip is an excerpt from the highly acclaimed
Web Design Mastery series.
|
| Syndication
Feeds |
|
| Internet
Marketing and Promotion |
|
| Business
/ Sales |
|
| Web
Design |
|
| Dr. Kevin
Nunley's Biz Tips |
|
| Web Site
Design Tips |
|
|
Sponsor Message |
You are subscribed to Etips as {FIRSTNAME} / {EMAIL}
Web-Source.net
Products: