If your site isn’t doing the job you created it to do, it’s (usually) because you never asked yourself: what’s the site’s purpose? Yes, you may know vaguely what you want the site to do, but you haven’t approached your site as someone new to it would.
Let’s listen in on a conversation as I grill Bob Smith (not his real name) on his site’s purpose.
Me: “So, Bob, what’s the site for?”
Bob: “I want my site to sell Widget X. In the millions, if possible.”
Me: “Ah, mystery solved. That explains why you have a thousand words on the home page telling your visitors all about Widget X.”
Bob: (manfully refraining from rolling his eyes and going “Well, duh!”) “Yes”.
Me: “Just a moment while I print this out. We’re going to role-play”. I print out the site page. “OK, I’m going to read the page to you. I want you to pretend that you’ve never heard of Widget X.”
I read the page aloud and ask: “If you found this printout stuffed in your letter box, what would you do?”
Bob, hesitantly: “Buy Widget X…?”
Me: Silence.
Bob: “I’d go to the Order Page… No, I wouldn’t. You’re right. When you read it out, it sounded boring. I suppose that’s why people aren’t interested.”
Me. “Hey– stop looking so miserable. This is EASY to fix. Now you know what you want, we can turn this page, and a couple of your other pages, into high-energy, sales-generating pages. You’re going to INSPIRE your visitors, and make sales, guaranteed.”
Every page on your Web site has a purpose, so once you know what that purpose is, you can ensure that each page fulfills the purpose. And if your purpose is sales, you write sales pages which in copywriters’ terms, follow the AIDA formula: they (A) Arouse (I) Interest (D) create Desire in your readers and get them to (A) take Action.
“ACTION” is the operative word.
Technorati Tags: copywriting, Web site content, Web site sales page
Angela Booth, top copywriter, author and writing teacher.
Info Product Maestro: Make $500 a Day with Your Information Products
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