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Bad Web copy is quietly, ruthlessly
stalking new victims. Soon, it'll be circling your business. It smells the blood you've spilled into the water with wounded prose. And when it attacks, it will take a shark-sized bite out of your bottom line! Don't want to get bitten by bad Web copy? Then don't spend all of your time and dough on graphics. Give killer copy equal consideration, both financially and strategically. Fail this, and you'll ruin your beautiful site's effectiveness with feeble
copy. This approach virtually guarantees a boring, uninformative site. Offer up boredom and you'll attract fewer visitors than Vanilla Ice's home page. Now's the time to take advantage of the fact that a walloping number of your competitors haven't addressed their Web copy problems either. The goal is to make high-powered copy your site's competitive advantage. Speaking of competition, as of early 1999, there were 330 million Web sites whirling around out there in cyberspace. This makes it more critical each day that your site gets found and
read. Your site's copy must reach out and grab potential customers by the throat. Because it's a whole lot easier to hang onto customers when you've got 'em by the throat. OK, you've momentarily slowed your customer as she rockets around the Web. Careful, that mouse button finger is getting itchy. Now what do you do? You move aggressively to lock and hold her attention. And the most effective way to do this is by delivering rich, informative copy. Copy that
positively glistens with a must-see, must-return gleam. What else can you do to achieve must-see, must-return status? Update and refresh copy at least weekly. Work to involve visitors with your copy. Plead for their opinions. Find out what bugs them. Then provide the fly swatter they need to squash that bug. This has little to do with what you want. It's about fulfilling your customers' desire to make their life better. Don't linger on features, customers care only about
benefits. Great Web copy is about convincing customers you are the recognized problem solver in your field. Become that problem solver and customers will knock down your door to do business. Carry out the suggestions in this article and you'll guarantee a profitable, popular Web site. Your copy will leave your site no choice but to churn out money. You'll have a site so engaging, so well written you'll have to hire a couple of bouncers to watch the front door.
By the way, I've been ordered to bullet 'til your eyes bleed. And, please until you've finished reading, stay out of the water.
As a famous dead person once said: "In order to break the rules, you must first learn what the rules are." Learn the rules of great copy and you've earned the right to bust 'em wide open. The point is to identify and use what's worked in the past. Armed with this knowledge, you're free to develop
unique approaches based on these "old rules." Only then will you know how to manipulate the rules that work, and safely discard those that don't. So, what are the rules? The rules on writing Web copy are... Well, OK, that's a pretty slim book, at least so far. But that's one of the beauties of this new medium. Web writing demands we borrow from the past with ample opportunity to put our spin on it for the future. Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of brushing aside
copywriting rules that have been developed over thousands of years. Yes, thousands of years. The ancient Greeks utilized copywriting to sell seeds via catalogs. More recently first U.S. Postmaster General Ben Franklin used his copywriting skills to sell books via direct mail. That said, here's what marketer par excellence Bill Jaymes says about rules: "The only real rule I know for success in life, business, and even direct marketing is that there are no
rules, including this one." So, rules are made to be broken. Hmm. But you can't break something you don't see. So, learn the rules, then go hog wild. OK, how do I learn these copywriting rules? Finish reading this article. Then devour everything you can get your hands on, especially by these folks: Ignore copywriting rules at your peril. Soon you'll be flailing about in uncharted waters. And that's precisely when bad Web copy will rise up and swallow your company whole.
Traditional copywriting is all business writing that came before the Web. Writing such as brochures, sales letters, infomercials, direct mail, public relations copy, and much more. The jury's still out, but most writers agree traditional copywriting doesn't translate directly to the Web. Meaning,
it's a big mistake to transcribe brochures and sales letters directly to your site. Why is this? Think about how you cruise the Web. You want to be entertained, even when you're tracking down information, or looking to buy. Nothing is less effective at attracting customers than plugging a static piece such as a brochure into an interactive medium such as the Web. Yet hundreds of thousands of sites do just that. Witness the screen shot below of the consumer advocacy company
Wondering why I didn't lead off with these gems? Because you needed to be hit a few times with the importance of rules. So, now you're ready for some quick steps on writing effective Web copy, right? How about six of 'em?
I knew the bikini thing would get you this far. As it should've, because this is the second most important element of a great site. The most important element is content, which we'll cover, too. At the risk of pandering, stop and take a close look at the site you're now perusing. eFuse is a clinic on uniting writing and design to
achieve must-see, must-return status. OK, now my check will clear. Whew :) Too many site designers get caught up spending all of their energy making their pages pretty. Designers forget the Internet began life as a labyrinth of textual information for a bunch of eggheads. It only recently had this ocean of information overlaid with graphics. To be effective, your site must be an equal mix of eye candy and informative content. The seamless integration of content and graphics relaxes
your viewers into staying and negotiating your site. Relax your potential customers, and they'll buy from you quicker than you can say, "How much is that Rottweiler in the window?" Witness the This site proves you don't need Michelangelo to do your graphics to have a popular site. The graphics support rather than fight the content. NHRA's intent is to keep fans hooked
on drag racing by delivering up-to-the-minute info and numerous profiles on drivers and their teams. That means when an expensive NHRA event comes to town, the typical fan will gladly shovel a hundred bucks-plus into NHRA's coffers. And he'll do it each and every day of a four- to five-day event. Not to mention the equally large sums of money fans spend with numerous vendors.
Looking for the dictionary definition of overlooked? Not focusing on what your Web copy should accomplish is synonymous with stabbing your site in the heart. Before you write a word you must understand what you want to achieve with your site. And making money had better be foremost in your mind. If so, make sure copy is geared toward supplying enough information to move your customers to buy. Give them gobs of detail. Convince them what you're selling is the best solution for their particular problem. Explain in vivid detail
every size, color, capacity, etc., your product comes in. Go point by point and detail every benefit your product offers. Use powerful, benefits-based copy to leave even your toughest customers no choice but to cave when you ask for the order. A quick aside, don't neglect response mechanism copy (forms, order pages, etc.). This copy needs to be so coercive, so snappy that it spirits your customers into a credit card number-yielding trance. Witness the granddaddy of all direct sales sites,
Is your goal to generate leads? To develop leads, you must dispel your visitor's fear of being hounded and harassed. Witness the lightning fast bastardization e-mail has suffered at the hands of marketing miscreants. You want your customer to look forward to being contacted, not dread it. Even if there's an installed interest, a
lot of people simply don't like being contacted. These customers prefer to initiate contact. They sneak around Web sites gleaning info. They use this accumulated knowledge to support their decision to buy from you. Use benefit-laced copy so these folks can retrieve what they need to know at their leisure. Then you can safely follow up. The fact they requested info and filled out your response form (you do have a response form, don't you?) makes them much
more receptive to further contact. Generating a lead can be tougher than asking for a sale. Your copy must coddle and scoot doubters into a state of eager anticipation. So when you do approach them, they're already pulling that fat roll out of their pockets. Is your goal to generate subscribers or loyal, repeat visitors? These site owners make great incomes charging substantial advertising rates for delivering X-number of eyeballs. Constantly refreshing in-demand content is the only sure way to guarantee subscribers. And the content you provide had better be compelling and loaded with hot information. Take the computer gaming site http://www.planethalflife.com. Although you can't really call PHL's visitors true subscribers, they do, however, partake religiously of Planet Half Life's myriad content. And this is gold to companies such as Visa, who pays PHL's owners big wads of money to slap its banner across the tops of their pages. Is your goal a strictly information-based site?
You'll need a little luck with this one. Even great copy alone seldom makes strictly informational Web sites very profitable. Of course, a strictly informational Web site can be rewarding as the apple of your infatuation's eye. So there's definitely something to be said for zealotry. Then there's a site such as the following, one that truly illustrates the importance of strictly informational sites. The Web site of the Is your goal to provide technical support or troubleshooting expertise? This seems similar to the one above, but it isn't really. Companies develop copy for tech/troubleshooting pages to better serve their existing customers. This saves money and delivers a quicker turnaround time for handling problems. I
know, I know, everyone's got a horror story about companies using tech support pages to ignore their customers. Sadly, there will always be people who utilize technology to avoid doing their jobs. And even phenomenal copy won't faze these folks' ill will. Networking technology company Ovislink illustrates my cynicism with this excerpt from Headline: "Download Drivers, Technical Support, and Customer Service" What the. . .? We can download drivers and both a tech person and CS flack? Last box: "Your Ovislink product is protected by The
Global Warranty System. If you thought your Ovislink product had the quality problem, please contact your sales representative, or e-mail us: marketing@ovislink.com to request further service." OK, I'll admit English was probably not the writer's native tongue. But if the biggest technology market in the world speaks English, how can you justify feeding it such badly beaten copy? Copy this bad will chase Ovislink's customers
away quicker than you can say: "Who's their competitor?" Suffice it to say, the above examples are the apex of writing at Ovislink. I take these shots at Ovislink not out of anger, but out of pity. Losing customers via language mangling makes me weep. It would've been so easy for this company to keep me as a customer. It simply had to take the time to deliver readable copy via its tech support pages and its e-mail. It didn't, and I was gone. So, the moral is: "Don't
make the mistake of letting bad Web copy irritate and frustrate your customers. You'll pay by never seeing them again."
Whipping up web words.
Illustration: From business and finance by Garrian Manning, artville.com | |||
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Here are some quick morsels that'll jump start your Web copy. For those of you with the gift of concentration, click 'em for more detail. 
Rules? 
In a rare moment of repose, the writer rests on his haunches beside a river. Ready, at a
moment's notice, to lunge back through the doors, or an open window, of WordSleuth Communications. His only goal, to resuscitate yet another fine company's sputtering prose. Contact Marc about your wounded writing at: 
