Writing Persuasive Website Copy Which Sells

Websites are there to sell your products or services, but they do have a significant disadvantage to a physical store – people can’t see, touch or feel anything – other than emotion. The emotion is what is going to sell your products, so you need to write persuasive web copy. Nielsen research showed that 79% of website visitors actually only read headlines and scan for keywords, which makes it even more important that you pay particular attention to what you put on your pages and how you present it.

What Makes Web Copy Persuasive?

There are six key characteristics of persuasive website copy:

1. focused on the customer - your website content must be 100% customer focused. Your customers are the ones you need to convince as to why they must purchase your products and to do this, you must be explicit in what benefits they will receive by doing so. 
2. highly specific - persuasive content gives all the information to the visitor. You don't want to make them guess and leave the site because they can't find all the information they want.
3. useful - persuasive website content gives the visitor what they want, which is useful information.
4. easy to scan - large paragraphs are unlikely to be read. Instead break the text up with headings and subheadings, bullet points and lists. This ensures the page is easy upon the eye and important details can quickly be found.
5. unique -  visitors want to read content that they haven't seen before. If your site has the same information as a competitor, they are unlikely to understand why they should purchase your products over theirs.
6. creates FOMO - no one wants to miss out on something, so producing content which creates a fear of missing out is very helpful. 

Tips On Writing Website Content Which Persuades

To write web content which sells, you must firstly know and understand your target audience. They are the ones you must convince to purchase your products once they have arrived at your website. 

• Use bullet points - most visitors to your website are only going to scan your pages, you need to make it easy for them to do so in such a way that your key message gets across.
• Highlight keywords in bold or coloured fonts - make sure the important words a visitor is scanning for stand out.
• Stick with one idea per paragraph - keep things clear and simple for your visitors by focusing on one main topic per paragraph. 
• Organise your content using headings - headings help to break up the content on a page and let a visitor quickly find what they are looking for when scanning the text.
• Position the most important messages at the top of the page - scrolling down a page requires effort and time. Put your most important content up the top so it is quickly seen and acted upon.
• Use calls to action throughout each page - CTAs or calls to action tell the visitor what to do next. This could be to sign up to your newsletter, contact the business or add the product to the shopping cart. 
• Use carewords - carewords are the words which everyone is looking for. They are the everyday words we use, rather than the fussy or embellished words people use to describe themselves or their products. For example, if you wanted to buy a plane ticket, would you search for ‘cost effective flights’ or ‘cheap flights’?
• Explain both the benefits and the features - when describing your product or service, not only do you need to tell your audience why something is so great, but what makes it so great too. Write the benefits first and then the features. For instance; (Benefit) Your information won’t disappear from your loaded internet pages if your connection drops (feature) because our database has an asynchronous connection preventing it from doing so.

Many different pages will be viewed by the customer during their decision making process, including the product description. A well written product description will do wonders for increasing product sales, so make certain you check out the article we have written which explain exactly how to write one too!