Practical copywriting tips and examples for e-commerce websites
As Coronavirus spreads around the world, e-commerce websites need messages telling customers what service they can expect from the new normal.
A few are doing these really well, but many are falling into the trap of writing in a stiff, legalistic language that does nothing to reassure or persuade customers to carry on buying.
It’s understandable. Plummeting sales figures (unless you’re selling Vitamin C) means that Business owners are panicked about keeping the company afloat, senior managers are petrified about their jobs and everyone is scrambling to get their work done. As human beings, they are worried about their friends, family and possibly their own health too.
Those huge levels of anxiety permeate through to stiff, formal wording that does nothing to reassure with statements like “Our existing business continuity plans have been designed to support the continued…
As traditional marketing methods become less effective, companies are realizing the need for more relevant and authoritative content
This shift in strategy is fueling the rapid growth of the content marketing industry, which is projected to reach $412.88 billion by 2021, according to Technavio.
But with all the buzz about the possibilities of AI, many businesses are curious about whether or not it can be (convincingly) applied to content creation. After all, companies like Google and Yahoo Finance have been using automated content for years, unbeknownst to many a reader. While the applications for AI are often lauded as either a panacea for society’s ills or admonished as being the end of humanity, the possibilities for AI and content creation rest firmly in reality, as many companies are already using both to help them build their brands…
...And you won't be able to tell the difference
2017 is the year that copywriting by Artificial Intelligence (AI) has moved from science fiction fantasy to commercial fact. Game-changing new tools mean that computers can now produce convincing, accurate product descriptions that look as if they were penned by a trained copywriter. The future has arrived.
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Many people regard AI as a bit of a joke and cannot imagine a day when software will write better than humans. Tay, the ill-fated Microsoft chatbot, became a laughing stock when she went from innocently playful tweets to racist rants and swear words…
How to avoid the most common copywriting mistakes and convert more of your visitors
If your landing page isn't converting leads and your email campaigns don't bring in significant results, something might be wrong with your copy.
Even if it's relatively easy to find talented writers these days, businesses are still making the same mistakes over and over again.
Check out our new Quick Win on how to write an effective sales letter or email.
Here are 5 copywriting mistakes you're probably making together with tips to help you fix them to deliver compelling copy for your product and boost your bottom line.
1. You don't really understand your audience
It's hard to address people you don't really know in your copy. How are you supposed to convince them to follow your call-to-action if you have no idea about their preferences, needs, or pain points?
Before crafting your copy, you need to have a full…
10 useful tips for writing copy for businesses to increase the conversion rate of your website
B2B copywriting is a different ball game to B2C copy, but a lot of the same principles apply. If you're writing to appeal to other businesses, then you need to look into creating a cohesive strategy that really brings in the business. If you're looking to improve your ROI, here 10 tips that will get you started.
1. Review your analytics
Look at what's already on your website. What's the data that people are returning to again and again? What pages aren't being visited? You can get a great idea of what other businesses want by looking at your analytics. From this data, you can create a new strategy to draw them in.
2. Avoid the hard sell
The hard sell may have worked once upon a time, but nowadays it just doesn't fly. No one wants to…
How to Combine Precision and Empathy for an Effective Effort
To successfully engage potential customers during the sweet spot of their buying journey, marketing leaders and teams need precision and empathy more than automation tools and available media.
Programmatic creative — technology that uses data (precision) to automate and accelerate routine, repetitive components of developing an ad — garners plenty of attention these days. The concept enables marketers to quickly create multiple online ads in different formats for different devices targeted to different audiences.
It hasn’t, however, automatically triggered effective customer connections and results. That feat requires a little effort, creativity, and lots of empathy on the part of marketers, with that last component being a possible springboard to turn accumulated data into a story that resonates with customers.
Mix Insights and Emotions to Tell a More Compelling Story
Programmatic creative technology is a vital resource in taking the guesswork out of digital advertising.…
Your website must convey your value proposition. Here's how to do it.
Web design and online marketing have gotten more complicated than ever before – it’s possible now to add all kinds of bells and whistles to your site, and there are lots of buzzwords about what your site needs to do to engage visitors and capture email addresses and generate leads. But too many company websites are losing sight of what is truly most important about their site’s design and content – showing people WHY they should care and “What’s in it for me” from the customer’s perspective. Simply put: too many company websites don’t really illustrate a value proposition.
Next time you redesign your website, take some time to ask yourself some big-picture questions to make sure your website really has a compelling case for why people should buy from you.
Here are a few questions that your website needs…
When writing content for your website, blog, or newsletter, should you aim for brevity or go in-depth?
I’d dump Q and maybe J.
Because if attention spans continue shrinking, we’ll need to cut down the alphabet to make words shorter (shrtr).
Given the online ADD epidemic, it surely makes sense to go short if you’re producing articles for a newsletter, blog or website?
Not necessarily.
If short was always the way, this blog would be dead. We just assume people won’t read long articles. The ADD problem has been hammered home so often that we hardly pause to think anymore.
But it’s not that simple.
Like everything online, the “ideal” content length depends on context: the ideal length is the one that says everything you need to say to get the right response.
Not short. Not long. But what suits your needs and the audience you’re targeting.
The…
These productivity and copywriting tools can help you take your content marketing to the next level
In a year in which content will reign supreme, it’s very important to differentiate yourself from tons of the material that is getting uploaded on the Internet every single hour. It’s important, but it is also very difficult. Your content has to shine, it has to entice, and it has to be beautiful.
Now, when we say beautiful we don’t mean it as an invite to go out there and b-dazzle pieces of paper, charts and diagrams. One example of 'beautiful content' is well-researched and organized content that has a structure and a flow. Another example is richly illustrated content that speaks to visual learners; every writer who’s worked on content for an infographic knows that visuals can do wonders in getting the material to really shine. A page of content completely devoid of grammatical and…
How to Easily Cultivate Trust with Button Copy that Puts Your Audience’s Needs First
Marketers are busy and often juggle way too many responsibilities at once. Something’s gotta give, and sometimes it’s the button copy. It’s understandable, but when you skip this one detail, you create a very bad impression with your audience.
By settling on generic button copy, you risk coming off as a lazy marketer who focuses on getting the lead or the sale instead of your customers’ wellbeing. Consequently, conversions suffer.
So it’s time to rid the world of generic button copy.
If Your Button Copy is Good Ole “Sign Up”, “Send” or “Submit”
You’re probably not doing this on purpose, but I’m not gonna lie – it’s bad.
When site visitors scroll through the page, a generic “submit” button doesn’t tell them a thing other than the fact you want something from them. Truth be told, they probably won’t even notice it,…
