If you want your business to be successful online (and who wouldn’t?) you need to give some serious thought to your website. Is the design important? Absolutely, it adds to your credibility as a business. But what’s even more important — and severely underrated — is the copy you use to convince your prospects to take action with you.
With the right messaging, your website can be your biggest sales tool, persuading your audience to become customers, all day, everyday, even while you sleep.
The One Mistake Most Businesses Make on Their Website
If you could say only one thing on your website, what would it be? It would probably be a good idea to talk about the business itself, and what makes your offering so amazing, right?
100 percent wrong, but all-too-common.
When prospects are coming to your website, the harsh reality is: they don’t care about you or your business. They really don’t even care about what you do. All they are looking for is how you can help them.
Unfortunately, when tasked with coming up with the copy for their own website, most businesses default to talking themselves up. This happens for a couple reasons:
- They think this will come across as a benefit to their potential customers.
- They aren’t experienced with the art of persuasive Web copy.
While you may think your customers knowing how great your product or service is will result in increased conversions, there is actually a fundamental disconnect happening. Remember, bringing up the virtues of your business is only an implied benefit, not a tacit one. And most of your audience will have a harder time connecting the dots than you would expect.
Consider the following example landing page’ headline:
Okay, so you’re “#1 Highest Rated.” Whoever wrote this headline probably thought it would be a convincing argument, but it’s missing the most important part — what does your software do for your customer? How does it solve their problem? How will it make their life easier/better/pain-free?
Here’s what you should do instead.
The Tactic to Writing Website Copy that Sells
When it comes to writing persuasive web copy, you really only have to accomplish one thing.
Tell your audience exactly how your offering will benefit them.
Sounds simple, right? By turning your brags into benefits, you can much more effectively communicate with, and convince your target audience to take action. Take a look at the following example landing page Lyft uses to target drivers:
See how the headline combines two solid benefits into one compelling statement? They could have easily just said “Drive for the #1 Rated Rideshare Service,” but it lacks the same level of enticement.
Would you rather work for a highly rated company, or make good money while choosing your own hours?
Would you rather hire “Your neighborhood plumber since 1965,” or have your issue “fixed fast with a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee?”
By specifically calling out what your customers get out of the deal, as well as letting them know how that will improve their life in some way, you will increase your conversions dramatically.
Getting Started
Go through the copy you’re currently using, line by line. Whenever you see a braggy statement about your company, ask yourself how you can turn it around into a concrete benefit for your customers.
So you’ve been a family-run business for three generations? While impressive, you’ll want to convey why that’s something your customers should be interested in. For example, you could turn it into a reason why they can trust you.
Final Thoughts
Whenever you’re trying to convince somebody to do something, you have to give them a reason that’s all about them. We can’t help it — we’re mostly wired to minimize our own pain, and maximize our own pleasure. By clearly stating how you can do that for your customers, your website will start to become a much more persuasive sales tool for your business.
Writing Photo via Shutterstock
It’s amazing how often people will neglect the importance of benefits. We have to remind ourselves that prospects don’t care about how awesome our companies are. They care about how that awesomeness benefits them. Great article!