The Essentials of Web Writing

IN THIS EBOOK

1. Format Your Copy to Be Scanned ............................................................................................................. 3 2. The Essentials of Formatting Web Copy ................................................................................................. 15 3. The Great Big B ig List of Little (But Critical) Web-Writing Details ........................ ................................ ................. .................. .................. .............. ..... 25 4. Avoid These 17 Copywriting Pitfalls ........................................................................................................ 37 5. Debunking the Biggest, Most Deleterious & Crippling Web Writing Myths ........... .................... ................. ................. ............... ...... 46

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joanna Wiebe is a professional copywriter and messaging strategist specializing in persuasive writing that converts visitors. Since 2003, she has been writing, editing & proofreading online and offline copy and designing interactions for tech companies as well as startups. She also consults and teaches writing for professionals. She holds an MA in Communications & Technology with specialization in ecommerce communication. The cofounder of Page99Test, Joanna lives with her hub-bub in Victoria, Br itish Columbia.

Twitter: @copyhackers

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Website: copyhackers.com

2 © 2011 Joanna Wiebe

1. Format Your Copy to Be Scanned Sca nned Effective copywriting is, at minimum, dependent on scannability. Online or off. True, there are some visitors who will read every line of copy on your site, word for word – but let’s call those people exceptions to the rule. Like in most areas of life and business, you can’t solve for the exceptions… or you’ll wear yourself thin with serious diminishing returns on your efforts. So write for the majority of people: scanners. Effective formatting is the first thing most people think about when writing scannable web copy. And you’re right to go there. Without appropriate formatting, all you’ve got is a bunch of words in a big clump on your page. Formatting your text makes it possible for the average reader to sort out what exactly is happening on your site.

The way you format your copy will make or break it. You can write a killer headline, but if it’s in the same font and style as the body copy below it, all visitors will see is a blob of text… and your conversions will suffer while your bounce and exit rates will skyrocket. Formatting your copy is what brings your messages to life on a page. And gets them to sell. Formatting is what gets the words breathing – gets a sentence’s heart pumping. (Then graphic design comes sweeping in and makes your copy s tart to pop right off the page.) And


visitors get all excited. And the endorphins start flowing. And your would-be customers start actually digging what they’re seeing on your site! Cool, isn’t it? But we’re not just talking about formatting full stop. The lesson is not simply that t hat you should use differing font sizes, bolding and bullets to improve your copy. No, we’re talking about formatting intentionally .

Format Intentionally & Thoughtfully I think the word “formatting” is clear, cl ear, but let me explain what I mean by “intentionally”.

I mean be deliberate. Be thoughtful. Know the formatting options at your disposal, which I’m going to show you in this ebook, and then selectively choose which formats to use in order to accomplish your goal of communicating X message to your visitors. Oftentimes, I’ll see new copywriters or startups make the mistake of choosing one type of formatting and use it like a crutch. For example, you might rely heavily on bullet lists because you read that bullet lists are good for scanning and, in turn, good for the web. Bullet lists are good. But repeated use of bullet lists will cause fatigue for users – and you don’t want that. Repeated use of any one style will do that.

So be thoughtful, purposeful and intentional with the formatting you choose. Start by familiarizing yourself with the formatting options here. As you read more, you’ll come to understand when to use which formatting style for your various messages.

What Pain Does Formatting Solve? When you’re formatting your copy, you’re really trying to make it easy to read. r ead. The only reason to have a single word on your page – nevermind dozens of ‘em – is to get them read. (If people won’t read the words, cut them from the page.) Here are the top 5 outcomes of formatting your copy: 1. Improving comprehension of your messages 2. Achieving aesthetic balance 3. Reducing fatigue for visitors 4. Facilitating usability or a better user experience


5. Simplifying site navigation When you format, you want to keep in mind the way people read. That means you should highlight the broadest subject first, and funnel users down to the most detailed info. The copy you want the majority of your visitors to notice first should be bigger, brighter, bolder. And the copy that only the truly curious need to read – the details – should be muted, shrunken, dimmed.

Get Your Copy Noticed Your goal as a copywriter is to get your visitors to notice your words. And I don’t mean only with formatting. There are secrets beyond bolding, coloring, making words bigger and other formatting tricks that can get your copy noticed. Because people ‘read’ your site in the all-too-discussed (but still legit) “F Pattern” and because their eyes are drawn to visuals – like images, buttons, and icons – your key messages should be positioned in noticeable ways. That is, the messages that matter most should be positioned alongside images, buttons,

and icons. Because that will help them get noticed. It might help you to keep in mind that people notice oddities oddities. That’s why legendary

filmmaker Stanley Kubrick strived for symmetry in his shots – so when something was out of place, audiences would notice and tension would rise. When everything looks just so, the human eye isn’t sure where to go. Here are some rules to follow in order to make it easier for visitors to scan your copy and notice more messages: •

Use parentheses (even when something’s not a side note)

•

Capitalize words that don’t need to be capitalized but Need To Be Read

•

Trade in periods and commas for long, noticeable lines – called dashes

•

Use 1, 2 or 3 instead of one, two or three

•

Replace “and” with an ampersand (i.e., “&”) or a plus sign (i.e., “+”)

•

Separate a string of thoughts… with ellipses that… give the eye a break

•

Make the font large… so everyone can easily read it

•

Use periods. Where they’re needed. Even if your high school English teacher. Would faint.


Let’s see a few of those tricks at work – and compare them to exact copy that doesn’t apply those tricks.

EXAMPLE A Without Ampersand and Dash: Keep track of downloads and rankings in all e-stores, even internationally

With Ampersand and Dash: Keep track of downloads & rankings in all e-stores – even internationally

EXAMPLE B Without Numerals, Parentheses and Capitalization: Target hundreds of high quality candidates, even passive ones, anywhere on the web

With Numerals, Parentheses and Capitalization: Target 100s of High Quality Candidates (even passive ones) anywhere on the web Taking this idea to the max – in a fab way – is SuperSprowtz.com:

When you know and use these small but hugely effective scanning tricks, you can start to make sense of where to position the words in your copy . And here’s exactly how you do that for maximum effect: Put the words you want to get the most attention near attractive punctuation. Surround them with it. Interject them with it.

What Not to Do Even with all the great, low-effort ways to draw attention to your messages, there are still some bad ideas that I’d recommend you don’t use. They’re copywriting no-nos. And they’re the same on the web as they are in email: •

Don’t write in ALL CAPS (unless you’re capitalizing the word “FREE”, but even then do so sparingly)

•

Don’t use excessive exclamation points!!!!

•

Dont mispel werds


To Facilitate Scanning, Group (Or “Chunk”) Text No message is an island. All messages should live in relation to other messages… which simply means all messages can and should be grouped to facilitate scanning. Grouping not only helps solidify your messages – by positioning supporting points together – but it also helps your visitors make sense of how to read your many messages… without having to think at all. (Once your visitors start thinking, you have to work a lot harder to hold their attention. So stick with the Krug Principle: Don’t make your visitors think.) Grouping messages allows your visitors to think l ess. Grouping is based in ‘progressive disclosure’, which holds that you should only show people small amounts of information at one time in order to facilitate understanding of that information. (If you know of the inverted pyramid, you already know this and likely do it. If you don’t, well, voila! This book is teaching you things already.)

What Is Grouping? Grouping is when you round up similar messages on a page and strategically organize them with visuals so visitors seeking that info can find it all in one place. Take the following example from the home page of What-Customers-Say.com, a Canadian real estate agent rating site:

Visitors landing on this page can be divided into 3 groups:


1. Those rating an agent 2. Those seeking an agent 3. Agents The information for each of those 3 groups is neatly packaged in 3 clearly marked callout boxes at the bottom of the page (above the fold). Visitors to this site can quickly selfidentify by scanning the headers on the callouts, scanning the info within, and clicking on the appropriate call to action. The messages, though simple, are obviously grouped to facilitate scanning. Another example is on Distimo.com, which offers app store analytics. Distimo divides its home page into 2 groups – one group for developers, the other group for operators and handset manufacturers. Just like in the example of What-Customers-Say.com, simple grouping makes it easy for visitors to scan your page and rapidly identify the messages that will help them complete their task, as Distimo does:

RouseApp.com makes grouping or chunking copy look effortless. Using appealing, juicy icons and thick, large-font headlines for each chunk, visitors can easily scan the top messages and dig deeper if they want to:


StorageByMail.com also does a fantastic job grouping their copy (which is supported by strong interaction design). Their top 3 “reasons to believe” a re clearly broken out on the home page, with noticeable images and visually treated headlines to draw the scanner’s eye to each of the 3 messages. (CAVEAT: The body copy font could be larger.)

StorageByMail groups all of their messages into clear sections that are easy to read. Which means no lumbering, hard-to-sort-through copy blocks. Just copy that’s wicked-easy to scan. See this other example from their site:


Why Do People Scan? Knowing for certain that people scan web copy – you know because I told you, and you trust me implicitly – you need to know that even as your site visitors are scanning, they’re passively seeing everything. And their brains are on, even if they’re not firing on all cylinders quite yet. And they’re looking for information. And they believe you have that information. And when they think they’ve found that information, they’ll stop and read it.

Some brilliant PhDs call this activity foraging – the act of scavenging around in a space to acquire something you need. Those brilliant folks tell us that your site visitors make decisions on your site in a manner very similar to the way they make decisions in stores, during their morning commute, or while reading the newspaper. And they make decisions on your site in a manner very similar to how they foraged for food a million gazillion years ago. That is, they make decisions by filtering out competing messages and interruptions while seeking cues – be those conscious cues (e.g., “I searched for ‘home coffee brewer’, so I am trying to find the phrase ‘home coffee brewer’ somewhere on this page”) or subconscious cues (e.g., twelve product choices for home coffee brewers = I’m going to need more info to make a decision = I guess I need to do more research, which I don’t feel like doing = exit site). So why is this important to know now, as you consider the concept of scannability in your copywriting? Well, knowing that your visitors are consciously and subconsciously looking for cues will definitely help you write more scannable copy.

More Examples of Great Scannable Copy Meebo.com uses headlines, bolding and supporting images to draw the eye to the primary messages, hold a visitor’s attention, and waste very little time getting to the point. With a straightforward offering, it seems easy enough to get the messaging right, as Meebo does.

But Meebo’s simple, highly scannable copy takes extreme discipline . Meebo has to make a decision every day as to whether or not they should add X new feature to their home page. It can be very easy to fill up a page with messages; it’s very hard to keep things simple – but the payoff for fighting that fight will show in your analytics.


Next up is the Features page for OxygenCloud. Like most startups, OxygenCloud has a lot to say about its primary solution – and it does so cleverly.

Each chunk of copy is prefaced with a headline , drawing in visitors who care about the subject while at the same time helping visitors not interested in that subject skip it . This great copy treatment – separated by screenshots and other relevant imagery – continues down the length of the page. The layout effectively chops a copy-heavy page into bite-sized, digestible pieces that are (what else but) easy to scan.


The third and final example is from the Learn More page on Yodle.com. Clear headlines and super-short copy chunks separate the top 4 messages into distinct boxes that are easy to scan. Beneath each box, supporting messages – complete with their own headlines, snappy copy blocks, and eye-catching images – fill in the gaps.

Do You Think You Might Be an Exception to the Rule? I’m the first to admit that there’s always an exception to the rule. But there aren’t 100s of exceptions to the rule. So, if you think, for some reason, that your site doesn’t need to be that scannable or that your messages don’t need to be formatted that rigorously, ask yourself if you’re being critical enough.

Unless your conversion rate is through the roof, you are not an exception to this rule. Because your visitors – no matter who they are – even if they’re English majors who profess a deep love of reading or accountants who tell you they want all the info up-front and unfiltered – actually want and need help sorting through your messages. If you’re going to spend any time writing your copy, make sure that time is well-spent.

Which means you need to make sure every word you write is worthy of being read – and can be read. That is, after all, the number one goal when you’re crafting a message: to get it

noticed. Go into your writing with the goal of attracting even the busiest scanner’s eye. Doing so will help you please the majority of visitors. And the more visitors you please, the more you can convince to sign up for your service or buy your product.


NEXT STEPS ~ Apply What You’ve Learned On Your Site Now ~ Instead of starting with your home page, let’s improve the formatting on your “How It Works” or “Why [Your Solution]” page. These pages can be excellent for conversion… but they’re often thick blobs of text with a few stock photos randomly scattered about. Here’s what you need to do with the copy on that page: complete the checklist on the next page of this ebook to improve the formatting of all your copy. If nothing can be improved, amazing! Skip along to the next chapter.


FORMATTING CHECKLIST Print this page from your PDF copy, or visit CopyHackers.com for a full selection of printable worksheets, including this one.

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Separate parts (of a longer sentence or statement) using parentheses… or an ellipses

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Capitalize words that Need To Be Read

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Shorten long sentences – especially those with lots of verbs (that is, action words) – into a series of short sentences

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Replace at least 2 commas with dashes that have a space on either side

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Replace written-out numbers (e.g., “five”) with numerals (e.g., “5”)

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Replace “and” with an ampersand (i.e., “&”) or a plus sign (i.e., “+”) in headlines

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Boost the size of the body copy font – and even the headline and subhead – by a t least 2 points

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Group similar copy chunks together visually


2. The Essentials of Formatting Web Copy Here are the essentials of formatting web copy to facilitate scanning. All points include examples that should help clear up the grey areas.

IMPORTANT RULE DON’T FATIGUE YOUR VISITORS’ EYES Switch your formatting up so that your visitors’ eyes are exercised on your page. Remember that people are drawn to visually interesting elements – from photos of people to cartoons to bright red flashing signs – but that you do not want to over-stimulate your visitors. So don’t overdo it.

Bolding In the midst of a lot of information, a little bold goes a long way to help visitors see what you want them to see. That said, some folks get a little crazy with their bolding, and suddenly everything starts to look overwhelmingly bold. So only bold the stuff that counts. (See next page for example.)


MagnetismStudios.com/FileMagnet

Bullet Lists The classic mark of copy formatting online and off, a bullet list is your friend when you have several related points to string together, such as the 3 benefits of X feature or the handful of features that make your solution so cool. (See also Numbered Lists.) Bullet lists work best when you have 5 bullets or fewer. Long bullet lists are too overwhelming and quickly lose readers. Here’s how to format bullet lists effectively: 1. The first-most important point should be your top bullet 2. The third-most or second-most important point is your second bullet 3. The point that doesn’t matter quite as much gets put here, where it can be overlooked 4. The other point that doesn’t matter quite as much gets put here, where it can be overlooked 5. The second-most or third-most important point is your bottom/last bullet Why do I recommend one of your top points get shuffled down to the bottom of the list? One, because, at a max of 5 points, your list isn’t so long that the point will get lost. Two – and most importantly – because people assume the thing at the bottom of the list is the least important thing… and so when they see this kick-butt point at the bottom of your list, a little spark goes off in their brain telling them that this must be one helluva product if even the last point is stellar. Seriously. It works.


If you have more than 5 items to put in a list, I recommend you break the list into smaller chunks and use headlines to separate the lists. This will facilitate scanning… and better ensure that your visitors understand what you’re sharing with them s o they can be more open to converting in some way. NOTE: No one’s forcing you to use a black dot for your ‘bullet’. If you want visitors to look at your list, given them something to look at… which might not be ye olde black dot.

LateNiteSoft.com/Sketches

TapBots.com/Software/WeightBot

Buttons Buttons aren’t what they used to be. Buttons have gone from two words in a single line overlaid on an orange rectangle to multiline buttons that most people refer to as “mega buttons”. Mega buttons can be two lines of text overlaid on a rectangle or they can be truly outstanding, eye-catching works of art that


include credit card logos, starbursts, mascots, taglines, money-back guarantees, images of the product to be purchased – the list goes on. Mega buttons are the copy hacker’s friend.

Here’s why: grouping important information near a call to action can help people both notice that call to action and feel prepared to click it. I call these messages grouped around buttons “click triggers”. (See Copy Hackers Book 4: Buttons & Click-Worthy Calls to Action.) For example, you could make “Buy Now” your button call to action and be done with it. Or you could take that button to the ‘mega’ level and surround it – neatly, using eye-catching visual design – with a short line that reminds people you have free shipping and an icon showing free phone support. Which has a better chance of getting clicked? Guess. The more reasons to click you give people, the better the likelihood they will click.

zendesk.com

Coloring Why just make something bold when you can change the color of it, too? Use sparingly. Comwerks.com


Copy Columns It’s more fatiguing for web users to read body copy that spans the width of a page than it is to read copy that’s broken up. Headlines and subheads can span the width, but body copy should go no wider than twothirds of the width of your page.

JakePrzespo.com

Directives (Or, Simply, Arrows) Really want someone to notice something or do something on your site? Put an arrow next to the copy you want them to notice to take action. Seriously. An arrow.

The more explicit you can be with your visitors, the less they have to think. Bonus points if you keep things emotional by using a visually interesting directive.

RouseApp.com


OutsideApp.com

Font Size Use multiple font sizes to display your copy on your site. The largest fonts are for headlines, the second largest are subheads, and the supporting messages come in various shapes and sizes. Increasingly, sites are using larger fonts, which feel easier to read, like a child’s book. This is a very, very good thing. My recommendation is to increase font size wherever possible. Why? Larger fonts reduce

strain and can help keep people reading the copy on your page longer. After all, why hide your great messages in tiny fonts? No one reads the fine print – and if your site looks like it’s written in fine print, visitors are going to bounce or bail quickly.

GourmetNutrition.com

Highlighting For a while there, 37signals.com had lots of highlighting. Then everyone started copying them. And they got rid of it. But other sites are still using highlighting in really cool ways… and so can you. If something really needs to get noticed, and bold’s already in use or color won’t do, experiment with highlighting key words or phrases in your copy. (See next page.)


TeaRoundApp.com

Icons & Images If you want your copy to be well-noticed, you should put it in or near an icon/image. That doesn’t mean that you should put every message in an image – remember not to fatigue visitor’s eyes – but the key messages may work best within or accompanied by an image.

Lanyrd.com

Plaxo.com

Leading & Kerning “Leading” (pronounced ‘ledding’) is line spacing. You can control leading in your CSS. When you have extra leading, you have more space between lines; when you have less leading, lines of copy tend to look cramped together or stacked one on top of the other. The smaller your font size, the more leading you may want to use in order to improve readability.


“Kerning” is character spacing. Most fonts are built with kerning, so be sure to choose a font style that has kerning that looks airy rather than cramped, to increase readability. The tighter your kerning, the harder your copy may be to read. So keep it loosey-goosey without going crazy.

Numbered Lists If you have multiple steps in a process or a specific number of reasons to choose your solution, use a numbered list. Numbered lists help people follow your thoughts and can also increase memorability, which makes your site easier to use and your product features or process steps easier to recall.

MySportsPlanner.com

Paragraph Length Your body copy is the only part of your site that actually has a ‘paragraph’… so we’re really talking about how to chunk your body copy when we’re talking about paragraph lengths. That said, no chunk of text – or paragraph – should be longer than 4 lines. Not 4 sentences – 4 lines. (See next page for example.)


QuickBooks.ca

Ragged Right (Left Justification) I don’t know why the brain works this way, but tests show that readers can better comprehend what they’re reading when it’s presented using a ‘ragged right’: the ja gged, imperfect edge along the right side of a left-justified paragraph. When the lines all match up perfectly – when a paragraph is fully ‘justified’ – you can actually lose readers. Who knew a simple thing like that could matter so much?

TurboTax.ca

Text Links Formatting your text links should be done with usability in mind, first and foremost. If it looks like a link, your visitors will be more likely to move their mouse toward the link and click it. If it doesn’t look like a link, how will they know to click it?


So keep it simple with this formatting: make the text link a different color and underline

it… or, if you loathe underlining, at least make it a different color from the unclickable copy. ZhiTea.com

CloudHarmony.com

Typography Every copywriter’s best friend is a stellar typographer – or just any graphic designer who uses fab fonts. (HTML5 deserves a medal!) That’s because cool typography gets noticed, and the only way copy is effective is if visitors notice it… and then read it. EPICagency.net


3. The Great Big List of Little (But Critical) Web-Writing Details The biggest parts of writing for the web require explanation and a little theory to get them right. But then there are the other things. The little things. Things that are critical but are easy enough to understand, once you see them written out. Those “little critical details” – all 25 of ‘em – are listed here, complete with examples, of course.

1. Write copy with substance. The only points that matter to your customer are points that express value. If your customer is willing to pay for something or tell their friends about something, then write a line or two of copy about it. If they’re not, don’t put it on your website.

TrunkClub.com


2. Follow the rule of 3. Everything sounds better and is more memorable when it i s presented in groups of 3. That means three short sentences in a row. Three chunks of copy grouped together. Three bullet points in a list. Three adjectives to describe your offering. Three, three, three.

FullContact.com

3. Hack off intro words. Get rid of phrases like “first and foremost”, “little did they know”, “the truth of the matter is” and other related phrases that create visual clutter and interrupt the acquisition of info.

SimpleUPC.com

4. Lead with a verb where possible. Starting your sentences with an action is a great way to keep your messages clear and ensure you’re cutting out unnecessary stuff, like “there is” and “welcome to”.

striiv.com


5. Don’t waste time or energy. Studies show people read about 20% of the words on the page. So keep your sentences short. Keep your paragraphs to fewer than 4 lines. Use bullets, but keep your bullet lists short. Don’t exaggerate points or waste visual time.

Kik.com

6. Address 1 small idea per copy chunk. If you want to address a larger idea, do so in a series of grouped copy chunks.

PunchBowl.com

7. Every copy chunk needs a meaningful headline. Whether 3 words or 10, a headline for a copy chunk should give a precise, well-toned overview of the feature or benefit about to be described. (See next page for example.)


Evri.com

8. Avoid paragraphs. In the Copy Hackers series of ebooks, I sometimes – but rarely – refer to paragraphs. I do so only because people know the term ‘paragraph’ more than they know ‘chunk’. But the fact is you don’t want paragraphs on your website because paragraphs are hard to

read on-screen and time-consuming . Stick with single sentences or groups of single sentences. And, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, keep chunks to 4 lines or fewer.

Crowdbooster.com

9. Get attention with bright icons. It’s hard not to look at color. And it’s hard not to scan the copy next to bright colors. So if your brand gurus tell you that your icons have to be in shades of blue or grey, send them on a vacation and change the icons to attention-grabbers while they’re away. (See next page for example.)


Atlassian.com

10. Short sentences are best. impermium.com

11. Front-load critical info. The first 2 to 3 words of every line are the first – and sometimes the only – words to be read. Put the powerful stuff there! This applies to headlines, subheads, body copy, text links and bullet lists.

Gild.com


12. Support every statement with proof. When you make a claim about your feature, your company, your team, your future, your product in general, support it with images, demos, testimonials, press releases, videos. This not only makes you more credible but it doubles the impact of a statement.

elacarte.com

13. Use customer feedback as copy. Your customers can usually see the value of your product more clearly than you can. So when you survey them, pay attention to the language they use in the long-form response questions, and go ahead and use it. Not as a testimonial! This isn’t social proof. This is just taking the words from the horse’s mouth and using them with the belief that they will resonate with other similar customers.

14. The F-pattern still applies. People view your site by reading the top-most area, then dropping down the left side a bit, then darting their eyes right again, then dropping down the left again. You can use images to draw their eyes out of this pattern. Be sure your critical copy is in the F and/or positioned near images.


15. Considered asking questions? When you ask a question – especially a question where you know your visitor’s answer will align with the message you’re trying to communicate – you mimic conversation and make it possible for your visitor to feel like you’re both on the same page.

PayNearMe.com

16. Some intro text is good. Although ‘welcome’ text and self-talk is not effective in web writing, a little intro text on the home page can help users stick around. If you use intro text, be sure it briefly answers just the two questions: what can visitors expect to find on this site, and what’s in it for them?

theflud.com

17. Write with keywords. Never compromise a great message for SEO, but do your best in your headline and subhead to incorporate keywords that match your visitors’ common search queries. This will help them feel confident they have arrived on the right page. (See next page for example.)


Assistly.com

18. Avoid repeating words in the same space. Your bullet list should start with different words, not the same one. Your subheads should start with the absolute best word possible – the strongest one, not the one that comes naturally to you – and not be the same. (The following example shows what not to do.)

Vizier.com

19. Prevent lines of copy from running the width of your page. Even though longer lines are faster to read, they appear to be harder to read. So avoid letting your sentences run long. (The following example shows what not to do.)

hbloom.com


20. Be concrete, not abstract. People don’t know what a “sizable loss” looks like, but they know what a “55% loss” looks like. They don’t know what “save time” is, but they know what “save 6 hours each week” is.

jpegmini.com

21. There is a time for jargon. Some body copy requires jargon to communicate a point to your target audience. Sometimes jargon is necessary to show your audience that you’re qualified and credible to solve their pain. But when jargon gets in the way of clarity, as it can often do in more prominent copy, it needs to go – so hold off on jargon in headlines and subheads.

sharethrough.com

22. Own your attitude. Is the tone of your brand friendly? How about funny? Or edgy? Whatever it is, own it – don’t dilute it or try to cover it up with too-nice language. Be sure not to offend by crossing accepted lines, but don’t be afraid to write the line “The Shoes Sexy B*tches Love to Strut In” if you believe that sort of tone matches both your brand and your audience expectations.


LetsFreckle.com

23. Copy kids’ books. Great big fonts, short sentences, lots of spacing and small chunks of text in large fonts make things feel easy to read. The more your site feels like it could have been created by Dr. Seuss (minus the unclear language), the better.

Strawberryj.am

24. Let your images & icons do the talking. Not every single thing you want to express needs to be done in copy. Images can grab a visitor’s eye better than plain text can – especially when your page begins to fill with copy.


gootip.com

25. Enhance credibility with visual design. No matter how stellar your copy, if it’s sitting in a clunky, ugly website – and I don’t mean an intentionally ugly sales letter – you will fail to convert a good portion of your visitors. Gain trust by matching visual expectations. Look professional. Look like you spent a buck or two on art.

testflightapp.com


NEXT STEPS ~ Apply What You’ve Learned On Your Site Now ~ Refer to your home page with the chapter you’ve just read open on your desk or your monitor. Now, go through the copy on your home page and do t he basics – like cutting copy that doesn’t seem to express any sort of value, including intro copy. Replace abstract benefits with concrete ones – preferably those that can be quantified. Shorten lines that run the length of the page, and front-load each one of those lines with powerful, meaningful words – to leverage and benefit from the F-pattern. That’s what you can do now . It should take you about 10 minutes to do all of the above. When you’re ready to bump things up to the next level, review points 22 through 25 and do your best to address those. They can be pretty major, from a conversion perspective.


4. Avoid These 17 Copywriting Pitfalls I’ve told you a lot about what you should do, but I tend to only imply what you shouldn’t do (because I’m not a huge fan of negative examples). In this chapter, I give you a detailed list of exactly what you need to avoid doing so you can ensure your copy performs well enough that it keeps users on the page, keeps them scanning well, keeps them moving through your site, and stands a better chance of converting them. All examples are what not to do. Where possible, I’ve avoided mentioning the name of the company because I know that even the best-written sites fall into these copy pitfalls – and the example startups shown here are no exception.

PITFALL #1. Failing to Introduce Yourself You’re new! You’re a startup! Until your brand is so well-established as to be ubiquitous – until your name is synonymous with your offering and the value it brings – introduce yourself to your visitors from page 1. Tell them what your company is, what pain you address, and what value they’ll get out of working with you. (See example of what not to do on the next page.)


PITFALL #2. Focusing on the “We” More Than the “You” You can write “we” statements every so often – but they still have to tie in the “what’s in it for me” that your visitor is looking for. That means if you write “We design WordPress themes”, you should finish that statement off with the benefit or value for your customers: “We design WordPress themes that ar e easy for anyone to setup and use”.


PITFALL #3. Overusing One Type of Formatting Mix formatting up! If every copy chunk you have is a headline with 3 bullets, that can get very tiring to read. If you bold too much or use highlighting all over the page – also tiring. Mix things up so you can keep your reader engaged and reading.

PITFALL #4. Welcoming People to Your Site You don’t need to welcome anyone to your website. They know they’ve arrived, and they just want to do what they want to do – so cut the pleasantries and get to the good stuff.

PITFALL #5. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Marketing and copy are like oil and vinegar on the web. Unfortunately for many Fortune 500 companies and agencies, marketing managers have infiltrated their web properties, sneaking in like thieves in the night. Taking over everything that could be called “marketing” – especially websites. Suffocating the spirit of any web team. And, worst of all, transforming clear, potentially compelling messages into diluted crap.


Fortunately for startups, you’re starting from a place where you get to build your own team. Which means you may not have made the mistake of hiring a marketing manager yet. Yay! You do not need some marketer coming in and watering down your messages.

PITFALL #6. Summarizing Everything as “Save Time” or “Save Money” If you’ve ever seen a website headline that reads “Save Time” or “Save Money”, you know a marketing manager – or some poor entrepreneur who thinks that’s ‘good marketing’ – was behind it. (Ouch! My confusion about the value of marketers is coming through, isn’t it?) If you want to use “save time” or “save money” as one of your lead messages, you must put this book down immediately and wash your mouth out with soap. Those are the 2 most overused messages, and they have no place on any startup’s site.

Get specific, be relevant, and quantify everything you possibly can. That’s the only way to keep those watered-down BS messages from stealing into your website and choking the life out of your offering and your visitors.

PITFALL #7. Believing Your Market Is Smarter Than Everyone Else (And Needs Great Big Words) Every market is filled with people of various intelligence levels. Even if your market segment is developers or hackers who you believe are just as smart as you are – and you’re a pretty smart person – there are still people in that group who like to take in information efficiently – with simpler words and shorter sentences.


This is true if you’re targeting philosophy doctorates, chief technology officers or government officials. It’s true no matter who you target. So be really honest about who your market is. And don’t let yourself get away with throwing in big, look-how-smart-I-am words or highly technical ja rgon. (A good rule of thumb is, if you didn’t like writing it, people won’t like reading it.)

PITFALL #8. Telling Yourself Copywriting Is ‘Just Wordsmithing’ Don’t let yourself get off the hook that easily! Copywriting is sales – plain and simple. That doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s only about closing the deal; sales is largely about having conversations, building relationships, and keeping those relationships alive. But if you tell yourself you’re just writing marketing messages or using slick words to explain your product, you’re doing yourself and your visitors an injustice.

PITFALL #9. Making It Hard to Buy or Sign Up The entire sales process is about making it easy for people to buy! So be sure that your calls to action are entirely visible. Why hide them? If you need to, put a ‘Buy Here’ link in your global nav. Why not? What’s stopping you? You don’t want to look desperate for sales, but, at the same time, you don’t want to make people hunt around your site for your ‘Buy Now’ button. Make buying EASY.


And if you think people will know that an image is clickable, be sure about that before you build your whole site that way, as the folks who designed the example below (in which all images are actually clickable replacements for buttons) failed to do.

PITFALL #10. Trying to Do Too Much at Once Your visitors can only handle so much. It’s a fact. Too much information presented at one time will drive them away from your site. If you’ve sent people to a page that promises free access to an archive of whitepapers, give them that archive – and hold off on all the peripheral stuff, cross-sells, upsells and so on until a better time. Or stuff it in the sidebar. But don’t mix it up with what they want.

The same can be said for using the right number of words. Don’t say in 30 words what you can say just as effectively in 8.


PITFALL #11. Not Giving Your Visitors Enough People need info! You have to gradually disclose i t, yes, but the average startup doesn’t actually have that much to worry about disclosing. So why hold back? If people move through your site and find only a few sentences on each page, you could lose credibility as a valuable service-provider. And if you’re trying to get people to sign up to be notified when you’re ready, make sure you tell them what’s different about the solution you’ll be providing. Some people might sign up for curiosity’s sake… but the people who understand your value will be more likely to look forward to getting that email from you that says, “We’re live!”

PITFALL #12. Getting Too Personal with Your Visitors Whether you offer a paid solution or a free service, your customers deserve to be treated the way any customer in any retail store would be treated: with respect. Get comfortable, get friendly – but don’t forget that you are working on a relationship that can quickly get weird (and end) if you fail to show the respect you need to. Remember who’s paying you (in money and/or recommendations). And remember that, if you turn a customer off, your competitor is waiting around the corner to snap them up. Don’t forget your customer’s power to leave.

PITFALL #13. Replacing Important Copy with Images Copy and art need to work together . As soon as you start replacing important copy with iconography – like the word “Home” with a small image of a house – you start losing customers.


A picture is worth a thousand words. But if you only have 5 words to communicate, then you’re overdoing it with the picture.

PITFALL #14. Supporting Copy with Meaningless Stock Images Stock photos of people smiling while they use the computer are as useless as clip art. If you can’t find a decent photo or icon to support a point of copy, then the copy is probably not important enough to mention (so cut it!) or try harder to get inspired.

PITFALL #15. Relying on So-Called Best Practices Take every rule as a guideline. Use it as a starting point, and then optimize for your own market. You won’t know what works for your visitors until you put something in front of them and see how they react. (In 2010, Marketing Experiments conducted a test using a very common web page template. Conversion was hurt by 3%. [Read more here: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/2010-toplessons.html])

PITFALL #16. Failing to Test I know it’s hard when you don’t have a lot of traffic. But is it not better to have directional data about the success of your copy than to have no data at all? One day, you’ll have so much traffic, you’ll be able to run statistically significant tests in a 2-day window.


But the only way to grow to that size of company is to have the right copy on your page in the first place. So test to be sure!

PITFALL #17. Failing to Proofread Grammar rules may not entirely apply online… but there are some rules you don’t want to break. Like spelling words correctly. A proofreader can check your copy for typos and other simple errors you might glaze over – like the one below, where the intro text references a “Place Order” button, but the button reads “Purchase”.

If you’re proofreading your own work, a good trick is to start at the end of the paragraph and read backward. This will keep your eyes sharp as you check for errors.


5. Debunking the Biggest, Most Deleterious & Crippling Web Writing Myths I want to address some of the things you may already believe about writing for the web – in case we need to break some bad habits. There’s a lot of info out there. Well, actually, there are a lot of short blog posts that try to summarize the entire writing-for-the-web experience in a page or two… and most of those posts are repeating the same info. There are also sales courses that instil crazy ideas. Sure, some of it’s great and reliable. But some of it’s, well, kinda bullshit. Here, we’ll review the biggest myths… and present you with a few facts which are, in themselves, often flexible.

COPYWRITING MYTHS MYTH: Your headline should be 7 words or fewer. Your headline should be as long as it needs to succinctly, powerfully and memorably express what the visitor needs to see to stay on the page, at minimum. Consider these two headline examples, the first meeting the mythical Standard of Seven, and the second striving to succinctly, powerfully and memorably communicate a message.


7 Words “Get Your Taxes Done Fast This Year”

12 Words “Do Your Taxes at Breakneck Speed… And Get Your Biggest Refund, Guaranteed”

The 7-word version only has room for 1 benefit: speed. The 12-word version tackles 2 benefits – speed and refund size – while throwing in a reassuring guarantee. It also uses words that are more noticeable because they’re unusual, like “breakneck speed” instead of “fast”. For the sake of argument, let’s try to squeeze those same 2 benefits and the guarantee into 7 words. Here are a few attempts:

“Do Your Taxes Fast + Guaranteed Biggest Refund” “Your Guaranteed Biggest Refund with Fast DIY Software” “Fast Taxes. Biggest Refund. Guaranteed.”

You might like the above. They may work. If you tested one against my 12-word control, maybe the shorter one would convert better. ( Maybe.) But I doubt it.

The point is that you shouldn’t put unnecessary limitations on yourself. Especially if you haven’t seen any evidence in your own work that 7-word maximums are the absolute be-all and end-all of headline writing. Remember that, online, a headline needs to do much more than it needs to do offline – including incorporating a top keyword phrase (in many cases), matching visitor expectations (which usually means repeating language from the call to action they clicked to get there), and the slightly important task of grabbing and holding their attention. Because so much is riding on the headline, it won’t do you any good to restrict it to some arbitrarily selected “rule of 7”. (See Copy Hackers Book 3: Headlines, Subheads & Value Propositions.)


MYTH: Always lead with the benefit, not the feature. The idea with this myth is that because benefits are what customers want – because they want to get rid of their headache, they don’t want a pill – you should always talk about the benefit. More than the feature. And before the feature. Not true. In many cases, features speak for themselves. New Extra-Strength Advil for Migraines speaks for itself. Features can be benefits. For example, you can make your headline “Introducing the Car Locator for the iPhone”. In that headline, you’re talking about the feature. No mention of the benefits whatsoever. But you might then support that headline with a subhead or bullet list describing the benefits: 

Never wander aimlessly through a mall parking lot again



Save time and frustration trying to remember where your car is



Simplify life for busy, forgetful people

(See Copy Hackers Book 1: Where Stellar Messages Come From. ) So you don’t need to lead with the benefit. You could. You might choose to. But it’s not a rule. You can lead with a feature and still sell the sh-- out of your solution.

MYTH: Don’t write “click here”. If it will help your visitor know where to click, write “click here” before your calls to action or around your calls to action. But, in most cases, you won’t want to leave a call to action as simply “Click here”. People need to know what they’re going to get when they click that link or button. So instead write “Click here to watch a demo” – or whatever the action might be.

MYTH: Never talk about yourself. Never say “we”. In the best cases, you’ll write messages that put the visitor or user first. But there are times when describing your value as a service provider is critical to converting the visitor.


This is especially true for startups, where your brand is light-years away from being established, which means you have to talk about yourself a bit in order to build a visitor’s trust in you. For example, your value proposition may begin with your company name – and that’s okay. But if you keep writing “we” or “our”, it’s unlikely you’re talking about benefits or writing messages the visitor needs and wants to see.

MYTH: Writing for the web should be done with SEO first in mind. Oy! If I had a nickel for every time I read a “how to write for the web” post that was all about writing for search engines. It gives me heartburn just thinking about it. Writing for spiders may bring you traffic… but ask yourself if it’s qualified traffic. You only want qualified traffic. Unqualified traffic is next to impossible to convert. And the idea of getting more “brand impressions” by bringing in unqualified traffic? I mean, come on. If you believe that, then, sorry to say, some search marketer somewhere lied to you. If you write SEO-focused copy that brings in qualified traffic, great. …But then ask yourself if the messages that qualified traffic sees when landing on your SEO-heavy site: •

Grab their attention

•

Match their expectations

•

Hold their attention

•

Draw them further into the page

If they do, great. But, 9 times out of 10, that SEO-focused copy won’t hold people or convert them. Because a headline stuffed with keywords instead of powerful messages is not going to do the work it needs to do to convert. Never sacrifice clear, persuasive copywriting for the chance to go up a spot in the SERPs.

MYTH: Online messages need to match offline messages. This is a MONDO MYTH propagated by marketing managers under the guise of “being consistent”. You want messages to be communicated consistently to your customers. But “consistency” does not mean “matching”. The copy on your product package does not need to identically match the copy on your website. It just needs to communicate the message consistently.


There’s a difference between messaging and copywriting. Messaging is conceptual or higher-level. Copywriting is turning those messages into words on a page. Consistent messaging is critical to branding. Consistent – as in matchy-matchy – copywriting is not. A print brochure isn’t necessarily trying to convert anyone as much as it’s trying to communicate information and, possibly, drive people to your website to l earn more. When those people land on your website, they don’t need to see the same headline on your home page as they saw on your brochure. They really, really don’t. They do, however, need the branding and high-level messaging to be the same. But the words don’t have to match. Effective web writing is written in the context of the channel, at a point in at least one user flow, and with the goals of the business and the user in mind. It’s highly unlikely the messages in online materials will or should match those in offline materials.

MYTH: Don’t begin sentences with “And”, “But” or “Because”. Because I was an English major and remain an insane grammar buff, I should support this myth. But, because I know that the high-faluttin’, no-good-reason-for-‘em rules of grammar have very little room on the web, I don’t support this myth. And I don’t think I’m alone. Because millions of clearly written, high-converting sites break this rule. That’s because copy works best when it sounds like a person might say it. Natural. Not forced or restricted. People start sentences with “and”, “but” and “because” all the time. It feels normal and natural. Take a look at the first words in each of the sentences I just used, and see if you agree. (PS: I happen to know that leading with the word “because” is a persuasion trick, signaling logic for people and making them question less, think less. So there.)

MYTH: Keep your most important messages above the fold. Keep your top message above the fold… in your headline.


But feel free to use other important messages all the way down the page. In fact, feel free to write long, long pages (called “long form”, t o be discussed in detail in Copy Hackers Book 5: Long-Form Copy & the Sales Letter ).

People will scroll, if you give them a reason to. If you don’t believe me, put click-tracking on your site and see just how low they’ll go when you’re giving them great content that goes below the fold. And if you still don’t believe me, run an A/B test that pits a short-form, cram-it-all-above-the-fold page against a long form that expands on benefits and draws the visitor into the message and down the page. In every single test I’ve seen of long form vs short, long form wins. Let me clarify: long form

converts better than short form. Which means you can sprinkle your oh-so-important messages well below the fold and, if you give the visitor a reason to keep reading, they’ll scroll… and convert better.

MYTH: You need a content strategy. Large organizations that have multiple types of web content, multiple content authors, CMSs with multiple users, stringent publish or release dates, different owners for different parts of the site, numerous message approvers or contributors – those are the guys that need a content strategy. So this is a fact for them. But for startups, it’s a myth. Content strategies, done right, are time-consuming and relatively complex. That said, there are parts of any content strategy – like an overarching messaging strategy and messaging hierarchy (both of which I discuss in Copy Hackers Book 1: Where Stellar Messages Come From) and an editorial calendar for your free content – that you should be considering. When you reach 1000 employees, then you can work on a full content strategy. For now, let’s just work on writing copy that sells lots of your product so you can grow to 10 employees, never mind 1000.


COPYWRITING FACTS FACT: The headline is the most important copy on the page. In my experience, headlines make or break the success of a page. A lot is riding on your headline. (The criticality of the headline is one way that writing for the web is very similar to writing offline materials.) It affects bounce, engagement, clicks, and overall conversion. In fact, you should be spending more time getting your headline and its subhead right as you spend writing the rest of the page. No joke. If you were considering hiring a copywriter, I’d strongly recommend you hire one simply to optimize your headlines. Further, if you’re thinking about A/B testing to optimize your site, some of the best tests are headline tests. Headlines are ridiculously important. On every page of your site.

FACT: Images sometimes do speak louder than words. If you can replace a chunk of copy with a clear screenshot, demo, graph, table or other useful image, do! You and I both know people would rather passively look at something than actively read something. If you can give their brains a rest, do. But if the image is some crappy stock photo that doesn’t actually help the visitor learn or complete their task, or if you’re replacing critical copy – like a call to action or headline – with an image, don’t waste their eyes or your real estate on it.

FACT: Copy is king on the web. Okay, okay, I know how biased that sounds! Trust the copywriter to say copy’s king. But, hello, let’s remember that I’m not trying to get a job with you. I’m not even trying to get you to hire my friends. So I’m not some sort of “copy pusher”. What I am is a firm believer in the power of great copy to make your site make you money. Search-engine optimized copy and PPC ad copy brings in traffic. Whitepapers and reports – both of which rely on copy – build your lists. Copy communicates information, which is exactly what searchers and visitors want. •

Headlines use copy to grab attention

•

Subheads use copy to hold attention

•

Navigation copy and calls to action move visitors to where they want to go


•

Testimonials build trust and encourage clicks

•

Body copy conveys messages that help visitors make decisions

Copy does the majority of the communicating on your site and in the spaces linking to your site. Everything else – like visual design – is supportive, as in it helps copy perform better. And if you don’t believe me, run a test of a designed page with copy against a designed page without copy… and see which converts better. Further, run a test of a design-free page with copy against a copy-free designed page… and see which converts better.

Copy gets traffic, and great copy sells. Copy is king.

The flipside is that crummy copy will totally hurt your site. Just like a crummy king will make everyone want to leave his kingdom.

FACT: Write for a sixth-grader. From avoiding semicolons to using simple words to boosting the size of your font, writing with the attention span and literacy level of a sixth-grader top-of-mind will help you write better web copy. Not because the web is making people idiotic. But because: •

The web is a high-stimuli environment with competing messages everywhere

•

Your visitors have one hand on their mouse and a new tab open in their browser… so they’re primed to lose interest quickly and move onto the next thing

•

Just beyond the box that is their monitor or tablet screen is a vast world of other stimuli

•

Computers are used primarily for work, but visitors to your site are actually taking a break from work when they visit your site; polysyllabic words – or jargon you have to think through – feel like the work they’re trying to escape

So think about your nephew running around the playground during recess at elementary school. The bell rings, and he comes sailing into the building, crashing into other kids, shouting something to his friend or, like, talking to his shoes or whatever odd things kids do. Around him, kids are picking their noses and sneezing and la ughing. The teacher’s telling everyone to settle down, but your nephew just noticed a bee fly in the window.


Now write a headline that’s going to get his attention. And write a subhead that’s going to keep it. And so on. If you can do that, congratulations: you are a copy hacker.

FACT: Use lists and short paragraphs. When you’re not writing a headline, subhead or call to action – that is, when you’re writing body copy – keep it short and crisp. Lists and short copy chunks should be the basis of your web writing, just as flour and water is the basis for bread. You can do more than use lists and chunks, but you will usually find yourself using lists and chunks on every page you craft.

FACT: Use the active voice, not the passive. Where possible, use the active voice (that is, write “Starvation causes death”, not “Death i s caused by starvation” or, even worse, “Death is caused”). Not because grammarians like it. But because it’s clearer. X does Y is easy for any scanning eyes to get and the mind to understand.

VISIT COPYHACKERS.COM to read the next ebook in the series, Book 3: Headlines, Subheads & Calls to Action.


All brand features referenced within are protected by applicable trademark, copyright and other intellectual property laws. Assistly Inc. http://www.assistly.com/ Atlassian http://www.atlassian.com/ CloudHarmony.com Comwerks Interactive PTE LTD, comwerks.com Crowdbooster.com Distimo BV http://www.distimo.com/ EPICagency.net and Epic.net E la Carte elacarte.com Evri Inc http://www.evri.com/ FLUD http://www.theflud.com/ Full Contact fullcontact.com Gild http://www.gild.com/ gootip.com and LoQuest http://www.loquest.com/ H.BLOOM Inc. www.hbloom.com Hettema & Bergsten http://beta.strawberryj.am/ ICVT Limited jpegmini.com Impermium impermium.com Intuit, Inc. QuickBooks.ca Intuit, Inc. TurboTax.ca Jake Przespo LLC jakeprzespo.com Kik Kik.com lanyrd.com LateNiteSoft http://latenitesoft.com/ Lyst Ltd. http://www.lyst.com/


The Essentials of Web Writing

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