Archive for the ‘Copywriting’ Category

The Power of Compelling Copy

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

Compelling Copy

Finding success in today’s market id difficult to say the least — there’s more competition than ever, more products than ever, and less attention than ever. One thing that can help you however is your copy … the actual language you use in your text. Whether you’re creating an advertisement in a magazines, a product description, or a press release, you need to be sure you’re as succinct as possible.

The best copy strikes the audience, whether a reader, listener, or viewer, and conveys the message quickly while holding their attention.

The best copy does this really well … and that’s because there’s usually an entire team of professional copywriters behind the project. However, this isn’t to say you can’t achieve the same success — you just need to take the time to learn copy in and out and practice; see what works and what doesn’t.

When approaching your copy creation, consider the following three guidelines:

What Your Viewer Wants or Needs

Consider identifying what your viewer wants from you, what they want from you, or what they were searching for just before they came across your website. Presenting this upfront will grab your viewers’ attention and reveal that they’re in the right place.

What You Have to Offer Your Viewer

Once you align yourself with your viewer, let them know you have what they want or need. This will compel them to continue discovering what your website is all about, and thus bring you to the final step, which is where you really win over or lose the potential customer.

Why Purchasing from You is the Best Option

Consumers know they have options — the key is to let them know why buying from you is the way to go. What type of guarantees do you offer? What do you offer in terms of customer service or customer loyalty? This is what customers will look for so be sure to let them know right up front with all of your copy.

Approaching any and all projects, whether a contact page, product page, or whatever, it’s crucial to approach your project with these three guidelines in mind.

 

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

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How to Clean Your Retail Store Online

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
cleaning a retail store online

Cleaning a retail store online

A retail store online isn’t all that different from a brick and mortar retail store — they both offer a collection of products, they both strive to provide an excellent customer experience, and they both need to be cleaned every now and then.

Just as you sweep and dust every aisle and every shelf of a brick and mortar, you need to straighten up your retail store online … not because customers are moving your product around, but because your product pages constantly need to be monitored for progress. If a particular product isn’t doing well, you need to take a look at what your options are in terms of bringing it up to par with your other pages.

Search Engines Optimization

Cleaning your retail store online usually comes down to a bit of the old search engine optimization. Because search engines are constantly changing and users are constantly changing the way in which they search for content, it’s crucial to consider search engines optimization at his point.

It doesn’t have to be much of a process if you have a professional optimization specialist at your side, but for those that don’t, the overall idea is to use the best practices (which change frequently) to get your product pages ranking better in the search engines index. Whether this means creating new content, improving your on-page link sculpting, focusing on the actual copywriting aspect of your pages, or a combination of a bit of everything is up to you and varies from project to project.

Creating New Content

Freshening up a page doesn’t have to be a major operation … adding some fresh content can go far when optimized for the right keyword. This works especially well for landing pages, which tend to focus on presenting a lot of optimized content.

In addition to focusing on the actual amount of content, you should focus on diversifying your content so the page is relevant and interesting. This might involve creating a list style article within your actual page, a few photos, info-graphics, and videos.

Link Sculpting

This technique involves reviewing every link on your website, no matter if it’s in the content body, the header, or the sidebar. The idea here is to optimize your links anchor text so it helps inform search engines your particular piece of content is relevant to the keyword you’re targeting.

Think of this like polishing your entire store — it takes time, but the end result will help create a better experience and maybe even attract new people to your retail store online.

Copywriting

Reviewing the actual copy of your page, headlines, and descriptions is an often overlooked segment of the retail store online to which you need to spend a lot of your attention. Because the copywriting involves the actual language people relate to and search for with search engines, the more relevant and universal your copy, the better your chances are of attracting customers through the search engines and persuading them to make a purchase or subscribe to your newsletter.

If one keyword isn’t working well, change it to something that looks like it might work well.

Creative Commons License photo credit: DanBrady

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