Frontpage Copywriting

Written by Hank Castello

Copywriting is the most overlooked, yet critical aspect of web pages.  This is a critique of a website being done by a young family member of mine.  We'll take this  front page and rewrite the copy from a marketing view point, grabbing the visitor's attention and drawing him deeper into the site..

Click for a larger view of this frontpage

Before I even get to the copywriting issues of this website, I really should address the copyright issues of the image.  Note the "bug" in the lower right corner.  This marks the image as clearly being unauthorized, and leaves the website owner open for a big lawsuit.

Stock photo websites like iStockPhoto.com, offer very reasonably-priced, beautiful images for as little as $2 apiece.  Web developers like myself, write "webbots" - programs that can go out onto the Web and locate illegally-used images like this one.  We can find it even if you've resized, cropped or otherwise edited the image.

Once that happens, you'll be contacted with an offer to settle for several thousand dollars and if you don't accept, you'll be sued (probably successfully) for much more.  By the way, saying you didn't know it was a copyrighted image will not save you.

Enough about copyrights, now on with the copywriting issues!

Currently, the front page features this, as its lead-in text..

This young fellow has done several things right - things that many seasoned web developers often overlook.  He's thinking marketing and has included an argument for using his client's services.  That's much better than many.  But it has lots of room for improvement still.

It has the following major issues -

• The paragraph and sentences are too long
• typos
• lacks action
• lacks focus
• too wordy
• no call to action

You may have three seconds, at the most, to capture visitors attention with this blurb. Many people won't even try to read a long paragraph on the front page.

The page begins by talking about "We..". Nobody cares about them. Everyone is tuned into one radio station - WIIFM.

Do you know what those call letters mean? If you're going to do web business, (or any other) then you really should know what they mean -

"What's In It For Me?"

With that in mind, let's rewrite this page -

=====================================

What does YOUR landscape say?

Does it say, "We don't really care about our customers or our business" ?

..or..

"We love our customers and take pride in our business!" ?

Anonymous Lawn and Landscape will have your landscape charming your customers in no time. Call us today.

====================================

We start off talking about the visitor - "What does YOUR..."

And we make him curious, so he'll stay on the page and read more. After all, who ever heard of landscape talking?

Yes, it might sound better as "What is YOUR landscape saying?", but that doesn't quite have the action of "What does.."  We're not looking for perfect grammar here - we want to accomplish our marketing goals.  So long as the grammar isn't distracting from our goals, it isn't really that important (unless we're selling English textbooks to schools!)

With the next lines, we get our message of quality across and add a call to action. Yes, I would still leave the "Read more" button (though I would shorten it to just those two words or even just "More..") and have more sales pitch in the full article page with a stronger call to action.

Note also how my lines have a lot of white space which makes them easy to read quickly. On the front page, you can't count on visitors having an ounce of patience.

Note the short, "zippy" sentences that pack action and ideas into few words.

That's called "copywriting" and is an essential tool of marketing.

Now, go have another look at your own frontpage.  Proofread carefully.  Double-check your right to use images (and keep the proof handy in case you ever need it).  And check over your content.  Does your headline grab attention?  Are your sentences short and action-packed?  Is there plenty of white space?  Is your marketing compelling enough to give your call to action sufficient ammunition?

And lastly, are you monitoring your results?  Do you have effective conversion goals setup in Google Analytics? Are you continually tweaking your SEO and marketing attempts?

Most web developers do not have marketing and SEO skills (though that doesn't stop many of them from claiming to have those skills!), and certainly most web owners don't have sufficient SEO and Analytics skills.  Do not underestimate the importance of Marketing, SEO and Reporting.  Be sure your web professionals have the skills you need for a successful website.