You’re writing content for a website, and you receive insight that tells you most viewers are moving away from the pages you’ve written after just a few seconds.
This guide will help you re-vamp your existing website content for successful engagement.
Copywriting Initial Self-Assessment
Before you read on, ask yourself the following two questions:
- Are my slogans too long?
- Am I presenting our company’s benefits with ultra-wordy texts?
If you’ve answered yes to either of those questions, frankly, nobody wants to read that. You are one of those guys who needs to think about rewriting. Don’t let this discourage you; it is an opportunity to learn something new and practice your copywriting skills.
What You Can Do About Over-Written Copy
You can start with your slogans and any page text that is too wordy. Take out anything on your webpage copy that isn’t necessary. Every seasoned marketing professional knows that we have somewhere between 2-8 seconds to capture the attention of our digital content’s audience. Keep this in mind while reading and planning your rewriting strategy.
Know Your Call to Action or Primary Objective for the Page
Your call to action will be the final part of the text you write on a page. This will be a very specific step or set of steps to direct your reader. Eventually, you want this reader to lead to a conversion. But, you are not going to ask for a sale at every turn. On some pages, you will want the reader to subscribe to a newsletter, write a comment, read a blog post, or share or like on social media. When you begin planning the changes, you should know what your call to action or objective will be, which is the purpose of the page content.
Plan With Emotional Triggers in Mind
When deciding what you will write, with your call to action in mind, decide which emotions you want to appeal to, and use them to entice readers to want what you want. Which emotions are you going to trigger, and how will you trigger them? What power words will you use?
You Are Not the Pied Piper
Now, people are not stupid, and you can’t just lead them all in a row like the Pied Piper by simply dancing down the path with sweet music. On the contrary, you need to HAVE some value in your content. While appealing to certain emotions, you need to be providing something meaningful to the reader, solving a problem. In order to do this, you need to know who your target market is and what readers like him or her want. Once you know what someone wants, it is much easier to give it to them. So, conduct appropriate market research for optimal copywriting success.
Find a Balance Between SEO and Engagement
When the time comes to write your first draft of web page copy, you should take SEO into consideration. You can conduct keyword research to see what search terms and long-tail keywords you could use that would be relevant for your copy. It should go without saying that “stuffing” your keywords into copy doesn’t work anymore. Although you should use your keyword in your headline and subheadings (h1, h2, h3) as well as your body text, you should be focusing more on engagement.
Consider what is written above, about providing value and knowing your objective. Creatively integrate your keywords into text that is relevant, useful, and makes readers want to take action in a timely manner. In this way, you have shifted the focus back to the customer.
Keep the Focus on the Customer
Your market research should have told you about your customer, the reader, given you some insight into what he or she is looking for. Now you’ve got a general persona to direct your copywriting toward. The final step, here is to format your text. This copy should be directed at your reader. Unless you have to, don’t mention your company in body text. Use the word “you,” and make sure that whoever landed on your page knows this message is directed at him or her. Most of the time, only one person will be reading your page at any given time, and your message should be conveyed in a personal tone for the highest efficacy.
Summary
You should have a pretty good idea how to create a better user experience with your copywriting now. You know you need to take out overly-wordy copy from the headline, slogan, and the body of your message. Once you know exactly what your objective is, you can partner it with a relevant call to action that your message is crafted around. Focus more on engaging with, providing value to, and strumming the heartstrings of your reader in a personal way, based on solid market research.
Learn as much as you can about appealing to your audience and keep practicing your wordsmithing skills. As you move forward with your content creation enhancement, the user experience of your site will begin to take on a renewed life.
The post Copywriting Tips for Better User Experience appeared first on UX Mastery.
by Megan Hicks via UX Mastery
