Imagine arriving at a stately home or (my favourite) a boutique hotel. You walk in through the front door and instantly feel at ease. The beautiful decor, fresh flowers and welcoming receptionist ready to look after you. You’re welcomed and invited to be guided to your room, shown to the bar or the spa. It’s a great start to a wonderful stay.

I always think that a website’s homepage should be just like an entrance hall to a stately home. Warm, welcoming and easy to navigate to where you want to go next.

Some websites give you too many options on the homepage and it becomes overwhelming (imagine the receptionist saying – I can show you to your room, the spa, the bar, the restaurant, the golf club, the tennis courts, the croquet lawn, the beach, the… – you get the picture – you forget what she said at the beginning!).

Other websites leave you standing there – leaving you to find your own way through the “house”. That’s why we’ll almost always use navigational bugs on the homepage to guide people around a site.

Worst of all… imagine after a long drive arriving at the stately home. Rather than asking how you are and showing you what you need to find, the owner shakes you by the hand and starts telling you his life history. Yawn!

Are you with me so far on this analogy? Your homepage isn’t the place to tell people about your business – save that for your about page. Sure – they need to know what you do – they need to be sure they’ve come to the right place. After that, talk to them about their challenges and how you help, you’ll find you get a much better response.

Your homepage should welcome, guide and show visitors on to the meatier parts of your site. A bit like an entrance hall!

Image: Brockett Hall

Why do you click on About Us pages when you’re browsing a website? Idle curiosity perhaps? A desperate attempt to find out who this company is and what they do? A desire to find out more about the person or people behind the brand and connect further?

In my case all of the above apply at different times.

I’m the first person to say that the copy on your website should be about your customer and their challenges rather than your business. But the same rules don’t apply to your About Us page. Your About page is your opportunity to talk about yourself as much as you darn well please.

It’s a bit like being at a party. You do all the right things – ask the right questions, listen, strike up a rapport and then the other person asks you about yourself. You need to answer! On your website your About page is your perfect opportunity to reinforce your brand position, qualify why you’re ideally placed to provide your product or service and most importantly, connect with your reader.

Vicki Knights, the photographer at the top of this post, does this brilliantly. She talks from the heart – reassures me, provides a little about herself that I can identify with and also explains (without boring me) why she’s qualified to do what she does so well. Importantly, she’s also got a great photo – eyes at the camera looking relaxed, engaging and reassuring.

Take a look at your About Us page – is it easy for people to see why they should do business with you? Can they see, literally see, who is behind the business? And have you reinforced your brand position?

Yes in that writing for the web forces you to take account of the search engines and making sure that what you’re writing reflects what people want to know. But a big, fat, enormous no in that to write truly powerful copy you simply *have* to write for your customers and not for yourself. Great copy attracts, engages and galvanises people into action.

Great copy answers questions that your readers have; shows them that you can solve their problem/ inspires them and entices them to put their trust and hard earned cash your way. It’s very simple really. And to be honest, writing for the web should be no different to writing for your readers.

Sure, you need to make sure that your website gets found. But if you understand *at the outset* what people are looking for in your niche; what people want to know about your product or service then it really isn’t rocket science. Now I’m telling you all this as a copywriter, not as an SEO expert (which I don’t profess to be). But just think about it for a moment. Truly bad copy (and we all see plenty of that about ) often starts out with a headline that bears no resemblence to what follows in the paragraph below. Writing for the web forces you to stay focused. If you want to get found for bespoke kitchens in Surrey; well then you need to make sure you use those words in what you’re writing. And so that it makes sense to the humans that are invariably going to read your website if your SEO ninja tricks pay off; then you need to make sure that the whole paragraph, or better still the whole page is around that theme too – just so that it makes sense…

I’m currently writing two pieces of copy for Stanbrook and Nicholson, a local joinery company based in the Surrey Hills. One is for their brochure, one is for their website. I’m pretty well placed to write this at the moment because we’re currently in the process of starting an extension, so I know exactly what their clients want to know.

I started by writing their brochure. Izzy and I planned out the structure a couple of weeks back, I interviewed the team and we’re now in the process of writing up. I still find it easier to write for people first – call me old fashioned but I have more love for them than robots. We’ve decided that the brochure is going to let the pictures do the talking so it was all about writing short, sharp, evocative paragraphs that told a story.

I then translated this to their web copy. Web doesn’t bring the space constraints with it that printed literature too – so we can allow ourselves the luxury of a few extra pages – more detail on the team and their environmental policy perhaps. It’s at this point that things start to get a bit more focused. With the help of my (now friend) Google and a few other tools I’m looking at various keywords – what people are searching for, what the competition is like, and how we can be different.

At the bottom of each page I’m specifying the keywords I think should be relevant to this page. That’s partly for my own sanity – to make sure each important one is covered off, and mostly to keep me focused. If I want to get found for bespoke kitchens surrey then I need to use those words – and there were places on relevant pages that I hadn’t.

So yes, writing for the web is slightly different to writing for print. But surely it’s just about a bit of discipline in giving the readers what they want? And let’s be honest, we could all use a bit of that!

Writing powerful copy is always underestimated. Why? Because we all feel that because we can write, we can write copy that sells. That’s simply not the case. All too often company websites are littered with “we”, “us” “our” more than they feature “you” “your” “you’re”. I’m on a mission to change that and bring you in more business!

Join me for a Copywriting Workshop on Thursday 11th Feb at the Talbot Inn, Ripley and I’ll show you how to write more powerfully for your business.

1. It’s
   boring: your leaflets or website
   might be repetitive, full of jargon or just plain dull. Whatever the root
   cause, the reader just switches off and you lose out. Write with passion,
   style and energy!
2. Because
   it doesn’t ask for a response. If you
   write to let your customers know about something: a new product or service
   you’re offering, then the chances are they’ll take on board what you’ve
   told them. And take no action. Why? Because you haven’t asked them to do
   anything! Send people a letter to tell them you’re now offering
   ‘threading’ and you’ll get very little response. Send them a letter asking
   them to book a threading appointment before the end of the month to get
   something free/ half price and you’ll see your response rate skyrocket.
   Why? Because you’ve been clear about what you want.
3. It’s
   too short. I’m not advocating reams
   and reams of text, but the bottom line is that there are certain steps you
   need to walk your reader through if you want to sell to them. You wouldn’t
   sell someone a diamond necklace just by waving it under someone’s nose
   without saying anything would you? Use AIDCA to mirror the face to face
   sales process and get a better response.
4. Because
   it goes in the bin before you’ve had a chance to sell. Whether you’re writing for your website or a
   leaflet, your headline is absolutely key. You need to grab attention,
   build rapport and make sure your reader reads on. All in one sentence.
   Easy!
5. It’s
   self-centred. Your customers don’t
   want to know about how brilliant you are: they’re busy people. They’ll
   switch off and do nothing if you don’t grab ‘em by the balls. Your
   customers want to know how your brilliant product or service will solve a
   problem they have. Think solutions to problems!
6. It
   fails to build trust. So often the
   reader is left thinking: it’s a nice idea but how can I be sure I’m not
   making a mistake? Reassure people with testimonials and money back
   guarantees.
7. It
   leaves people thinking: ‘so what?’.
   Powerful copy leaves people wanting your product or service. Sometimes
   you’ll do that with a fabulous discount, other times with a compelling
   reason to buy, like the fact that writing powerfully will bring you in
   thousands of pounds more in revenue. Or perhaps the reverse psychology,
   that not writing your sales copy properly is losing you thousands of
   pounds in revenue! Whatever technique you use, be sure to really make
   people want your product or service.

Writing powerful copy isn’t a dark art. It’s something every
business owner can achieve: especially if you attend my Copywriting Essentials
workshop! Book your absolutely risk free place today at http://www.marvellousworkshops.co.uk/copywriting.html 

My promise to you: Attend the
workshop and you don’t feel that it has added any value to your business then I
will refund your money. No quibble. Book your place online today. I look forward to seeing you
there!