Can rules and creativity co-exist in writing copy for your website? While creativity is not a bad thing or a dirty word in copy writing for businesses, as I implied in my post last week the trick is to be strict with what you include. If your best bit of creative writing does not fit the rest of your copy then get rid of that and not the rest. Simplicity is key, and so the lesson seems to me to be simple in your creativity. Or creative in your simplicity. But I digress…
11 Simple Rules
During the course we examined some of the rules of copywriting which are generally accepted across the industry as good practice. Piers introduced us to 2 sets of rules of copywriting, 4 more obvious ones, and 7 “Unwritten” ones that are maybe a little easier to overlook. A quick summary of these before I highlight one in more detail:
4 Rules of Copywriting
- Get the reader’s attention
- Be clear
- Express the benefits
- Get the reader to act
7 Unwritten Rules of Copywriting
- Know your target audience
- Do your research - provide facts & real opinions
- Answer the brief - ensure you focus what you’re writing on your specified tasks
- Be objective - ensure what you say is inarguable
- Keep it simple - obviously
- Know your medium - in our case of course that is the web
- Be ambitious - don’t accept you 1st thought, keep developing ideas in your writing
I think all of these have some significant relevance for those of us involved in increasing conversion rates - things like expressing the benefits (rather than features) and knowing your audience are common factors in successful conversion rate optimisation strategies and I think as marketers, offline or online, all of these rules should be matters of habit for us all.
Getting the reader’s attention
One area I believe can easily be overlooked online is the issue of getting the reader’s attention using copy, mostly in headlines. A lot of websites do this with imagery and flashy fonts which is fantastic at catching the eye but work mostly only on a superficial level. If you can combine these with some powerful words then you’re putting yourself into a great position to increase your conversion rate. To see a great real world example of how you can test headline copy which is very applicable online, check this out.
Piers highlighted a number of techniques used in successful headlines, as listed below (with some variable quality examples!):
Ask a direct question - “Are you paying too much money for your car insurance?” (as in this video from 0.14!)
Use the imperative - “Come and check out our showroom“
Use numbers to back up facts - “3 easy ways to save your business money“
Create a challenge - “You won’t be able to resist this prize giveaway“
Be opinionated/controversial - “Cigarettes are good for you!“
Set up a cliffhanger - “The biggest threat to your health is coming…“
Use surprise & the unexpected - “Hasselhoff reaches number 1“
Alliteration & rhyme - “Crack open a Can of Coke“
Make a promise - “We can make you healthy!“
Address people head on - “We know people like you“
(There are a number of good & bad examples on this excellent post from Skelliewag.org)
For me there are some common themes here that can help us to explain why these tend to be so popular. They can all be used to directly involve, include, address or in some other way interact with a customer. As mentioned in my last post, personas are an important aspect in looking at optimising your content and if you can develop headline content that appeals to those people who actually buy your products then it follows that they should convert on a regular basis.
Another issue Piers related to this was that quite often headlines/titles online, with all that free space to use up, can end up being a bit over-long without telling us anything. He suggested that telling a story could be an effective way of promoting a product as it can involve the customer. He introduced the class to 6 word stories, a concept based on the famous, and tragic, example by Ernest Hemingway, and asked the class to write a 6 word story to sum up their product, one they work with or one they just know. Some course-mates initially really struggled with this but were delighted after a little work that they could do this in an effective manner. This may not work in every case, but I think is a very useful exercise in both conciseness and focus when describing and/or headlining your products.
Headlines are a great opportunity for testing and experimentation, especially as it requires no graphic design and precious little development work to set up a test on a headline, and the possibilities for product titles, benefits, and other headline material are huge. No rules are hard and fast, and it may be that the persona that you are looking to serve actually prefers a long wordy headline that perhaps creates an extra element of credibility, for example. They are also everywhere on your site, from the home page & landing pages to the category, product and even basket pages.
