Copy in Conversation Rate Optimisation

If your website doesn’t talk the talk how do you expect visitors to walk the walk?

SEO, PPC ads and social media are real limelight hoggers. Yes, these are all great ways to get traffic to your website but who needs traffic? What you want is customers and your website to be working furiously to turn traffic into profit. It’s called selling and it’s what your website’s built for.

What is doing the selling on your website?

So what does the actual selling on your website? The graphics? Perhaps the slick functionality? Or maybe all that lovely SEO and popular social media campaigns? Nope. These most definitely help sell and will lose you sales if done badly, but they don’t do the selling.

Copy (all those pesky words) is what sells.

“Hang on a minute… in this digital age of multi-media wondrousness you’re telling me that words are what sell?”

Oh yes and I can prove it.

Definitive proof copy does the selling online

Now you’re likely going to feel a bit tricked by this first over-the-top, foundation-building ‘extreme case’. Quite rightly too. But bear with me – it’s leading somewhere useful.

Check out this slick bit of design.

Sexy isn’t it?

In real life it’d be functional too. Click on this babe of a button and you’d be greeted with a beautiful roll-over effect and a quick, smooth transition to the next page.

But why would you click on it?

Let’s try it with copy…

It’s ugly, it’s just some text and a ‘non-designed’ link, but now you know what you’re getting, why it’s great, why to get it here, why to get it now and how to buy it.

Also, looks scarily like a Google ad doesn’t it?

Yes, nice design and a smooth checkout process will maximise sales, but they won’t sell.

And yes, great product shots really help sell but don’t do the actual selling (they’re also content, not ‘design’).

What about videos? Well, adding video to your website is an extremely powerful sales tool. What makes video so powerful? The fact that you can combine engaging and informative visuals with a well-written script. There are those pesky words again – they may be spoken, but that script still needs writing.

Seriously… copy is vital to Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

To clarify – web design and development are crucial to maximising sales, no one’s saying they’re not. But you can’t overlook the vital role copy plays in selling.

Here’s just a brief glimpse of what well-written web copy can do to increase conversation rates:

• Engage – catchy headlines, special offers, personality…
• Inform – all the reasons why your product/ service rocks.
• Overcome objections – there’s no reason not to buy.
• Build trust – we’re the people to supply you.
• Build credibility – testimonials, independent reviews…
• Strengthen your brand – how you say things not just how you look
• Direction – guiding visitors through the site toward a sale
• Encourage a response – calls-to-action at just the right time

And that’s just a glimpse of what it can do.

So, in summary…

SEO, PPC ads, social media, online marketing, web design and development… all are very important to get visitors and maximise sales. But they don’t sell. Copy does.

CRO is part of every successful website and means doing whatever it takes to increase online sales – converting visitors into customers. Your copy is what does the selling on your site… make sure it’s earning its keep.

Written by Jason John Mills