Is Long and Hard Better?

December 18, 2008 · Filed Under Writing Copy

The ideal situation is to build your business for the long-term. You want to keep visitors coming to your site and for them to return. There are a number of points you should consider when copywriting for the web to keep your visitors on your site and increase the chances of conversion.

1) Keep your copy short.

Unless a visitor has been directed to a particular page on a site and is expecting detailed information, more often than not, they will only read 1 or 2 lines of the text before clicking off to go somewhere else. You have about 15 seconds to capture the visitor’s attention and keep them. The longer your text is, the less likely they will want to read it. You want to capture and hold their attention with an enticing headline. Which of the following headlines would get you attention:

“Put ads on your blog to make money.” or “7 Tips To Make Ads Perform Better On Your Blog.”

Why are you reading this article? Was it the headline?

2) Keep your copy simple.

Visitors should be able to understand what has been written on their first reading. They do not want to have to spend time thinking about what you have written. Rule #1 of website building and copywriting is “Don’t make me think.”

3) One idea at a time.

In most cases, you should be able to convey one key idea effectively in just one or two lines of writing. By writing any more than that, you are likely to ruin the chance of the first idea you are providing to get through to them. Paragraph length should be kept to two or three sentences.

By anticipating what your visitors want and covering it, they will look for the page that has the information. Give them the link to another page of your site where they can find it.

4) What if you do need to write long copy?

If you do need to write longer copy, organize it. Even if your visitors are expecting to find a page heavy with text, they may not actually be willing to read it. In order to help them, divide any distinct ideas you have into separate paragraphs. Provide them with useful headings, sub-headings and numbered or bulleted lists. This is a great way of introducing key ideas to them deliberately.

It is best to assume that not all the visitors to your site will read longer articles in their entirety. Write copy that they will be able to skim through and allows them to read the parts they are interested in.

Although longer copy should still be easy to read. You will find that those visitors to your site, who have difficulty understanding what you have written, will stop reading it. They will click back to the search engine to find another site.

If you are writing on a technical topic, tell your visitor at the beginning that it is a technical article, white paper, or thesis. This will allow them a few seconds for their brain to get up to speed.

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