What’s Different About Copywriting For The Web?

December 5, 2008 · Filed Under Writing Copy

Early this morning, around 8, I posted at Twitter that I was writing this post. I really did have good intentions. Nine hours later here it is. I know what your thinking “It took you nine hours to write this? Why the hell would I want to listen to you about copywriting?” Excellent questions!

Actually it took me about ten minutes to write this. The other eight hours and fifty minutes were spent getting my server back online.

Okay lets talk about copywriting for the web and why it’s different.

The most important reasons as to why copywriting for the web is different is that the mindset of those who are going to be reading it is different.
More often than not, most web pages will be found via a search engine or a social network. This is very significant, as it means that the person reading your site has been looking either for you or someone like you. So that puts them in control. This is because they will be focused on finding a particular product, service or piece of information.

So anyone visiting your site for the first time and has found it via a search engine will have a few questions in mind. “Have I come to the right place?” also “Will I find what I’m looking for at this page or site?” Finally, they would be asking themselves “Does this tell me what I want to know ?”

In order for this to happen, your writing needs to provide answers so that the visitor knows exactly what they are looking for. What is important when writing any copy for the web is that you reassure any visitors that they are in the right place, and that they should continue to read on.

How do you get your visitors to read on? It’s actually pretty easy, tell them a story. The bland and factual don’t stir people. Yes, you need to present the facts unless your writing pure non-fiction. The way you present the facts is critical for today’s web searcher. Stories capture peoples’ imaginations. Imagination propels their emotions. People buy based on emotion.

As it turns out Jack Chartrand over at Copyblogger stole my thunder today. Bless him. Jack is one of the best web copywriters out there. I’ve been a subscriber to his feed for quite awhile because he never disappoints. Go read Jack’s post on “Why You Need To Transform Website Into A Story.” I’ll beat him to the punch next time, maybe!

It is not this bad! Read it again. Please! B- to C+ ? You are terrific! I will click some ads for you. (No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...

No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)

Related Posts

Finding High Quality Links - Part 1 Finding High Quality Links Last week I posted about the importance of both internal and external links for improving your site's search engine ranking and subsequently your Page Rank (PR). Starting today with part 1 I'll talk about how to find high quality links for your site. Where do you......
Power Words Yesterday's post was about negative power words. Starting today I'll be talking about positive power words. If you haven't noticed yet people buy, about 99.5% of time, based upon their emotions. Logic and commonsense rarely play a part in the decision to buy. If you're selling on your website it......
Finding High Quality Links - Part 2 Finding High Quality Links - Part 2 #7: Article Writing & Submission Article sites like ezinearticles.com are another good place to get back links. You can submit your own articles to these directories, with links at the bottom of the article in what's called an "author box" or a "bio......
Back Links And 4 Rules For Article Marketing Back Links And 4 Rules For Article Marketing [/caption] Writing and publishing online articles is a good way to get back links to your website, as long as you follow some rules. There are 4 rules for article marketing shown below that need to be followed to optimize the affect......
Post Time Post time! A familiar phrase to horse racing fans. However, what I'm referring to is "What is the best time to publish a post?" I'm not sure if you have thought about this, but I believe it's important. The best time to publish a post differs depending on what your......

Related Websites

Search Engine Optimization - Do You Really Need It? Search Engine optimization…SEO for short is the art of making both the reader and the search engines happy with your webpage. Now how do I do that? Well simply put you want to have a set of keywords or phrases that appear on a certain page a number of times.......
My Five Favorite Personal Finance Bloggers I realize that I've been blogging for some time and with the exception of a few quick mentions, I never mention who I read everyday and why. Today, I'm going to fix that. Here are my 5 favorite personal finance bloggers in no particular order: Boston Gal's Open Wallet -......
The Best SEO Tool... Quality Content! As we all search for the most powerful tool for keyword optimization... seeking the latest guru with the ultimate search engine optimization strategies... and shelling out hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars in our quest for website traffic, it might just turn out the biggest asset is what we've had......
SEO Tips for Blog Traffic Generation While it may be true to say content is king when it comes to blog publishing, the truth is that writing your blog content is not by far the only thing that you should be focusing on when it comes to attracting a readership following. Quality SEO, or search engine......
Benjamin Franklin, the original personal finance blogger I just finished reading "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" which is actually just a collection of letters and papers from Franklin. The edition I read was out of print but you can find a similar version at amazon (The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: Second Edition) or free online at......