This is a Guest Post by Sally Bagshaw. Sally is a content strategist from Brisbane, Australia. A word nerd at heart, she blogs about copywriting and content strategy, and is always up for a game of Scrabble. Say hi to her on Twitter.
Content and conversion are hot topics at the moment. As the world of business moves more and more online, people are looking closely at their content and asking:
“Are we really making money from all these words?”
And so they should. For far too long content was seen as the filler between a great design, left alone to languish on a page.
So what do you do if you want to improve your content to boost your sales?
There’s a lot of information out there on crafting the perfect headline, using color to persuade, a/b testing, and landing page optimization. All of which are relevant and useful. But I think if you really want to make a difference, you have to go back to basics.
Know what you’re selling
Well of course this is obvious, right? Not always.
You need to know the purpose of your website even when you’re not selling a physical product. An easy way to do this is to identify the key task you want visitors to complete when they’re on your site.
Different kinds of websites have different key tasks.
- If you have a news site, your key task may be to get the visitor to share an article with their social media network.
- If you have an e-commerce site, your key task most likely is to get a visitor to buy a product.
- If you have a blog, your key task may be to get a visitor to be part of your blog’s community by leaving a comment. Or, you may want them to hire you for a consult.
- If you have a self-service site (like a knowledge base or help centre), your key task may be for visitors to rank pages as useful or not useful to help the next person using the site.
- If you have a brochure (or lead generation) site, your key task may be for the visitor to sign up to your newsletter or call you for a quote.
Once you’ve identified your key task, your content should be written to make it as simple and straightforward as possible for a visitor to complete it. This may include things like clear calls to action, in-built comment and share functionality, online booking options, or detailed product descriptions.
Know your audience
This links with the first point – why are people visiting your site in the first place? What problem is your site solving for them?
Are they catching up on the news? Searching for the perfect pair of shoes? Trying to find out what type of ink cartridges their printer uses? Looking to test drive a new car?
If you’re selling a physical product, understand that men and women research and shop differently. If you have a predominately female audience, make sure you support the different stages they go through when buying something.
Write your content in a way which is appealing and relevant to your audience. Focus on the benefits, and answer the questions they expect answered. If you’re not sure about the points to cover, do some market research and find out.
Know how your site is being used
Hopefully you’re using some sort of metrics tool to monitor your visitors and see where they are coming from.
Use this information to craft your content:
- If most of your visitors are visiting via a smart phone, then spend time developing mobile friendly content which is brief and targeted.
- If visitors are finding your site through an Ad-Words campaign, make sure the content on the landing page matches the tone and context of the ad they’ve clicked on.
- Same goes for offline advertising. If you’ve got a billboard promoting a URL, check there’s consistent messaging between the billboard and the website so they know they are in the right place.
- If you’ve got a massive site with an internal search, go to the effort to make it work.
So that’s it - three easy ways to boost those conversions. Once you’ve got these basics covered, then you can start with the other techniques I mentioned earlier like headlines, colors, a/b testing and landing page optimization.
Good luck!
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