Being an online copywriter is becoming a much more lucrative profession as more and more Internet business ventures pop up all over the web. Everyone has something they want to sell online, it would seem – and copywriters are the people with the skills to make things sell.
But is there really a big difference between copywriting for the web, and copywriting in the offline world? In some respects, yes. In many ways, successful online sales pages resemble successful offline sales letters. However, there are some important points to bear in mind when it comes to online copywriting that can have a big impact on the success of your copy.
The Way People Read Online
One of the biggest issues a copywriter must consider when writing for the online space is that the way people read words on a computer screen is completely different from the way they read a printed page.
Computer screens tend to cause a strain on the eyes if you read from them for too long. For that reason, people naturally start to skim and scan when they read copy on the web. Add to that the fact that web surfers in general are an impatient breed, looking for the information they need right now. When you understand these factors, you can see why online sales copy needs to lend itself to skimming and scanning.
This means having plenty of headlines through the sales copy is particularly important. Ideally, a reader should be able to scan through the page reading only the headlines, and pick up a good idea of what the whole page is about.
As for the body copy itself, short sentences tend to work best online. The language ought to be as simple as possible, so anyone can read and understand it. No one is going to get out a dictionary to understand your sales copy.
Another factor of making sales copy easy to read online is breaking up the writing into short paragraphs. It’s not uncommon to see sales page with a bunch of one-sentence paragraphs. The ellipsis (…) is also a common feature of online copywriting, because it helps draw the reader’s attention towards the next line and create a sense of anticipation and suspense.
Creating PPC Friendly Landing Pages
One of the methods typically used to drive traffic to an online sales page is PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, using a network such as Google AdWords. If you’re going to be using PPC as part of your plan to drive traffic to your product page, you need to ensure your site copy lines up well with your ad copy.
There are several reasons for this. One is that the relevance of your web page to the keywords you bid on can affect the price you pay per click. But the other is simply your conversion rate. If your ads aren’t in sync with the copy on your sales page, you’re not likely to get the conversion rates you could potentially get if your PPC campaign and your sales page copy were working in harmony.
Search Engine Optimization
Another major method of traffic generation to a sales page is search engine optimization (SEO). This involves optimizing your sales copy for particular keywords, so that your page will show up in organic search results (as opposed to paid results) at the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! And Bing.
A good online copywriter will know how to approach optimizing your sales page, is SEO is a big part of your traffic building plan.
To get a marketing experienced copywriter to handle writing or rewriting your sales page, simply visit Premium Online Writing and hire an online copywriter.