Copywriting with CRO in Mind

Getting traffic to your website is one thing, converting that traffic into customers is another. If your website does not have enough persuasive power, you can kiss your page visitors goodbye as they click past your website and on to another. I recently watched a presentation by The Conversion Rate Experts that, I think, makes some great points about how to keep CRO at the heart of your copywriting. So I thought I would share some insights that will be particularly useful for those wishing to write website copy.

Firstly, before even approaching the keyboard, a good copywriter will take the time to know the product or service they are writing about to the point where they could sell it to someone face to face. Know what makes the product or service stand out from competitors, why your audience needs it and highlight the best features. If you can’t sell a product face to face, chances are you can’t sell a product online.

Think about the way a salesperson can predict almost every question or qualm a customer has about a product. When you are writing copy you need to put yourself in the customers mind and make sure all the things they need to know to make a purchase are included in the copy. Before making a purchase most people will look for answers to their questions regarding the product or service. If they can find answers to their questions on your website they will be less inclined to look elsewhere.

Even though you may be answering a variety of questions, don’t waffle when you write page content. You need to keep it clean and concise in terms of content as well as design. User’s easily get frustrated with unclear and disorganised pages and will leave quickly. If you keep it clean and give them the information they want in an easy to understand format you are more likely to keep them engaged and therefore more likely to convert them into customers.

While you are keeping all these factors in mind it can be easy to slip into a mechanical way of writing that tells the reader what they need to know but doesn’t connect with them. When you are writing, look out for phrases that you would not say in person. Even though you are writing for a website your content needs to be human to avoid moments of disconnect with your potential customers.

Finally, when you write content for your website you will not know how effective it is without testing and analysing. You can find out which content works best by using A/B testing. A/B tests measure the effectiveness of changes to your website in comparison to the original design in order to find out which one works best. You can test changes using tools such as Google Analytics or an online survey with open ended questions.

Writing content is not just a matter of writing a description of your products or services, there is an art to it. In order to optimise your website conversion rate it is important that you carefully consider the content you are putting on your website and use tried and tested methods such as those mentioned here to engage, connect with and inform your page visitors.