Why Buy From You (and Not the Other Guys)? [Rant]
Everyone knows that their website doesn’t exist in a vacuum. However, a majority of websites still act like they do. And that’s costing them business.
Everyone knows that their website doesn’t exist in a vacuum. However, a majority of websites still act like they do. And that’s costing them business.
Think about the last thing that made you laugh. Was it a TV ad? Tim from HR? A tweet?
Now think about the last landing page that made you laugh. Really, take a second and try to come up with an answer. Was it just another 404 page?
You’ve found your way to this article, but you probably won’t read it start to finish.
You’ve read the stats. According to Copyblogger, 80% of people will read a headline, but only 20% read the body. 38% of people who click on a site will leave before engaging with the content at all. People will share copy, effectively vouching for its quality, when they’ve only read 25% of it.
In Ancient Greece, public speaking was the main channel for political debate and decision-making, legal decision-making, and even philosophical discussion.
As it became more and more important to society, so did rhetoric, which is the art of persuasive speaking and writing. Ancient philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero studied and practiced rhetoric… essentially boiling it down to a do-it-yourself guide.
That guide has been lost (ok, just forgotten). Until now.
If I asked you, “what’s the most persuasive word in the English language,” what would you say?
Many would say “free” – and that may or may not be accurate. It’s one of those CRO ‘best practices’ that is often repeated but rarely discussed in detail.
There are studies that support its power, but there is also plenty of data that supports the idea of ‘free’ being detrimental to optimization.
When you’re putting together copy for a website you may not have the luxury of only having to speak to one audience. In fact, you may have multiple audiences you need to address.
Which means you’ve got a juggling act on your hands.
Who is most important? What if both audiences require equal attention? How do you write copy that attracts more than one audience on a page without confusing your messaging?
The answers to these questions lie in your customer research and a process for determining where your audiences’ needs overlap.
As you almost certainly know, copy is what sells.
That’s true in print, and it’s equally true on the web. A completely unstyled site with strong copy will sell infinitely more than a beautifully styled site with none. And since the average website is between 90 and 95% text, one leading expert wisely observes that “web design is ninety-five percent typography.”
So while you can be quite flexible with how you present other parts of your text, your body copy needs special care. Making your selling content difficult to read is like mumbling to your prospects. You might as well turn them away at the door.
“It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.”
There is one variable that data is not very good at deciphering – the human.
It’s easy to forget when analyzing the data for conversion purposes is that the end-user is a real human with feelings. Data tells us a lot of things, but it is really bad at anything that involves understanding the human condition.
In an ideal world, designers and conversion optimizers can strike the perfect balance between the logical & emotional sides of the human brain & design experiences that engage potential customers and “activate” visitors to take action.
If you’re selling in a competitive market, you must live & die by the little things that make you uniquely different from your competition.