Personas

Personas are based on the profile of readers of your copy—the visitors to your Web site and potential customers. Creating a profile is all about considering the needs and desires of your Web site visitors and effectively meeting them. For example, How do they make purchase decisions? Do they compare lots of service providers before selecting one? Do they make lists of questions and call in for assistance with decision making? Or do they make purchase decisions spontaneously based on a special offer?

Web site copy can be structured in such a way that it caters for several personas, but you need to spend time understanding their needs before you are able to write copy that addresses these needs with conviction.

Understanding the profiles of your readers is an important element, and the best copy usually results from extensive time spent figuring out who your audience is.

When writing on behalf of clients, it is very important that you have clearly understood what their corporate “personality” is so that you can convey this in your copy without deviating from their corporate identity or diluting their brand ethos.

Writing an online copy—guidelines document will enable you to fall back on the styles, conventions, and voice that you are required to write for. Understanding and sticking to this corporate voice is just as important as the audience you are tailoring your content for. The two need to work together and draw from one another for direction.

By sticking to style conventions, you will assist the audience in familiarizing themselves with author personas. This way, they will know what bits of content go where in a document, and this allows for easier navigation.

Copy That Is Easy to Read

Online copy is judged first and foremost on its layout, regardless of the content. It needs to appear to be well structured and easy to read before a visitor will choose to read it.

A good online copywriter will also be able to use basic HTML (hypertext markup language), knowing that it is the appealing layout of the page that will get their words read. It should be easy for users to skip and skim the copy, effortlessly finding the parts that are most relevant to them.

Online copy should be pleasant to read and easy to scan. This means making use of the following:

• Bulleted and numbered lists
• Short paragraphs
• Clear and concise headings
• Bold and italic text
• Descriptive links
• Calls to action (CTAs) above the fold

It’s easy to see this in practice.

Readers online are usually strapped for time and need to decide quickly whether or not to read a page. This means that the most important information needs to be at the top of the page. Start with the summary or conclusion—the main idea or gist of the article.

While clever wordplay in headings and titles can attract some attention, online these need to be written as descriptively as possible. The copy is multitasking: not only is it informing visitors of what to expect, it is also telling search engine spiders what the page is about. Be creative, but keep it relevant.

Learning to Use HTML

HTML stands for hypertext markup language, and it’s the foundation of documents on the Internet. HTML tags tell browsers how to present content. HTML tags are in the brackets that look like arrows: < and >.

When writing online copy, you can use an HTML editor, where you insert the tags yourself, or a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, which works in a similar way to a word processor.

Basic HTML is simple to implement and will help you to lay out your content in an easy-to-read way. Here are some basic HTML tags:

• Bold. <b>phrase you wish to bold</b>
• Italicize. <i>phrase you wish to italicize</i>
• Underline. <u>phrase you wish to underline</u>
• List. <li>lines you wish to list</li>
• Create a paragraph. <p>paragraph text</p>
• Insert a line break. <br/>
• Insert a link. <a href=“page url”>phrase you wish to link</a>

The tags also help search engines to identify how the content has been laid out on the page.

The best way to get to grips with HTML is to start using it online where you can see how the tags work.

Call to Action: Telling People What to Do

A crucial element to online copywriting is the CTA. Users scan Web pages and look for clues as to what to do. Don’t make them think; tell them what action to perform.

A call to action is a short, descriptive instruction that explicitly tells a Web visitor what to do. Banner advertising usually involves a clear call to action, and it can also be used in paid search advertising. Call-to-action copy is not limited to short copy: e-mail newsletters and promotions should also make use of call to action, and we even see them all over Web pages. Calls to action should always be above the fold to drive action.

Any time that there is an action that you want a Web visitor to take, a call to action should instruct the visitor what to do. This means using active verbs when you write and crafting hyperlinks to be clear instructions that resonate with your visitor at each step in the conversion process.

A strong call to action resonates with the action that the visitor needs to take, as opposed to the technical function that is performed. For example, if a user has entered an e-mail address to sign up to your e-mail newsletter, the action button should say “sign up” (which is what a user understands) and not “submit” (which is the database action).

Consider what actions mean offline:

• With e-mail newsletters, “sign up” can have very different connotations from “subscribe.”
• “Subscribe” is very different from “subscribe for free.”

Whereas subscriptions connote regularity as to the times when newsletters are sent (e.g., once a week, on a particular day at a particular time), “sign up” does not carry the same burden. There is only one way to know what call to action works best on a Web page, in an e-mail, on a banner, or in an advertisement: test, test, test. You could do this by performing A/B split tests to see which CTA drives the most clicks or actions.

PPC Advertisements

PPC advertisements have a very limited space, and very limited time, to get a message across, as well as plenty of competition for an Internet user’s attention. These four lines of copy need to work hard to be convincing and compelling to ensure a top return on investment.

PPC advertisements follow the same basic structure:

Getting Read: Titles and Subject Lines

Titles and subject lines are there for a very important reason: they inform readers whether or not they are likely to want to read further by giving a sneak preview into what is to come in the article. They are the gateway to your content.

Consider the following two titles:

• Guide to Online Copywriting
• Ten Steps to Writing Online Copy That Sells

The second title conveys more information to the reader that helps the reader decide to read further. Minor word manipulation that tells the reader how he or she will benefit from reading that content can make a huge difference.

Subject lines are like titles for e-mails and can make the difference between an e-mail being deleted instantly and being opened and read. Subject lines also work hand in hand with the “from” field of an e-mail. Both fields usually appear side by side in an in-box and are used to determine relevance, familiarity, and trust.

Use a consistent and easy-to-recognize sender alias—the “from” field—so that readers can recognize your e-mails easily. With familiarity and trust established using this field, the subject line can be used more creatively, allowing you to build on the already-established relationships with your readers.

As with a title, use the subject line to make clear what the e-mail is about. For example, if there is a promotion in the e-mail, consider putting it in the subject line as well.

Titles, headlines, and subject lines need to be both persuasive and enticing. Consider what need your copy is meeting for your readers and express that first. Be honest and straightforward and never misrepresent the content of an e-mail as this will prevent readers from opening them in the future.

Copywriting for Search Engine Optimization

As well as the copy on the Web page, HTML (hypertext markup language) tags and metadata are also used by a search engine optimization (SEO) copywriter. In addition to assisting you with structuring your content, these tags indicate relevancy and context to search engines. Some of the tags are used by screenreaders, and so they assist visitors with disabilities to access your content. The meta description can also be used by search engines on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

A keyword refers to the word or words that are used in a search query on a search engine. Multiword keywords are sometimes referred to as key phrases.

The first step in SEO copywriting is keyword research. Having identified the themes of your Web site and Web pages, keyword research should be used to identify what keywords your target audience uses when searching for you.

Each page should be optimized for a primary key phrase and can be optimized for a secondary and tertiary key phrase as well. Usually a Web page is optimized for three key phrases but can be optimized for up to five (though only if the page is very long). Any more than that and you are better off creating new, niche Web pages.

In Chapter 6 “Search Engine Optimization”, there is more detail on the process of keyword discovery and keyword selection.

The following are guidelines for using key phrases on a Web page:

Remember that each page on a Web site must have a unique URL (uniform resource locator), title, meta keywords, and meta description.

A Brief Synopsis on the Process of Writing

The following is a brief list of the steps for writing online copy:

1. Research and understand your audience.
2. Establish your tone using copy guidelines.
3. Establish your business objectives (what your copy aims to achieve).
4. Conceptualize the angle you will take to get this across in your copy and meet your business objectives.
5. Write the framework, that is, the <h1> tags that will dictate the hierarchy of the content as well as a powerful title. Then elaborate in the body of the copy under the subheadings.

Things to Avoid

Even if you are a brilliant copywriter, the moment you stop sticking to online copy rules and regulations, your writing will hold very little weight on the search engine. These are some of the examples of bad practice that can have some very serious repercussions:

• Keyword stuffing. If you try to squash too many targeted phrases or keywords into a piece of copy, the search engine spiders will immediately pick this up, and you will stand the chance of being wiped right off the SERPs. Keyword stuffing makes copy sound forced and unnatural and is unpleasant to read. Stick to relevant content that offers the readers real value; this will naturally attract links and visitors.
• Misrepresented titles. Titles are often the first touch points that readers come across before deciding to pursue a page of copy. Therefore, they need to encompass what the page is about and get the gist of the content. Be sure to be true to your title; otherwise readers will feel cheated and taken advantage of and there is a strong chance that they will not want to visit again. Misrepresented titles breed mistrust—avoid this at all costs!
• Irrelevant content. No reader wants to go through the mission of searching a search engine only to land on a page that has no relevance to him. Your content will be seen as waffle, and you will lose authority as a credible source—in fact, you will probably chase many visitors away.