35% Revenue Increase from Your Website!
35% of visitors fail to achieve their goal when they visit company websites! By using 2 simple rules, you are able to improve your web-derived revenue by 1/3 or even more!
Renowned website usability researcher, Jakob Nielsen, today (Nov 24) published results of his latest study. His test subjects used 139 websites. Normally, they didn’t find what they were hoping to find 35% of the time. Shockingly, 37% of users couldnt even find company location details!
What was surprising was that users didnt give up. They generally found the info they were after but they thought it was at a competitors site!
So how can you stop potential customers falling in to the hands of your competitors Nielsen is appropriate when he suggests user research. Yes, its imperative that understand what your users need at the site. But what he doesnt have to say is how to structure your website therefore it meets users needs.
There are two golden rules:
1) Write first, build later
2) Write to your customer
Write first, build later
The real message on most websites is in the writing. It seems sensible, then, that the writing must decide the dwelling.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for many businesses. On their behalf, the writing is an afterthought. They structure and design the website first, then attempt to fit the writing to the structure. This flies in the face of good sense. When you speak to someone, you structure your speech around your message. You dont decide on a structure, then alter the message to suit!
For a truly usable website, you need to plan what you would like to say before you decide to create the site maybe even write the whole thing. The content the writing must decide the structure.
Write to your customer
So how can you decide what to write
Firstly, dont think, What do I want to say. When youre writing a website, you have to think, What does my customer want to know. Its an extremely subtle difference, but its the key to engaging writing. And thats what you would like to do engage the customer.
Most customers may wish to know the basics:
- Exactly what do you do
- What benefit do you offer them
- Why must they choose your merchandise or product
- Why must they choose your service or product and not your competitors
- What does it cost
- Just how can they contact you
- Where have you been located
Your website has to communicate enough detailed information online. And to make matters worse, youre likely to have limited screen real-estate. Ideally, your customer wont need to scroll especially on your homepage (all your information will fit within a single window). And you cant fill the entire screen with writing, either. The look and navigation elements take up about a third of the window, and you ought to leave a little for white space (you dont want to overwhelm your customer). Usually of thumb, you should expect to have about 1/3 of the window available for the writing.
Chances are, at this time youre thinking, How can i fit everything in. Well, thats where your ability as a copywriter are available in. Choose what you are saying very carefully
Websites can be an extremely powerful bit of marketing collateral. You are able to reach millions for one few $ 100. Unfortunately, your competitors can do the same thing. Its an amount playing field, but there are a lot of players. Its essential that your ideas are structured, otherwise your site is a mess. If your message is apparent, your site is going to be simple and easy to use. Its all within the words
8 More Good reasons to Write for the Audience
1) There are approximately 550 billion documents on the web
2) Every single day another 7 million are added
3) Workers take so long trying to find information it costs organisations $750 billion annually! (A.T. Kearney, Network Publishing study, April 2001)
4) Reading from a monitor is 25% slower than reading from paper. (Sun Microsystems, 1998)
5) Helpful content develops site loyalty. An average joe visits a maximum of 19 websites in the entire month in order to avoid mass confusion. (Nielsen NetRatings in Jan 2001)
6) 79% of users scan read when online (Sun Microsystems, 1998)
7) Information gathering is the most common utilisation of the Internet – 73% (American Express survey, 2000)
48% of individuals search on the internet to find work-related information instead of 7% who use magazines.
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