nick usborne's guide to online copywriting
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Give people a reason to read your content.
On larger web sites, many pages are simply content, or information pages.
As an example, I am currently working on a site for an insurance and financial services company.
There are various categories on the site and, of course, plenty of pages which contain content about insurance and investing.
One page I wrote recently is basically a list of auto insurance coverage options. Along with their competitors, this company offers quite a variety of coverage options, each of which needs to be explained.
Does this make for compelling content? Not really. When we buy auto insurance, many of us take the route of least resistance. We just want to get it done.
So how can you encourage people to actually read through a dozen descriptions of insurance coverage options? It’s not terribly compelling content. It’s just information.
Start each page by giving people a reason to keep reading.
Whether it’s a page about insurance, software, home repair or anything else, I always try to start the page in a way that relates to the life of the reader.
There are numerous ways to do this.
One simple way is to ask a question or two. The advantage of asking a question is that it stimulates the reader to think of an answer. And as soon as that happens, the rest of the page will fall into the personal context of the reader’s own life and experiences.
For instance, in the case of auto insurance coverage, I might ask a question like:
“Do you know if you are covered in the event of a collision with a driver who is either underinsured or has no insurance at all?”
What am I trying to do? First, I’m trying to paint a picture, something the reader can visualize.
Second, I’m trying to provoke a moment of thought. In the case of the question above, I’m hoping the reader will think something like, “Hmmm, I had never even thought about that. I wonder if I am covered.”
Do the same thing with every page of passive or informational content.
Plenty of sites contain pages that are largely devoted to the presentation of informational content.
These are often important pages. But if they are too dry, and the reader cannot connect the content to his or her own life in some way, it’s all too easy to lose the reader’s attention and, sometimes, lose them from the site altogether.
Which pages does this apply to?
As I said, pages that need this kind of attention tend to be content pages, not sales pages.
If you want a hint as to where to find them...think of all those pages on your site where the content was more or less cut and pasted from existing print materials.
These pages often sit on your site, linked to, but disconnected from the surrounding pages.
And disconnected from the user experience.
These are the pages to address first.
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