Make Your Words Sell: a guide to
Internet Copywriting and Marketing
By
Donald Nelson , Copyright 2004
When it comes to
selling and communicating on a web page, it is the written
word that makes the vital difference between satisfying your
viewer or losing her as she clicks through to the next web
site.
If you are not sure what to write or how to write for an
Internet audience, then one of the best guides is the ebook,
Make Your Words Sell by Joe Robson and Ken Evoy. The
authors explain the entire process of creating a web page that
will attract the attention of your viewers, maintain their
interest and then convince them to contact you, sign up for
your newsletter or buy your product.
The secret of their approach has nothing to do with knowledge
of English Grammar or writing techniques. Rather it is based
on human psychology. When someone comes to your web page he
wants a solution for a particular problem or an answer to a
question. If you can show how your product or service provides
the solution or answers the question, and convince him that
you can be trusted, then you will make a sale.
Because your viewers are looking for a solutions to problems,
the authors emphasize the need to write benefit-oriented copy.
If you say that your lawn mower has a built-in grass catcher,
then that is a feature. But if you say that by using your lawn
mower the user will be able to spend more time at the beach on
the weekend, then that is a benefit.
One of the most important sections of the book is an exercise
which will help you determine your business’s USP (unique
selling proposition). The USP is a combination of your
product’s most powerful benefit with a strong unique aspect of
your business. The USP should answer a viewer’s inevitable
question, “what’s in it for me.”
Getting away from psychology, the authors also give some
writing tips that are very useful. They stress the importance
of using short paragraphs, headlines and subheadings to break
up long stretches of boring text. On the Internet most people
are scanning rather than reading and your copy should make
sense even if they only read your headlines and bold text.
Take a look at the most riveting and online pokies
persuasive, sales-oriented websites on the web today, and you
will find that all of them use the techniques explained in
Make Your Words Sell. If you would like to join the ranks
of the 5% of websites that actually get it right, and don’t
have lots of money to spend on hiring marketing experts, then
Make Your Words Sell is required reading. (you can find
out more about the book at
http://myws.sitesell.com/webpromote2.html)
Donald
Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He has
been working on the Internet since 1995, and is currently the
director of A1-Optimization (http://www.a1-optimization.com),
a firm providing low cost search engine
optimization,submission, website copywriting and web promotion services.
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Articles in recent issues have included:
Meta tag guidelines,
Writing Website Copy,
Website promotion for a
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Selecting reciprocal
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Internet Article
Writing,
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