by Karon Thackston © 2004 http://www.copywritingcourse.com
When you begin to write copy for any product or service, there
are a few things you have to take into consideration. The first
is always your target audience: who you’ll be writing to.
Finding out about the needs and wants of the audience members,
their communication styles, their lifestyles, and a multitude of
other elements are “musts” before writing one word of copy.
But something most people neglect is giving due attention to the
buying process as a whole and where your target audience is
within their own process. Understanding this can, oftentimes,
make or break the success of your copy.
When AEwebworks (an online, dating-site software developer)
approached me about rewriting their website copy, it became
immediately apparent that their copy could benefit from paying
some due diligence to the buying processes of their customers.
The Problems
My primary concerns with the copywriting on this site included
the lack of synergy within the copy, the use of testimonials,
the lack of focus on the target customer’s buying process, and
the inability for the copy to support the search engine goals of
AEwebworks. In its present state, the copy contained few
mentions of keyphrases.
You can view the old copy in PDF form at this link:
http://www.copywritingcourse.com/AEWebWorks-Original.pdf.
When I first read the copy, it felt as though I was being
pitched to from all sides. The headline spoke to someone
thinking of entering the online dating site industry. The body
copy did not support that headline; rather it spoke to someone
who had already made the decision to launch or improve a dating
site.
The use of testimonials at the bottom of the home page posed a
challenge for two reasons. The first was the sheer location. The
design of the site was such that it appeared nothing fell “below
the fold” (what was first seen when the home page loaded onto a
browser). The second challenge was that many of the testimonials
were from people asking questions or stating they were
considering trying the dating software… not actual customers
attesting to the benefits they’d personally experienced.
In addition, while the information included in the body copy was
good, the information given on the home page needed to outline
why AEwebworks was better than the competition. In its present
state, it did not. That meant finding those aspects of buying
dating software that were most important to the customer and
highlighting them within the copy.
Lastly, I needed to focus the home page copy on only two or
three keyphrases and increase keyword saturation for those
phrases. This also meant creating a copy strategy that would
allow me to use the keyphrases effectively without making the
text sound stiff.
The Solution
As always, I started the project by gaining a good understanding
of who the target customers were, what they wanted, their fears,
their likes, their dislikes, and anything else I could discover.
After a good bit of research, and after reading the completed
target audience analysis from AEwebworks, I felt I had a good
understanding of those I would be writing to.
In order to combat the lack of synergy within the copy and the
lack of focus on the target customer’s buying process, I created
a copywriting plan. From my research I found that installation,
upgrade policies, and support were the three most common gripes
buyers had about dating software. I decided to make overcoming
those obstacles the focal point of the copy instead of the
actual features and benefits.
That may sound like an odd choice, but that’s where recognition
of the buying process comes in. Considering that the majority of
visitors to the site had already made the decision to launch a
new site or had chosen to upgrade an existing site, they were
already well versed in the features of dating-site software and
their associated benefits. Yes… the benefits did need to be
mentioned; however, other issues proved to be more pressing to
this particular group of customers.
The use of testimonials on the home page was easily corrected by
simply deleting the ones that did not directly apply to actual
users of the software. I chose two for use within the copy and
suggested that, as AEwebworks gets more testimonials, they
create an entire page that visitors can read.
That left me with overcoming the inability of the current copy
to support the search engine goals of the site. I suggested
AEwebworks review their keyword choices to be sure they were
targeting the ones most likely to bring in qualified customers.
After a review, they provided me with a revised list to choose
from.
I selected three keyphrases for each page in order to allow an
adequate level of both keyword saturation and natural language.
For the home page, the terms “dating software,” “online dating
software,” and “dating script” were used.
After all the hoopla with Google, AEwebworks was in foul shape
as far as search engine rankings were concerned. I had to pay
particular attention to creating copy that impressed the search
engines AND their site visitors in order to help them regain
ground with their positioning and sales efforts.
The plan was in place. Now “all” I had to do was write the copy.
In part two of this series, you’ll get all the details on how I
turned “OK” into “Wow!”
