Three Tips To Raise Your Response

“What am I sup­posed to do?”

You may not know it but that’s a ques­tion your read­ers, vis­i­tors and prospects may be ask­ing right now. And it’s also one you need to avoid at all costs, or else it will cost you in wasted traf­fic and sales. In other words, if peo­ple become lost on your web­site at any point, or while read­ing your copy, you in turn will lose them.

For­ever.

Granted, your copy may com­pel your reader’s atten­tion and present an irre­sistible offer. But if it fails to pro­pel their actions too, you will prob­a­bly won­der why it’s not pro­duc­ing any sales or why it’s get­ting such a poor response. If that’s the case, here are three quickie sug­ges­tions you can implement.

#1. Does Your Web­site Ask For The Order?

One solu­tion is to visu­ally take read­ers “by the hand.” Tell them or show them what you want them to do, even if what you want them to do is sim­ple or obvi­ous. Adding sim­ple “hand-​​holding” com­po­nents to your copy may seem trite. Some even dis­count the use for they believe, for exam­ple, that a web­site should be intuitive.

“My clients are not dumb,” they exclaim. “They can guess their way through!” Or “I don’t want to insult their intelligence.”

Think­ing this way may be more insult­ing than you think. Peo­ple have com­fort zones. And their defense mech­a­nisms are always alive and kick­ing, wait­ing to jus­tify their non-​​decisions by drum­ming even insignif­i­cant, neg­a­tive and totally erro­neous per­cep­tions about you. There­fore, fail to lead them, and you are plac­ing your copy at the whim and mercy of your reader. (Not to men­tion your pocketbook.)

My friend, copy­writer Peter Stone, said it best: “The aim of good copy is to tem­porar­ily sus­pend dis­be­lief, but GREAT copy is to tem­porar­ily sus­pend crit­i­cal think­ing.”

You see, it’s not about obey­ing the rules of web usabil­ity, it’s about using com­mon sense. It’s about avoid­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion, not com­pelling let alone pray­ing for action. And today, it’s also about surviving.

For instance, I often make the case that a book or mag­a­zine is lim­ited by its front and back cov­ers. But a web­site, how­ever, is not. If the goal is only to inform your vis­i­tors, and like the clos­ing of a book once it’s fin­ished, the only thing left to do will be to close the browser win­dow or leave the site.

But if you require some kind of response, even if it’s to just to keep read­ing, then you must inte­grate words that direct the reader and elicit some kind of response. Whether it’s to join, sub­scribe, buy, call, email, fill out a form, down­load or just click a link, incor­po­rate words like “click here,” “down­load this,” “buy that,” “join now,” “read more” and so on.

Besides, tests show unequiv­o­cally that response rises dra­mat­i­cally when the copy is what I call “direc­tional.” Even when the copy aims to sell a sophis­ti­cated crowd, like engi­neers and scientists.

We are all des­per­ate to be lead. It’s an instinc­tual part of the human psy­che, regard­less of the intel­lec­tual level of your tar­get market.

#2. Give Your Vis­i­tors a “Head” Start

In order to encour­age longer stays, repeat vis­its and, above all, online sales, you need not only to direct your audi­ence to take some kind of action but also to make it easy for them to do so. And the most impor­tant step in accom­plish­ing that is to first direct your vis­i­tors’ atten­tion (i.e., their eyes).

How can you lead them when you haven’t got their atten­tion in the first place? Remem­ber this: online, peo­ple don’t read. Not at first, any­way. They scan, skim and scroll. So unlike a book that’s read from cover to cover, peo­ple don’t read entire web pages from top to bottom.

How often do you read entire news­pa­pers, for exam­ple? You likely scan them and stop at a head­line that cap­tures your atten­tion, piques your curios­ity and pulls you into the arti­cle. Read­ing web copy is a more weary­ing task.

So don’t write to be read. Write to be scanned.

Keep your para­graphs short at around four to five lines deep, and incor­po­rate many head­ers through­out your copy by adding one at every two to five para­graphs. Use dif­fer­ent sizes, col­ors or fonts that make them stand out.

Cen­ter­ing also helps, because it’s dif­fer­ent than the tra­di­tional left-​​justified text of the rest of the copy. Being cen­tered, it draws atten­tion to itself — rather than drown­ing in one big trance-​​inducing blur of same­ness as peo­ple skim through copy quickly.

Ulti­mately, you want them to stop scanning.

A friend of mine, copy­writer Brian Keith Voiles, once reported that using red head­lines and head­ers don’t work. Of course, he’s right, because he’s refer­ring to offline copy. Brian says, “Red means ‘Stop!’ And you don’t want them to stop.” But online, it’s per­fect. Because peo­ple never read any­thing at first, and there­fore they need to stop scan­ning — and start reading.

#3. Pull Them In to See What’s “In”

When scan­ning, what peo­ple will read the most is what stands out the most, includ­ing head­lines, head­ers, bul­lets, boxes and text links. There­fore, use words that are invit­ing, invok­ing and intrigu­ing with these com­po­nents. The words you use must force them to stop and feel what fol­lows can­not be ignored.

Avoid overused and hack­neyed expres­sions, like “Wel­come to [What­ever].” Start with an active verb that tells your read­ers exactly what to do or what they will be doing, or use pic­ture words that paint vivid men­tal pictures.

For exam­ple, if it’s for a prod­uct descrip­tion, don’t use words like: “Here’s a Descrip­tion of Our Wid­get.” (Or worse still, “Wid­get” or “Features.”)

Instead, use: “Dis­cover how to get [ben­e­fit] with our wid­gets now!” Or, “Learn the secret behind the [wid­get or ben­e­fit].” Or, “Can you really get [ben­e­fit]? The answer may sur­prise you…” Or, “Here’s how to put an end to [prob­lem the wid­get solves].”

Here are more examples:

Rather than, “Pro­fes­sional Debt Res­o­lu­tion,” write, “Break Free From Debt And Sleep Bet­ter at Night With Our Guid­ance!” Or, “Back­room Tac­tics Used To Elim­i­nate Debts Exposed.” Or, “Redis­cover Finan­cial Free­dom By Sim­ply Fol­low­ing These Sim­ple Steps.”

Instead of “Home-​​Based Busi­ness Suc­cess,” use, “Uncover Prof­itable Busi­ness Oppor­tu­ni­ties Hid­den in Your Own Home!” Or, “Unearth The Kitchen Table Mil­lion­aire In You.” Or, “Here’s How To Put An End To Dread­ful Days Spent Inside Your Soul-​​Sucking Cubicle.”

In the final analy­sis, when I con­duct copy cri­tique con­sul­ta­tions, about 97% of the web­sites I ana­lyze are life­less, con­fus­ing or unpro­duc­tive, or fail to ade­quately lead vis­i­tors to take some kind of action. As an exam­ple, many of my clients tell me, “Our web­site is for brand­ing, not sales!” But then they won­der why peo­ple aren’t join­ing their mail­ing lists or return­ing to their websites.

Whether your web­site is for brand­ing or direct mar­ket­ing, the fact remains that you prob­a­bly still want to elicit some kind of response from your vis­i­tors. Direct your vis­i­tors to take some kind of action or lead them to a spe­cific out­come. Write your copy by inte­grat­ing some form of direct response for­mula (i.e., words or mech­a­nisms that com­pel read­ers to act).

For instance, add calls to action, even if they’re as sim­ple as ask­ing your vis­i­tors to con­tinue read­ing. Don’t dis­tract them with too many things to do, includ­ing too many exter­nal links or mar­ket­ing mes­sages. If you offer too many choices, vis­i­tors will find it hard to make one. Instead, offer choices later on based on the spe­cific path or paths a user follows.

Ulti­mately, trans­form the words on your web­site into blind­ers that will steer vis­i­tors in the direc­tion of your choosing.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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