The old cliche is wrong. All our lives we've heard, "It's not
what you say, but how you say it." That may occasionally be
true, but for the most part it's what you say AND how you say
it. Case in point: Announce It!, a custom candy-bar-wrapper
manufacturer, had copy on their home page that was acceptable.
It mentioned pretty much all the important things a site visitor
would need to know about ordering candy wrappers. Yet the copy
wasn't pulling as well as it should have been.
The Problems
The target audience consists mostly of women. In addition,
these women order favors for special occasions. That means
(stereotypically speaking) you have people who ask a lot of
questions and are especially cautious of buying something they
can't touch, feel or see (in person) for use at a major life
event. Communication (what the copy says as well as how it says
it) is vital.
The text had to convince women that they could trust Announce
It! to produce something they would show off in front of all
their family and friends for important occasions such as
birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, weddings, showers and
more. That meant answering the questions these women have as
well as instilling confidence that their party favors would be
the hit of the event.
Technically, the copy was OK. But it lacked excitement. No,
not hype. excitement. It needed to reach out to women and make
them feel welcome while also reinforcing that Announce It! was
the perfect solution for them. You can see the original text
here:
As I've always said, you never want to "we" all over your copy.
The content needed to speak to the site visitor, not talk about
the company. The old text was full of "we's" and "our's" and
hardly even acknowledged the site visitor.
From a search engine standpoint, the site was bouncing around a
good bit. According to the site owner, "For a long time, I held
the #1 position for many of my keywords. As search engines
evolved, my site started bouncing. It was time to hire a
professional."
The Solution
The plan was to make the text more inviting and supportive while
providing information that was easy to immediately identify. I
wanted to help Announce It! differentiate itself from other
candy-bar wrapper and favor sites. That meant making important
benefits clearly visible. In addition, a glimmer of excitement
would be added to the copy to get the women in the mood to buy.
A complete change of focus for the copy would also happen.
Rather than "we" and "us" the copy would be directed toward the
visitor while still communicating important benefits about
buying from the company.
Lastly, correcting an elementary mistake would help the copy
read better and assist with SEO. The hope with SEO was to give
Announce It! some stability, as it had a history of bouncing
back and forth between the first and second pages in the SERPs.
The overall goal was to increase conversions for this site. As
the site owner herself said, "Without conversion, your rankings
don't mean as much. You really have to convert the visitors once
they get to your page." Oh so true!
In Part 2 of this series, we'll look at the rewrite and the
results of this copywriting makeover so you can see firsthand
what effect the changes had for Announce It!
Karon Thackston: Learn to write SEO and website copywriting that impresses the
engines and your visitors at http://www.copywritingcourse.com Already know how to write, but need help using keywords? Get
Karon's report "How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without
Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)" at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword/
