By Tess Wittler
“Keep your home page language simple,” advises master web copywriter Nick Usborne.
When visitors arrive at your site, they are in a hurry to find out if you have what they want. Your copy needs to communicate a great deal, quickly, and demand very little. In other words, don’t make your visitors work to find the information they want.
A key element of simple, fast communication is the simplicity of the language you use. Start your site with short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs, advices Usborne. Don’t start with complex ideas or sentences that will make your readers scratch their heads and pause.
“Win their hearts and minds on the first page, and you’ll have plenty of time to get into details on the next levels,” says Usborne. “At the beginning, keep it simple.”
Note: Nick Usborne is the leading advocate of good writing on the web. He is an author, copywriter, consultant, speaker, and publisher of the Excess Voice newsletter for online writers. You can read his articles at www.ExcessVoice.com.
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Although I agree with Nick’s idea, I wonder if the premise is a little flawed. Here is where I see the error – most people coming to your site may not becoming to your home page.
To have a highly successful web site you need to be producing ongoing remarkable content that revolves around keywords or key phrases that users will use in search engines to find a solution to their problem. Realistically a prospective client of my company probably does not know me or my company so chances are unlikely that they would do a search for Brandwise (my company’s name). They would however be more likely to do a search on “how to get better direct mail results using a direct mail ROI calculator”. You see you need to get in the mind of your prospects and develop a customer profile and start building your web site content around the customers needs and the keywords or key phrases they would use to fix their problems.
Only then does it make sense to tweak your copy as Nick says. The goal of the web site should be getting found first than being easy to use and comprehend. The next phase would be making offers to get people to take action and convert on your web site.
So make sure every page on your site is short and sweet and to the point as Nick mentioned, but also build all your pages/content around your customers needs.
Great article Tess keep sharing this stuff!
You bring up some great points about making every word count. Writing copy so that your website is not only effective but is also found is much more than pulling words together. Thanks for sharing your insight, Dale!