15 Tips For Writing Content For Your Website
The copy you write for your website performs a service for you. It helps your audience get to know who you are, showcases your solutions, and helps them trust you enough to spend their money in hopes your offers will solve their problems.
You’re not trying to trick people when you write content for your website. You’re only trying to showcase the benefits in a way that convinces them to buy and use your products or services.
Here are 15 tips on writing content for your website so that your prospects and customers find your products and services irresistible.
How To Write Content For Your Website That Will Generate Sales
1. Know Your Customer
Do continual and thorough research about your audience. You want to know where they hang out, who they like getting information from, what their problems are, and how those problems can be fixed by your products and services.
2. Identify Your Competition
Knowing the competition is an excellent way to figure out where your products and services fill in the gaps of theirs. When you know what they offer, how they offer it, and who they offer it to, it’s going to make it easier for you to write compelling copy.
3. Know Your Keywords
Keyword research, like audience research, is ongoing for business owners who want to write persuasive content. The keywords your audience uses to find your information is imperative to know, and you can only know these if you research regularly.
4. Don’t Forget That People Don’t Know What They Don’t Know
It’s vital to remember that most people have a knowledge gap of some kind. You do too. There are simply things that you don’t even know you don’t know. That may sound confusing, but when that happens, you don’t even know what questions to ask. Understanding that some of your audience may have this problem can help you write more specific and compelling content for your website that answers questions they didn’t know to ask.
5. Make a Compelling Promise in the Headline
Your headlines are the first thing that will be noticed when you share your landing pages, articles, and information on social media and when people search. Focusing on promising something in a headline will make them want to learn more.
FREE Download: 5 Step Content Strategy
6. Expand on the Promise in the Sub-Headline
Once they click through, give them a little more information in the sub-headline that compels them forward to read more. You don’t want to blow smoke or trick people with your headlines or sub-headlines, but you do want them to want to know more.
7. Identify with and Relate to the Customer
While most of the copy you write should be in the second person, writing some first-person information helps the customer get to know you. When reading it, they’ll realize that you have something in common can help build trust as they move through the sales page.
8. Solve Problems
Remember that your job is to solve problems. Your copy should focus more on the issue of solving the problem than on bringing up features. It’s okay to rub salt in the wound if you’re going to rinse it out with the solution quickly.
9. Show the Proof in the Content Body
The best way to cut down on buyers being afraid is to show them the proof that your product does what you say it will do. Include case studies, testimonials, and quotes from experts to prove your point.
10. Write to the Education Level of Your Ideal Customer
Audience research helps you understand how to impart information to them. If your audience consists of doctors, nurses, and medical professionals, you must write the content just for them. If they consist of bankers, they’ll use different terms due to their education differences.
FREE Download: 5 Step Content Strategy
11. Focus on Benefits over Features
You’ve heard this before, and it’s because it’s true. The audience cares about what the product or service is going to do for them. They care about the benefits that it provides, and that’s it.
12. Remember the White Space and How People Read the Content
When your content is being written for online reading, you must keep this in mind when you write. How you layout and order your content is essential due to how the content is read. Lists, white space, bullet points and short paragraphs work better online.
13. Always Include a Persuasive CTA
No content, no matter how well written, can survive a lack of call to action (CTA) or, worse, a bad CTA. Learning which CTAs work for your audience takes practice. Test out different ideas, one at a time, so you can perfect it.
14. Optimize for Mobile First
Your website and the content on it can be perfect, but if people can’t access it comfortably on their mobile devices, you’re going to lose more than half your sales in most cases. Most people use mobile devices online now.
15. Edit for Readability and Understanding
When you write anything for your audience, avoid using large words, bad spelling, and unclear messaging. It’s okay to break some rules of English in your content, such as using passive voice, ending a sentence with a preposition, and so forth, but you need to ensure it’s easily readable and understandable.
Free Checklist: 5 Step Content Strategy
Writing good website content is all about following a process that helps you cover all the arguments your audience may have in their mind about the solution you’re recommending. The copywriting process includes preparing, organizing, writing, editing, and reviewing. Then, of course, testing and improving as you go.
Download my free checklist, The 5 Step Content Strategy to discover 5 key content marketing tactics used by the most successful online entrepreneurs.