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
needs and wants of 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 buying process as a whole and where your target audience is within their own process. Understanding this can, oftentimes, make or break 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 buying processes of their customers.
The Problems
My primary concerns with copywriting on this site included lack of synergy within copy, use of testimonials, lack of focus on target customer’s buying process, and inability for copy to support search engine goals of AEwebworks. In its present state, copy contained few mentions of keyphrases.
You can view old copy in PDF form at this link: http://www.copywritingcourse.com/AEWebWorks-Original.pdf.
When I first read copy, it felt as though I was being pitched to from all sides. The headline spoke to someone thinking of entering online dating site industry. The body copy did not support that headline; rather it spoke to someone who had already made decision to launch or improve a dating site.
The use of testimonials at bottom of home page posed a challenge for two reasons. The first was sheer location. The design of site was such that it appeared nothing fell “below fold” (what was first seen when home page loaded onto a browser). The second challenge was that many of testimonials were from people asking questions or stating they were considering trying dating software… not actual customers attesting to benefits they’d personally experienced.
In addition, while information included in body copy was good, information given on home page needed to outline why AEwebworks was better than competition. In its present state, it did not. That meant finding those aspects of buying dating software that were most important to customer and highlighting them within copy.
Lastly, I needed to focus 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 keyphrases effectively without making text sound stiff.
