So you have an awesome website . . . lots of text, awesome flash, online requests forms . . .everything that anyone could possibly be looking for in a website. Yet your crime scene cleanup business is still not bringing in the revenue you expect. So month after month, you check your website stats, just to make sure people are still visiting your website. Month after month, you check your rankings in Google. Month after month, you continue to find that you’re in the top ten for Google keyword searches and thousands of people each month are visiting your site. So where’s the business?
ALERT Worldwide, LLC is involved with a number of different types of businesses in several different industries. Much of our business is conducted via the internet and the majority of our sales is directly related to our ability to write an effective pitch page. For example, one of our eBooks was not selling very well. Only 4.8% of our site’s visitors were actually purchasing the eBook. Not happy with this percentage, we made consistent changes to our pitch page, which slowly nudged our sales closer to 6%. Still not satisfied, we completely re-wrote our pitch page and our sales jumped to nearly 30%. Through a bit of trial and error, combined with some experience, we were able to determine what it was that our site visitors needed to learn or understand before they felt comfortable enough to complete the buying process.
Writing copy is the art of describing a product or service in such a way that it appears meaningful, useful and needed. For example, let’s say you need to find your dog a new home, so you put an ad in the newspaper. Here are two such ads:
- Home needed for a small black and tan female German Shepard. She is house broken and all shots are up-to-date. She’s a beautiful dog that will fit in to any home and make a good guard dog when she gets older.
- Small black and tan female German Shepard named Peanut is in need of a loving home. Peanut loves children, is house broken, does not chew and all shots are up-to-date. She’s protective of her family, yet rarely barks for no reason.
Although both of the above ads are nearly the same size and convey the same information, one is clearly more attractive. How attractive is your copy to potential buyers or clients? Bringing visitors to a website is not hard to do. Keeping visitors at your website long enough for them to learn that your company is the one they need to choose is much more difficult. If your website and marketing materials are not adequately selling your business, think about re-writing your copy.
Once you feel comfortable that your copy is attractive and effective in providing your clients with the exact information they need, implement a clear and concise “call-to-action”. Tell your clients what it is you want them to do. For example:
- Click here for more information
- Click here to order
- Contact our 24-hour staff for immediate service
All of the above are examples of a call-to-action, which must be conveyed to a client so he or she knows how to complete the transaction.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with your website and marketing materials. Keep changing things until you find the right combination of words, sentences and paragraphs that will convince your clients and customers to spend their money with you.
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