Sales Copy Before Design

Your website has to have good sales copy BEFORE you work on the design.

Most people don’t land on your website because they want you to tell them how amazing your product or service is. Nor are they overly impressed with your website’s “pretty” appearance.

More than likely they are visiting your site because they have a painful problem, and they want someone like you to fix it for them.

Like a person with a sore, aching tooth, they are looking for pain-relief and they will go with the first dentist whose website answers their questions, proves that the dental staff is trustworthy and then helps them schedule an appointment.

Great Sales Copy is Organized Around Your Customers

A fundamental key of creating killer website copy is to focus on your potential customer … their pains, problems, desires,  fears and frustrations.

  • What does your potential customers want to know about your industry, business, service or product?
  • What do they truly need in order fix their problems, solve their issues and reduce their fears?
  • What do they really want from your product or service? (People buy 1/4 inch drills because they want a 1/4 inch hole).
  • Do your homework … Find Out What Your Customers Want and Try to Give It to Them!

Great Sales Copy Uses Information Architecture

Information architecture (IA) is basically a way to organize the info on your site to achieve your business goals. Now there are TONS of ways to organize the copy on websites but the one I like to use I call the AIDA Framework.

AIDA is an acronym – it stands for attention, interest, description and action. It is a time-tested formula that has been used in marketing and copywriting forever … okay since the 1920’s … to create powerful sales letters.

Now, the AIDA Framework is a Information architecture model (website layout) that sets up your individual web pages like a sales letter:

  • Attention = Home page – grabs the visitor’s attention
  • Interest = About page – explains why they should listen to you
  • Description = Product/Service page(s) – describes why your stuff is different
  • Action = Contact page – explains when, where and how to find or contact you

You might have noticed that for a website to work, it only requires four pages. All other the pages are really just supporting pages for the main ones listed above. See the chart below on how a simple website is structured:

  • You can easily see how staff bios and photos can go on the About page.
  • Individual product photos go on their own separate pages under Products
  • FAQs (frequently asked questions) can slipped onto the main Service or Product page.
  • And direction and maps can go under Contact.

Think about what you want to go on each core page

Take notes on what you actually tell people (face to face) about why you started your business, what you have to offer, why you do what you do. And how what you do it is different than others in your field.

Now note down what are the best ways to contact you (call or text or email) and how to find your place of business (optional if you have a service or kitchen table business).

And don’t forget your Homepage copy. The Homepage is really a portal page that is designed to link to and persuade your visitors to browse the rest of the pages within your website.

Remember these core pages are actually “sales” pages and form the main marketing platform for your site. Once done, they can  be refreshed but like a good sales letter, their persuasive sales copy can bring in new business for years and years.

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