I emailed the company to ask if they could tell me what the problem was. They couldn’t. “The volume was up to max when we did the final compilation,” was what I was told. “It can’t get any louder.”

That’s a real problem. Why? Because – while the images were super – the words were what mattered. Just watching a talking head at the top of the sales page wouldn’t do anybody any good unless they knew what was being said. The information – the persuasion – was in the words.

Graphics Heavy, but Copy Light

I find this happening a lot online. Site owners and marketing directors put all the weight of conversion on an image. Product pages are graphics heavy but copy light. Don’t get me wrong: images are wonderful. In fact, they add quite a lot to the page.

However, just looking at a photo of a laptop computer doesn’t come close to informing the customer of the full range of features and benefits this machine offers.

Does copy need to be long to be effective? No. A well-written, 60-word product description on an ecommerce site can effectively communicate what the reader needs to know to make a buying decision. (Optimal phrase: well-written.)

When setting up your online store, don’t skimp on the copy. You’ll end up like I did – with a page that’s nice to look at, but doesn’t accomplish a thing!

Want to learn how to write great SEO copy for your site? Check out Karon’s Step-by-Step Copywriting Course. Visit Karon’s copywriting blog to get her free ebook, Copywriting Makeovers.

Why then do so many landing pages fail miserably? Most often, it’s due to one of five errors. And, thankfully, all five are easily fixed.

• 1 Not understanding what a landing page is best used for. Yes, as I said above, a landing page *can* be any page of your site. But keep in mind I also said that was only true *if* the visitor was being sent to the page from some prearranged campaign. Joe Public who clicks to your Services page because he found a link in his buddy’s blog post does not equal someone visiting a “landing page.” However, if you place PPC ads about your service offerings and use a special URL for a specifically created page to greet and persuade your visitors, then you have created a landing page.

• 2 Failing to coordinate your campaign copy and your landing page copy. Site visitors click to your landing page because they saw something in your email, postcard or PPC ad that interested them. Sending them to a generic page that doesn’t coordinate with the promotion they saw is a deadly error.

If you send an email with a special offer just for World Wildlife Fund (WWF) members, then your landing page needs to make clear that WWF members have found the place they are looking for. If your PPC ad promotes free processing for one month for all new merchant account customers, your landing page needs to clearly and quickly communicate that. Visitors won’t tolerate being offered a free month and then be forced to dig for information about the promotion once they click to your site. Instead, they’ll simply leave.

• 3 Clearly defining your goal and call to action. So often, site owners and managers want to pack a landing page full of goals. “Well, while they’re here we might as well…” What one primary goal do you want to accomplish with this page? Once that’s defined, what specific call to action do you need to give to make your goal happen? Make sure everything in your copy measures up to those two standards. Giving too many options on a landing page is confusing to visitors and fractures their attention while on the page.

• 4 Be clear. Marketing Experiments once published an article entitled something to the effect of “Clarity Trumps Cleverness.” Skip the cutesy headlines and copy; instead, opt for clear information that is well written.

• 5 Write to your target customer and no one else. So many times, copywriters and website owners tend to write about the company and not to the customer. You should be speaking with your target audience singularly. Write in second person (“you” and “your”) instead of we-ing all over yourself with copy stuffed with “we” and “our” and “us.” It’s not about you.Change the focus of your copy to your customers. Instead of:Our products come with a lifetime guaranteewrite:You will receive a lifetime guarantee on all purchases.

True landing pages should never be generic. To work their best, they need to address the visitor, relate to the campaign, give informative copy, focus on a specific goal, offer a clear call to action and speak to your target customer. When you incorporate these elements into your writing process, you’ll find your landing pages convert with much greater success.

Subscribe to Karon’s Marketing Words Copywriting Blog today and receive your free target customer discovery questionnaire and Copywriting Makeovers ebook.

Your headline is the most-read component of your copy. It has an enormous impact on sales. Just because you’ve found one that works pretty well doesn’t mean there aren’t several others that pull even better results. This is why it’s important to test and tweak every headline on your website.

If you sell an ebook, you might have a primary headline (at the top of the page) and a few sub-headlines that are scattered throughout the copy. If you operate an ecommerce website, you’ll likely have dozens from the main headline on your home page to each of the headlines on every one of your product pages. They all should be tested regularly. PPC ads? You bet! Those headlines should have their turn at improvement as well.

Which One’s Best?

Anne Holland’s clever website, Which Test Won?, offers proof that testing and tweaking can make a huge difference. There are a couple of tests on headlines you can view including one that improved conversion rate of a lead generation form by 143%.

The point is, you wouldn’t know which of these headlines was the best until you tweaked your current copy and then tested the results. You could be happy as a clam with a 3.5% conversion rate, thinking you were well above the 1%–2% average, when in all actuality you could be realizing gains that are 20%, 50% or even over 100% greater.

Take it Slow

How do you test headlines? Unless you are well versed with multivariant testing, you need to only change one headline per page at a time. If you make too many changes on the same page simultaneously, you’ll have no way of knowing which change caused the increase/decrease in sales.

I recommend Google’s Website Optimizer. It’s free; it’s easy to use, and it is reliable.

What Do I Change?

Take a look around your site and plunder through your website statistics/analytics for ideas. Perhaps you’re only using one take on a particular product. For instance, if your website sells professional dinnerware to restaurants, you may be focusing your headlines and copy strictly on price. However, for upscale restaurants, quality or appearance may be more important factors. You could test headlines that bring out these features/benefits.

You could also test headlines using different:

• Keyphrases – Sometimes site visitors connect more with headlines that use the precise keyphrase they were searching for.
• Numbers – Switch up using “50% Off” with “Half Off” or “Fifty Percent Off.” Formatting numbers in different ways can produce significant increases.
• Target Segments – A laptop computer sales page might test mentioning business users, students or senior citizens in the headline.

It’s well worth your time to set up a testing schedule for the headlines on your website. You’ll be amazed at how much you will learn and what phenomenal improvements you can experience with very little effort.

Subscribe to Karon’s Marketing Words Copywriting Blog today and receive your free target customer discovery questionnaire and Copywriting Makeovers ebook.

“But how do I test my copy?” people ask. It’s actually very easy, thanks to some free tools provided by Google. Install Google Analytics, or have your web designer install it, and add the tracking code to every page of your site. Then start testing. You can do this by either comparing data in Analytics or by using Google’s free Website Optimizer to conduct A/B tests.

Website tests can get very elaborate, but they don’t have to be. Simple A/B tests (where you make one change and then compare the results between version A and version B) are the basis for most online testing. Set up two versions of the same page. Make a single change to one of the versions, then track the results.

It isn’t surprising to find that the slightest changes can pull the biggest lifts in conversion rate.

What You Should Test

Where do you start? At the beginning. There are numerous areas of any given page that can (and should) be tested. Let’s go over a few of them.

Headlines

By far, THE most-read section of any web page is the headline. Because of the importance of this snippet of text, it deserves to be tested often. I recommend starting with two very different headlines to see which pulls best.

Once there’s a clear winner, do some micro-testing. Exchange adjectives: instead of “great” use “awesome,” for instance. Play around with verbs: rather than “improve” try “increase.” Change the order of the words in the headline. Unless you are familiar with multivariant testing, make one change at a time until improvements level off.

If your copy uses sub-heads, repeat this same process to test them as well.

I have personally conducted tests that resulted in an 84% increase in conversion rate just by changing the word “creative” to “expert.”

Opening Paragraph

The opening paragraph is usually the second most-read section of a web page. While this content always needs to support the headline, test various ways of communicating your ideas to your visitors.

If you sell pet bedding, the copy on your Home page might read:

Handmade with love, these adorable pet beds are filled with 100% organic cotton padding to ensure comfort and a peaceful night’s sleep.

That has a very feminine tone. Change it up and test something like:

After romping through the woods or clowning around at the dog park, your best friend will sleep like a rock on these overstuffed, 100% organic cotton pet beds.

Other Areas to Test

What else can you test? Everything!

• Bullet Lists – If you don’t use bullet lists, add some. If you have them, change the order of the bullets.
• Captions - Switch up the captions under your images. Don’t have captions? Add some.
• Images – Change the images you use, or keep the same images and adjust the sizes to be larger or smaller.
• Text Color - Change a headline or important sentence from black to red or blue or green.

If it’s on your web page, the content can be tested. Take an inch-by-inch tour of your Home page. With each element you encounter, ask yourself, “What can I change about this copy?” Then set out to discover where improvements can be found.

By Karon Thackston © 2010, All Rights Reserved

Karon Thackston is author of the Step-by-Step Copywriting Course, now in its 5th Edition. Copy not converting well or boosting your search engine rankings? Get Karon’s self-paced web / SEO copywriting course at http://www.CopywritingCourse.com and learn to write like a pro.