How to produce engaging website copy that converts

Reaching potential customers with engaging content is the key to delivering increased conversions. But how do you write compelling copy?

Often, copy is written from the business’ point of view, but it’s the customer or prospective client that should be the focus. Remember, copy is your way of conversing with your customer. You need to understand what they want, and present them with solutions and answer their queries. At that point, you can convert them.

But to secure conversions, you need to get your potential customers to your website in the first place – and keep them there. Here are some proven techniques for attracting and converting people.

1. Have all the answers

Search trends quickly change with the times. You can soon be overtaken in search rankings by competitors if they’re responding to hot topics and answering questions better than you.

So uncover the questions your audience is asking and provide authoritative, comprehensive answers to them. But make sure you get to the point and supply a clear answer. That can even be the way to securing a coveted featured snippet spot on Google.

Blog content is an effective way to answer questions, but you can also do it on your product, category and other pages. FAQs are perfectly suited to this purpose, while case studies can showcase your knowledge.

Of course, the key to SEO is to keep it relevant, so don’t needlessly ramble on and derail the customer journey when they just want to buy something or register. Which brings us onto our next point.

2. Experience matters

Whether people are on a website to buy a product or get an answer to a question: they want to find it right away. Make sure your user experience is optimal and visitors can fulfil their search intent, or they’ll quickly head back to Google, with a newly developed mistrust of your site.

A golden rule in user experience is getting people to where they’re heading in as few steps as possible, pointing them in the right direction whenever direction might be needed. It’s vital to assess the user journey through your website. After all, you’ll only get conversions if people can get to the point where they convert. 

Heat mapping or A/B testing can help you discover the elements on your website that are performing well – and those performing not so well. A quick tweak on a call to action, for example, might produce better results – and more conversions.

3. Mind your language

A user’s journey through your website can also abruptly end because of the words themselves. If something is inaccurate or difficult to read, you can say goodbye to the reader. Or maybe you’ve just taken too long to get to the point and they’ve lost interest.

There’s no substitute for high-quality copywriting, which can make your content clearer, more engaging and perfectly suited to your audience. Copywriting 101 is framing your products or services as solutions to their problems, rather than telling them what you do. It’s about highlighting benefits for real people, not features of your products.

It’s worth conducting occasional audits of your site copy to weed out any pages that don’t adhere to simple rules like this. Quick fixes might yield pleasing results.

Nuances in the tone you use can also make a huge difference. You can win leads over by making your content friendlier, more compelling or just more of what the reader likes to see.

It’s especially important to keep copy concise and clear – yet enticing – at the point where you’re converting. If that’s a call to action asking people to submit an email address, spend time tailoring the language to your audience. Or if you need people to fill a form out, make certain that’s not a daunting or frustrating experience.

4. Make yourself useful

Got data insights into your industry? Great, package that data up into some useful infographics and make it as shareable as possible. 

Or can you create a video to illustrate some of the points your content addresses? Some people prefer to learn through videos and again, it could be a useful, shareable resource. Anything you can do to attract people to your site is a potential lead-winner, particularly if you can position your company as an authoritative source of information.

Wherever copy features on your site, tailor it to the audience you want to reach. Speak their language and keep it concise. 

You can lose a reader at any moment, so keep it relevant and interesting enough to push them on to the next sentence or action. Otherwise you can lose people because you’re not being clear and they don’t know where to go. But if you’re choosing your words carefully for your particular audience, you will give yourself the best chance of nudging people towards that all-important point of conversion.