Internet Copywriting - Writing Website Sales Copy

The first thing you should have on your mind is who you are targeting. You need to know and understand the motivations and desires your potential customers have.

People buy from the heart and not the mind (despite what people like to think). You buy a sports car because it goes fast and you'll look cool in it - not because of the metal used in it's chassis, or revolutionary new air breather or whatever.

The words and phrases that you choose must be dictated by your visitors. Don't use words that are not in their natural vocabulary. A good way of doing this is to work out what newspaper your target market regularly read, and check what language it uses.

Sell the benefits not the features. People buy benefits (what's in it for me) and not for features (this product has this and this and this). Both need to be mentioned, but it's the benefits that must have the most prominence.

Always remember, it's not about you, your product, your great website - it's about what your potential customer wants.

"No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence,
or whose attitude is patronizing."

E. B. White

There are two things that often get confused, and used incorrectly.

Those two things are benefits and features.

Product benefits list all of the things that a product does to produce a positive reason for owning the product. The benefits are all of the positive changes that a person can expect to have by owning the product.

The features of a product are the things that make up product itself that produce the positive effects that make the benefits achieveable.

A product's features are things such as the air cleaning filter that is included in a humidifier. The benefit is the cleaner air that is coming out of the humidifier.

Push the product's benefits rather than the features. Buyers like to know about what a product features, but they're much more interested in what the benefits of the product are - "what's in it for me".

"Making the simple complicated is commonplace;
making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

Charles Mingus

1. Make sure that the text is easy to read. Use a black clean font such as Verdana or Arial, and keep the text uncluttered. Keeping it readable should be the most important aspect of writing internet copy because of course, copy that's hard to read is not going to get much reaction.

2. Your first headline must grab the interest of your target prospect. The headline must get the reader to want to continue to reading your sales copy.

3. Sub-headlines should be placed in an order that addresses the readers core wants. Each sub section should relate to the whole topic of your sales letter, while making its very own point to the subject.

4. When writing sales copy, promote the benefits to the product. This will sell the product over any other aspect.

5. When appropriate use testimonials. Prospective buyers are more likely to purchase a product that is given a testimonial by another owner of the product.

6. Do not use links that leave the page. The last thing you want to do is give a potential buyer a link to a page that they cannot buy from. There's a good chance they'll get distracted and not return to purchase the product.

7. Include a "call to action" in your copy. Keep reminding the reader to buy, making it as easy as possible with direct links to the order or payments page.

8. Using long copy will give you the ability to include all relevant information in one page. Short copy will give less information on a page and require several pages to include all relevant information. It's a balancing act as to which is right for your product. The only way to know is by continual testing one vs. the other.

9. Use a "P.S." at the end of a sales page to add more relevant information, reinforce the key benefits, while making the reader aware that you'd like to give them all information necessary.

10. Use split testing in order to improve your sales with your sales copy.