This is Ten Top Tips on ZINGING for your Website

That’s right, I used the word ZINGING. To ZING means to be snappy, precise, lively, exciting, motivating and influencing.  ZING is the opposite of PLOD.  PLOD means to be clunky, slow, dull, monotonous, confusing and boring.  If the copy on your website PLODS, then you’ve got a problem – no one will buy from you.

This is Ten Top Tips to get your website ZINGING:

1) Less is More

The Bauhaus may have drifted into obscurity, but their motto ‘Less is More’ is vitally important to your website copy.  Say what needs to be said and no more.  Make it simple, make it easy for people to understand your central message and make it easy for them to find what they came looking for.

2) Get to the Point

You need to express precisely what you do and precisely what the customer should do to get what they want.  Too many websites waste their visitor’s time droning on about when they were established and what their vision is.  All of this information is important, but keep it away from the important pages! Web copy readers are lazy, so within the first two lines of text, they need to know what they need to know!

3) Provide Solutions

Only a fraction of people using the Internet are actually looking to buy something immediately.  Most people surf the web for the answer to a problem that they have.  The best way to sell anything through your website copy is to position your product or service as the solution to their problem.

4) Benefits over Features

It’s the basic law of the Sales Jungle, but still people plaster the features across their website.  Think ‘What’s in it for Me’ from the customer’s perspective and tailor your web copy to provide benefits over features.

5) Small Friendly Words

Big words impress academics.  Small words sell.  Keep the words in your website copy small and friendly.

6) Negatives

Do not spend one second telling your website visitor what you can’t do, what’s not possible, what’s not included or why you can’t do something.  Don’t even entertain the negative.  If you have a returns or cancellation policy, word the policy carefully so that you do not suggest any negative reasons why they might return or cancel. Your website copy must completely free of negatives.

7)   Have a Plan

Your website copy needs to follow a basic copywriting plan.  Most professional copywriters have our favourite ways/plans for formulating web copy.  There is a certain psychological approach to writing website copy, this will help you keep things ZINGING and not go off on a tangent.

8)  AIDA

Featured in David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize winning play about salesmen, Glengarry Glen Ross – AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Decision, Action, these are the steps that your website copy should take your potential customer through.  Your website copy should:

√ Capture their Attention
√ Maintain their Interest
√ Lead them to a Decision
√ Help them take Action.

9)  Always be Closing

Also featured in David Mamet’s film Glengarry Glen Ross - when the film was released this became the mantra of salesmen everywhere.  ABC – Always Be Closing.  At every opportunity, your web copy should be aiming to close the sale, by all means inform your clients, provide incentives, persuade gently, even coax, but close – or you won’t have any clients, just well informed visitors.

10)  Don’t Overestimate Your Client

It’s dangerous to presume that your client is smarter than anyone else just because they are educated, professional or wealthy.  Human beings desire ownership, that’s why they call it consumerism; they have the urge to consume.  They also have the urge to belong and make their lives easier.  Websites that presume too much tend not to sell to their clients.  If you believe your clients are superior to the average web user, tailor your content to them by all means, but don’t stop closing just because you think highly of your client.

Mark Westbrook is a professional online content and copy writer, he runs WritingEngine, a company in Glasgow that creates SEO web copy and content.  If your website lacks the ZING it needs, visit www.writingengine.co.uk or contact Mark on This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it