How Online Copywriting Works?
When writing for the web, it does not mean that traditional approaches to copywriting need to be ditched. The foundations remain. The first step you need to take is to research your audience, understand their needs and write copy that solves their problems while engaging with them.
Knowing your audience will guide you in determining the topics that they want, and help you to organise information in a way that makes sense to your audience. It will direct the tone of your copy, as well as the content.
However, the Internet has lead to an audience of one (Price and Price, 2002). What does this mean? While your audience is not literally one person (and if it is, thank your mum for reading your web site, but spend some time on growing your readership), it is not a vast, vaguely defined crowd. Instead, online we have many niche audiences who are used to being addressed as individuals. Online, many of the individuals in our audience also exchange information via blogs, forums and other forms of social media.
Holly Buchanan of Future Now (www.futurenowinc.com) sums this up with three questions you should ask:
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Who is my audience?
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What actions do I want them to take?
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What information do they need in order to feel confident taking action?
Personas
Personas are based on the profile of readers of your copy – the visitors to your web site. Creating a profile is all about considering the needs and desires of your web site visitors. For example: how do they make purchase decisions: do they compare lots of service providers before selecting one, do they make lists of questions and call in for assistance with decision making, or do they make purchase decisions spontaneously based on a special offer?
Web site copy can be structured in such a way that it caters for several personas, but you need to spend time understanding their needs before you are able to write copy that addresses these needs.
Understanding the profiles of your readers is an important process, and the best copy usually results from extensive time spent figuring out your audience.
Copy that is easy to read
Online copy is judged at first glance by readers not just on its content, but first and foremost on its layout. It needs to appear to be easy to read before a user will choose to read it.
A good online copywriter will also be able to use basic HTML to layout copy, knowing that it is the appearance of the page that will get his words read. It should be easy for users to skip and skim the copy, and it should be easy for them to find the parts that are most relevant to them.
Online copy should be easy to scan. This means making use of:
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Bulleted and numbered lists
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Short paragraphs
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Clear and concise headings
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Bold and italics
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Descriptive links
It’s easy to see this in practice.
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Before |
After |
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Tea has been drunk for thousands of years, and as people are growing more health conscious, tea sales are increasing. Personal preference plays an important role in making the perfect cup of tea. However, using fresh water ensures maximum oxygen in the tea, and warming the teapot first is standard practice. Tradition dictates one teabag per person, and one for the pot. Tea is served with milk, lemon, honey or sugar, according to taste. |
Worldwide, tea sales are increasing as people are becoming more health conscious. Here are some tips on making the perfect cup of tea:
The perfect cup of tea is based on personal preference and taste. Tea can be served with:
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Because visitors need to decide quickly whether or not to read 
a page, the most important information needs to be at the top of the page. Start with the summary or conclusion – the main idea of the article.
While clever word play in headings and titles can attract some attention, online these need to be written as descriptively as possible. The copy is multi-tasking: not only is it informing visitors of what to expect, it is also telling search engine spiders what the page is about.
Learning to use HTML
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, and it’s the foundation of documents on the Internet. HTML tags tell browsers how to present content. HTML tags are in the brackets that look like arrows: < >
When writing online copy, you can use an HTML editor, where you insert the tags yourself, or a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor which works in a similar way to a word processor.
Basic HTML is not hard to use, and will help you to layout your content. Here are some basic HTML tags:
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To bold: <strong>phrase you wish to bold</strong>
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To italicise: <em>phrase you wish to italicise</em>
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To underline: <u>phrase you wish to underline</u>
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To list :<li>lines you wish to list</li>
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To create a paragraph: <p>paragraph text</p>
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To insert a line break: <br/>
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To insert a link: <a href=“page url”>phrase you wish to link</a>
The tags also help search engines to identify how the content has been laid out on the page.
The best way to get to grips with HTML is to start using it online, where you can see how the tags work.
