What Distinguishes Good Online Copy From the Bad

Aren’t you just appalled at what you can sometimes come across online? There are too many incidences when the only thing that makes a website stand out is its terrible copy, eye-catching simply because it’s so incredibly bad. Avoid being renowned for that and, instead, create unique, well-written copy that will boost your site visits and increase sales.
Below are both factors to steer clear of and others to keep in mind and incorporate when producing copy for your website.
What to Avoid
Badly written copy is one that fails to grab your attention (for the right reasons) in the first few sentences. Similarly to when you read a newspaper or magazine article, you want to be able to explain exactly what the content is about after reading just the very first paragraph. Don’t make your reader beat around the bush. Also, stay away from repetition.
Don’t, however, think you can get away with just writing a good introduction and then slacking from there on. Copy needs to be engaging throughout.
This comes hand in hand with burying the lead or, in other words, concealing the most important facts too deep in the text.
A simple mistake to make is to write too much. While you may think the more copy on a site, the more informed the reader will be and the more prone search engines will be to pushing your site up the rankings, text-heavy websites can actually prove to be a bad idea. People’s attention span online is even shorter than offline.
The most important thing to keep in mind is how smoothly your copy flows and whether it’s easy to read and comprehend. All too often you see websites whose copywriters’ main idea has been to squeeze in as many keyphrases as possible. This comes across as totally unnatural, makes it difficult to read and may affect your search engine rankings as they disapprove of keyword ‘stuffing’.
What to Do
Present your business or your product in a clear, honest way that’s straight to the point and strikes the right tone by being personal yet professional. Keep it short and simple. If you don’t have anything more to say about something, then stop right there.
Make sure to address your reader directly where possible to entice and engage them. Highlight the benefits of choosing your product or service to the individual.
Place keywords wisely and use synonyms for diversity and better readability. In terms of readability, your choice of words can also make a huge difference. It’s important to write in simple, easily comprehensible terms, only use descriptive adjectives if they really add value to a text and provide explanations of concepts some readers may not be familiar with.