Building The First Line Of Your Web Copy For Success

Your website is a 24/7 salesperson. You need it to be ‘selling’ right out of the starting gate. In fact, your web site should be the next best thing to a salesperson talking to a prospect or customer. In other words if you don’t write the first line of your web copy for success, then why have a web site at all?
Despite what people try to tell you, writing for the web IS different.
o You need to be brief and concise
o The words have to be descriptive and powerful
o The message has to be concise.
o Lots of white space
o Use Lists and bullets
People browsing the web need to be pulled up fast when they land on your page, or they will move on if your very first sentence doesn’t engage them. When writing web copy for success the opening is the key.
But if you are too wordy, then the reader goes away as well.
Hooray for short attention span readers, they give us an opportunity to outdo our competition.
In saying that we need to use strong words that stand by themselves without adverbs or adjectives. People are in a hurry and will leave if they get slowed down by your writing or have to mentally compute to get your message.
If it’s a concise message they will understand it fast and then go to your most wanted response (the reason why you want people reading your copy).
Which brings us to white space.
For some reason writers are scared of it.
They think that if there is too much it means they have nothing to say and the reader might leave.
On the contrary, I think that the use of white pace makes web copy easier to read.
And your message is simpler to understand – I use it a lot in any web copy for success that I write – you should too.
The last point is the use of bullets and lists. I should also have bulleted headers and subheads too when I made the list, because a skimmer will be drawn to those on their own. Written well, headers and subheads can tell the story clearly enough to stop the skimmer in their tracks, and get them to act.
And the list is easy to read, and sums up what the page is about anyway.
So there are a few pointers if you want to write web copy for success. Easy rules to follow really, and backed by years of experience. Try them, use them and profit by them.