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The Laws of Profitable Online Sales Copy

Web sales copy that sells has immutable characteristics:

1.  Bad Stuff Solved by the Good Stuff

Great web copywriting sets up the bad versus good argument.  You’ve seen this a million times.  The black-and-white clip of a woman fighting with her “old mop.”  Cut to:  color footage of the new, revolutionary WonderMop.  It’s a bad vs. good seesaw throughout your web sales copy.  At first, it’s more fifty/fifty.  Towards the end, it’s all good stuff.

2.  Short Sentences and Easy Grammar

Short and easy has always been a tenet of sales copywriting.  But crank up the dial even more with web copy.  On-screen copy is more difficult to read, even for the literate population.

3.  Vary the Graphics

“Graphics?  Why, that’s not my job.  That’s the web designer’s job.”  Wrong.  Sales copywriting is about graphics, too.  Examples:

  • Short or long paragraphs
  • Bullets
  • Short tables
  • Centered text
  • Boldface
  • Italics
  • Headers:  from <h1> to <h3>

4.  Realize You’re Selling an Idea, Not a Product

This was my big breakthrough as a web copywriter.  That’s when the copy started to flow easily.  And it’s such a basic concept.  Any freshman marketing major reads this in their first textbook, first day of school.  But I never took any marketing courses, so I guess I can be excused.  “Sell the sizzle,” is the old Madison Avenue rule.

5.  Use Active Voice and Strong Words

Instead of “You will want to buy this product,” say “Buy this product.”  Trim the dead words like:  the, a, an, and, for.  Starting sentences with a “T” word is sure to induce boredom:  “There is,” “The product,” etc.  Active voice means saying “Start the car” instead of “the car is started.”  Basic writing advice, not necessarily germane to web copywriting.

6.  Use Passive Voice in Headings, Blurbs, and Descriptions

Why change the advice now?  Active voice is still the gold standard for most web copy.  But this unusual piece of advice from Jakob Nielsen suggests that by turning some sentences backwards, you can frontload them with rich keywords.  So, instead of saying, “We suggest that you buy Viagra and home equity loans,” you would say, “Viagra and home equity loans were suggested by…”  Admittedly, this isn’t really an unshakable law, because it’s still so new.  We’re experimenting with it, though…

7.  Write to a Single Person…

…not to a group.