Why Web copy is all about ‘you’
When writing web copy remember these two rules.
- The 1% Rule – this is the tiny percentage of people who, on average, take some form of ‘action’ when visiting your web site. By ‘action’, I mean visitors who subscribe to your newsletter, contact you about your service or directly place an order. This means you may be losing 99 out of every 100 visitors to your site.
- The 8 Second Rule – research shows that, on average, 50% of visitors to a typical web site make a decision within 8 seconds about whether to stay on that site.
Not very encouraging statistics are they?
The good news is that there are a number of ways to decrease the likelihood that these numbers apply to your own site. The first is to make sure that your web copy is relevant to the needs of your visitor.
Most websites talk about themselves, what they stand for and how successful they are.
They have the mistaken belief they are communicating with the whole world. In fact, the very opposite is happening; they are communicating at a one-to-one level. Your web copy needs to reflect this. That’s why web copy should be all about ‘you’.
Using the ‘you’ word is the best way for you to connect with your visitors.
The Power of the ‘You’ Word in Web Copy
Surfing the web is all about self-gratification.
If what you read is not relevant and does not address your immediate needs, you move on. This means that warm welcomes are often superfluous, as are sophisticated graphics and animations.
More often, all you need is web copy with a simple statement or paragraph at the top of a page that contains the magic ‘you’ word within one or two sentences.
Do not underestimate the power of the ‘you’ word. As soon as you start to write web copy using ‘you’, you change the language, tone and impact of what you write.
I am sure YOU are get the message now. You are engaged in a one to one conversation with your reader so write as though you are communicating personally with them.
It is an old copywriting trick but one that most web copy fails to adopt.
Re-draft your web copy
If you are in doubt, and you don’t do this already, take a piece of text on your own website and re-draft it using the ‘you’ word.
Keep the tone slightly conversational as if you were telling a friend in a relaxed and informal way.
You’ll quickly start to move away from corporate jargon and make your web copy communicate with informal relevance.
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