Where Credibility is Key

When you write copy for your website, the main thing your readers are looking for is credibility.  What you’ve written has to tell them that they’ve come to the right place and that you’re the right people that they want to do business with.

Three years of research out of Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab in Palo Alto, California, says that website credibility comes from two components: trustworthiness and expertise.  In other words, your Web copy should strike your readers as being honest, and at the same time confirm that you are knowledgeable about the products or services that you deliver.

To help increase your website credibility, Stanford provides some guidelines for writing your web copy that I’ll summarize for you here.

Visitors to your website in cyberspace need to feel familiar with the real organization standing behind it.  So it’s a good idea  to include copy and photographs that show your visitors who you are.  A short, well written company history and some photographs of your offices work well.  Short bios and photos of your people work even better, and contacting them should be easy for your visitors to do.

Creating a professional image of your company requires a professional design of your website.  Effortless navigation and error-free content make your visitors’ experience more pleasant and engaging.  Additionally, providing references and links to support your claims shows your visitors that you’re confident about the products and services that you deliver.

To highlight your expertise, show your credentials and the professional organizations that you are associated with, but do show some promotional restraint.  People rarely appreciate a hard sell face to face, just as visitors to your website may be turned off by a hard sell online.

Finally, to ensure that your visitors know that your information is up to date, review your content frequently.  Add new information as it becomes available.  Even better, get one of your experts to write a blog that your visitors can easily link to.  Having a company blog helps you ensure that your visitors get current information without your having to change the content of your website so frequently.

Websites are often your first contact with potential customers.  To ensure you make an impact, review your web copy.  Credibility is what your visitors want to see.  Well crafted web copy is where they’ll find it.

The Mystery Technique

Today I’m going to reveal an amazing Technique for writing Web content that will keep your readers glued to your site.

If you surf the Web (and who doesn’t), you’ve seen this Technique before.  It’s been used recently in one Web advertisement that pops up on many sites.  Have you seen it?  It’s an ad for weight loss.  A cartoon of a portly woman in a black bikini magically sheds weight on a simple program that you can learn about simply by clicking.  This brings you to an online presentation giving you information bit by bit, keeping you hanging on till the sales pitch at the end.  By now, you’re hooked.

This Technique isn’t unique to Web writing.  Lots of writers use it to maintain your interest.  Mystery writers are particularly good at it, feeding you just enough information to prevent you from putting your book down until the last chapter. 

This Technique depends a lot on structure and style.  Each item of information you provide for your visitors needs to link seamlessly to the next one.  You can achieve this using what writers call ‘connectors’, which are words that connect one idea to another.  Many of these connectors, like therefore, additionally, and on the other hand, appear in your writing automatically.  They’re easy to use, yet they make a huge impact on your readers, helping them follow along with your content closely without losing track of where you’re leading them.

This Technique is essential for what Web marketers call Conversion Rate Optimization, or CRO.  Basically, CRO means using Web design and writing techniques to convert your visitors into buyers.  Statistics show that unoptimized commercial websites have conversion rates of between just 2.5 to 3.5%.  High-quality optimization, however, improves conversion rates by 200 to 300% on the average, with some increasing as high as 600%.

Do these conversion rates sound attractive to you?  Is this the kind of activity you’d like to see on your site?  Well then, it’s time you reevaluate your Web copy.  Read it through and see.  If you were a visitor, would this copy lead you to take action?  Would it convert you to a buyer?  If not, it’s time to rewrite and build this simple, useful, and powerful Technique into your Web copy.

And now, you’re probably wondering, just what is this magic bullet Technique?

It’s called… anticipation.

Can Search Engines Find Your Website?

Do you know what the most common online activity after e-mail is?  No, it’s not what you might think.  Actually, it’s search.  Internet users make billions of searches each month and every one of them is focused on specific information.  Typically, the websites that rank at the top of a list of search results are the ones that attract the highest volume of traffic.  That’s why it pays to ensure that your website is search engine optimized.

Basically, search engine optimization, or SEO, is choosing targeted keyword phrases related to your site, and ensuring that your site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search.  This involves research into the type of business you’re operating, the key phrases visitors use most often to search for businesses like yours, and assessing the amount of competition that you have.

SEO for your website works on two levels – first, what you say about yourself, and second, what others say about you.

What you say about yourself on your website must be useful and relevant to your readers.  Longwinded company histories and descriptions of your products or services are likely to be skipped over.  Simple, informative and engaging content works better to enhance your visitor’s experience.  At the same time, your content has to be noticed by Internet search engines, like Google and Bing.  Placing targeted keyword phrases describing your business in strategic locations such as titles, subheadings and introductions will help ensure that the search engines can find you.

Specific keyword phrases work best.  For example, if you’re running a small business as a beauty consultant and distributor of skin-care products in Klang, it won’t help you very much if you choose ‘cosmetics’ as your keyword.  A specific keyword phrase based on location and specialty, like ‘Klang beauty consultant’ will get you better results.

Great content generates links from your visitors, and more links tell the search engines that your visitors trust what you have to say.  That’s why SEO also involves getting the word out and promoting your content. 

Social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook are free content distribution systems that can help you build links with the help of your friends.  In addition, Blogging helps you keep your audience informed and linked without having to add content to your website.  Linking out to other blogs is also an effective way to get linked in.

SEO is both an art and a science, and that’s why there are professional Search Engine Optimizers who can help ensure that your site gets noticed.  It pays to see what they can do for you.  After all, when potential traffic is out there searching for you, you want to be found quickly.