Have you heard the phrase "it's always in the last place you look", well nothing is truer on the web.
When you find a trustworthy website that has the product at the right price, you will buy. You will not continue to search. Having the website that is the last place prospects look is obviously the ideal position to be in.
Trust is the key, beyond the price and even beyond getting the exact product. Without trust the price and product just doesn't matter.
When someone is looking at your website lots of things are contributing to whether they trust you or not. Some of these things are:
Layout
Graphic design
Security policies
Credibility of claims made in your copy
Legibility of your copy
Freshness
Now you could have the #1 position on Google or Yahoo! and be first, but no one will buy or call unless you can persuade the visitor to trust you.
Its a New Year, what better time to make some positive changes to your website. After all it is probably the biggest marketing tool your business has.
Some tips for getting the best out of your website in the New Year.
Define website objectives for 2008
Write down everything you would like your website to be doing by the end of 2008. For example "Reduce telephone support calls" or "Increase leads by 20% on last year".
Have a website idea jotter
You probably go through your working day having lots of ideas for content on your website. Perhap ideas for entries onto your FAQ page or information on a particular product or service you now offer. Jot down these ideas as you have them, then set time a side each month to decide which ideas should be sent on to your website designer to action.
Make seasonal changes
Keep your website current with the seasons, a small change to reflect a season can really pay off. It shows that you are up to date and current.
If you run a forum you will know how bad forum spam is. Hundreds of spam users signing up and posting with very unsavoury content. This often leaves forums unmanageable unless you can spend all day on it.
I have just found the phpBB AntiSpam Project that gives a good list of usernames and ip addresses to ban from you forum, hopefully reducing your spam.
Alot of clients tell us they are going to just rewrite their competitors copy and send that to us.
Some don't even rewrite it, obviously we don't allow that - another topic.
If you want to engage your visitors and persuade them to contact you rather than a competitor you must be different. Otherwise based on copy you aren't giving youself any more than a 50:50 chance.
So as you are writing your copy consider things that your competitors can't say about themselves. Write about what is unique to you and your business.
What value can you possibly add to a visitor's experience by simply repeating everything they have read elsewhere? Your visitors will respond.
It is important to stay in the mix once a potential customer has left your website. When I am looking for a product or service online I often just collect information before I make my decision. The easiest companies to do this with are those who send a brochure direct to my e-mail's inbox. No saving, no hassle, it is there when I pick up my e-mail.
We have added to our website this feature and the response to this has been brilliant.
We keep it short and to the point with just the necessary information. Potential clients can still be thinking about us once they have long left our website.
If you are receiving an error similar to "ERROR 550 Rejected at zen.spamhaus.org" when sending e-mail, this is an issue with your ISP (BT, Demon, Orange, etc.). Our mail servers check IP addresses that are attempting to send email against a database of known email spammers.
Don't worry this doesn't mean you are accused of spamming, your current IP address, used many times by other customers of you ISP, may have been in the past used for sending unsolicited email.
Two Solutions
Disconnect your modem or broadband router and reconnect you will probably receive a different IP address that isn't listed.
A good place to start your copy writing is by creating a list of everything you want to communicate on your web page. These list items will become the subjects of your web page's paragraphs. Now lets make another list of everything your website's visitors will want to know. Some of these will be duplicates of the previous list.
Now combine both lists, the items on your visitors list should take priority over items on your list and therefore should be at the top of the list.
For each item add sub items of the main points your paragraph will cover.
Taking the list flesh out each of the points into sentences. This is now the basis of your web page's copy.
From this process you will ensure that you have properly thought out what your visitor wants to know and it is in a stuctured form. Remember the most important points should always be at the top of the page.
