When Creating a Website, Is Good Copy Enough?
By Susan Greene
You’ve drafted your website text, and you’re confident the content explains your products or services. Good web copy is a definite competitive advantage, but is it enough?
Unfortunately, the answer is no. You need a quality web design, one that underscores your company’s professionalism and credibility. It should give the visitor confidence that you are trustworthy.
A good web designer will help you create a simple navigation that allows your visitors to quickly find the information they seek and complete the tasks they want, whether that’s place an order, subscribe or simply contact you.
Applying some basic design guidelines can help your copy look as good as it sounds. Your web designer should incorporate white space to let the text breathe, use titles and subheads to make the copy scannable, employ bullets to catch the eye, and selecting an easy-to-read color and font.
Visuals like graphic elements and photographs should support your copy. They should tell the same story as your words.
While your main consideration should always be the user’s experience, the site should also be designed and programmed with the search engines in mind. In order for those spiders to crawl through your site, the paths must be clear and the navigation properly linked. Fancy introductions like those made in Flash, can be a barrier that hurts your site’s ranking. Simple, clean websites that make sense to visitors usually appeal to search engines as well.
Once your website has been written and designed, it’s ready to go live. Now you need to generate some traffic. After all, the most brilliant write-up on the Internet is useless if no one stops by to read it. If prospects aren’t buying from you, most likely it’s because they don’t know about you.
So how do you get your selling message in front of potential buyers? How do you reach your best prospective customers without spending a fortune? The answer is multi-dimensional: a combination of pay-per-click advertising, Internet PR, e-mail marketing, blogs, online social networking, cross promotions and more.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should also be an important part of your marketing mix. Certainly, you will have considered SEO as you wrote your copy and worked on the site’s design. Your goal should be to have your site appear in the top listings of search engines for your main keywords. Effective SEO can help you achieve high rankings that bring in targeted traffic and steady profits.
The combination of good web copywriting, quality design, marketing strategies and SEO will help ensure your online success.
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Need help with your company’s website? Whether it’s web copy, marketing strategies or search engine optimization, Susan Greene can help. Contact Susan, Florida freelance copywriter, at Susan@SusanGreeneCopywriter.com or 407-578-5528.
