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Web Copy Has To Stand Alone
In the olden days when print was the rule, what you saw was what you got. Every element of an advertisement worked together to create a single, static, optimal effect. The finished product looked the same to every reader every time.
Those days are dead. Print still counts, but not the way it did. The way we write now is for the web. And the web is a very different medium. Web browsers don’t show a fixed and finished reproduction the way the designers imagined it. Browsers take code and reconstruct it as best they can. The screens may be visual but what shows up there looks different in each different browser.
Images can be turned off to save download time. Type can be halved or doubled or in size, depending on the viewer’s default setting. The viewer may be blind and use a program that speaks the text aloud. Copy can appear on a massive monitor running multiple screens simultaneously. Or on a 50-inch WebTV. Or on a mobile phone screen the size of a postage-stamp.
You can be fairly certain that in most cases browsers will be looking at an end product sort of close to what the web designer wanted. Maybe. But you have no assurance.
So the online copywriter has to work on the assumption that none of the visual elements that normally support the copy – not even typography -- will do so.
The copy you write has to be written so that it stands alone.
Entrance From Anywhere
It isn’t just that visual appearance can’t be taken for granted. Logical flow can’t either.
When reading print, people generally start at the beginning, move through the middle, and go on through the end. The logical stages of an argument, a presentation, a process, unfold in clear sequential order.
Not on the web. Readers enter your site from any page, not necessarily the home page. And they progress through it any way they please.
They leap away to other sites via hyperlinks. They scan, bouncing from sub-head to pull quote to pop-up window. They may follow a link into your site at a page devoted to your staff’s bios. They may jump next to the links page, see one they like, and click away never to return. Or bounce back and hop over to the FAQ or the corporate blog, or bookmark it to del.icio.us where they (and thousands more) may access it later. They may click an mp3 file to listen to your pitch while replying to email or browsing a competitor's site.
How much of your site do such visitors seen? A third? A tenth? How much have they come away with? What order have they seen it in? Even they may not remember.
Again, web copy has to stand alone. It's isn't just that it has to work independently of the visuals or the surrounding imagery. It has to work independently of the surrounding pages. Sometimes even of the surrounding paragraphs. Writing for the web means creating content that makes instant sense or gets instant interest regardless of overall context.
Can Effective Web Copy Be Written At All?
Sounds bad, doesn't it? Well, yes. Your site's reader can drop in at any point, move in any order, and see something wholly different from what you expected him to see.
But is it fatal? No. Web readers follow the news, read blogs and wikis and fanfiction, and even make online purchases. Billions, in fact. Obviously people read online, and take actions and make buying decisions on what they read.
And that’s what saves the day. Because when you find something that works, you can study the process. And re-create it.
Web studies abound tracking the way people read web copy online and how they react. (The archives at Jacob Neilsen’s www.useit.com house a Niagara of material on the subject.)
In my case it’s led me to four principles that I continually keep in mind when writing for the web:
Who Are The Readers And What Do They Want To Know?
That’s the first question to ask. And it should always be asked in that order. You start with who, not with what.
Say you’re writing a travel blog so your family can follow your foreign tour. They want to hear about your feelings, your experiences, your surprises. Because the main thing they care about is you.
Say you’re writing copy for a travel agency web site. You write about the place, the sights, the prices, the cuisine. Because the main thing potential tourists care about is not you. It's the tour.
Both categories of reader really want the same thing: information. But they want different kinds of information. Your task as an online copywriter is to find out what it is, and so your first task is to get a sense of who you're talking to.
Think of web readers as information hunters. They want to know something, and they want to find it as quickly and clearly as they can. They don’t want to have to dig for it and they don’t want to have to puzzle over it. They want it now. Bang.
But what they want is the information that matters to them. Stuff that readers don't care about isn't information, just verbiage, however concisely you serve it up. What sells is relevance. And relevance is only relevant in relation to a person: a person who represents a target market.
If you're lucky, review the market research. And if you not and you don't have any, talk to a few actual target prospects or check out where they chat on the web. The more you learn about the prospects, the better the eventual copy.
Long Copy Still Sells
What? Long copy sells? "But I thought web readers barely read at all?"
Readers don't. Buyers do. Long copy sells – to serious buyers. And those are the only kinds you really need to consider.
The fact is, not everyone who visits your site or reads your online piece is a likely prospect. Some are. Some aren’t. And most aren't. Most visitors flicker in, have a glance, and click away.
But people seriously interested in a subject, people who are seriously thinking about making a purchase, will want more information not less. And they will go through it. Don't think of it as long copy. Think of it as rich content.
Example. Imagine that you want to buy a Volkswagen. You see two classified ads.
Ad One: “Car For Sale. Contact POB XXXX.”
Ad Two: “2004 VW. 20,000 Miles, Perfect Condition, Inspected, Automatic, A/C, CD Stereo. Price
Negotiable. Must Sell By Tomorrow! Call XXX-XXXX.”
Ad One is short. Which in principle is fine. But are you really going to send a letter to a P.O. Box and wait to see if that car even is a VW, when what looks like a good VW deal could go any second? Ad Two sells because Ad Two tells.
This principle doesn't just work for product sales. Take a prospect who needs marketing. He sees a business card with the word MARKETING on it followed by name, address, and contact info. Then he sees a second business card that says Print, Direct Mail and Internet Marketing, Branding and Strategy Consultation, In-House Design and Production, 20 Years Experience, followed by contact info. Which card is more likely to lead to a call?
A consumer making a low-cost purchase may buy casually, but when business people in business-to-business situations make a decision, they want as much relevant information as they can get.
Don’t misunderstand. Prospects don’t read your writing for the joy of savoring your elegant prose style. Short sentences, short paragraphs, and straight-to-the-point copy remain the rule. But that doesn’t mean you cut down on content. Far from it.
Content is king for a reason: it rules. And while it’s smart to serve it up online in short sentences, serve up more content rather than less. Substance still sells, and a rich amount of strong selling content is always stronger than copy that’s information-starved.
Write Long Cut Short
Short sentences, short paragraphs, and straight-to-the-point copy definitely works well on the web. No question. Unfortunately that may lead you to think that not only is it good to write short, it’s good to think short too.
This is the ‘Just Do It’ school of copywriting: an approach that focuses on creating striking one-liners instead of persuasive appeals. It’s not entirely without merit. Brilliant and memorable one-liners really do fall happily out of the blue sometimes. But copywriters who think of themselves as Jay Leno rather than salespersons are playing a risky game.
The focus of commercial writing is never the writing. It’s the product. And making a good loose case for the product during the draft helps you hone a sharp concise case in print. And a crystal-concise one on the web.
Think of it in terms of process. To write 500 words of good print copy, you may well have to write a thousand or two thousand words of bad draft copy. The draft is where you sketch, try different approaches, brainstorm. When final draft time comes around, you trim and compress that amorphous blob till it reaches 500 tightly focused words fit for print.
To write good web copy, you keep trimming. You condense it to 200 words or even 100.
But you can’t condense something that just ain’t there in the first place.
Good print copy is like the proverbial iceberg. The tip is visible, but 90 percent lies underwater. Good web copy? 95 to 98 percent may lie underwater. But it's what you don't see that makes what you do see visible.
When you write, my advice is this. Make the linear case first. Study the product in depth. Look at the research, understand the target market. Be thorough. When writing the first draft, sprawl.
And then?
Think Chunks
Once you get the long copy drafted, chop. Cut it down. Break it up. And – if it’s headed for the web – make sure each stand-alone section is comprehensible on its own, compelling on its own, and is interesting enough to make the reader want more.
The test for print copy is generally to read all the copy. That's a luxury you can't afford online. You have to judge each piece of copy on a page-by-page, sometimes a screen-by-screen, basis. Does each screenful of text affect the reader in a way consistent with the marketing goal? If that one screen is all the reader sees – and it may well be – does it work?
The criteria is not the total impact of the whole site. Because the studies are blunt: people don't read whole sites. They read chunks. So our criteria has to be: do the chunks work? If all the pieces hang together, cool. But they have to work effectively separately. Because separately is all that most viewers will ever see.
The Way We Write Now
There are times when I think that there is no such thing as body copy anymore. Only headlines. The art of writing copy for the web is in many ways the art of crafting subheads, labelling buttons, and unobstrusively inserting keywords. (Which brings up the whole question of writing for search engine optimization -- a future article in itself.)
All in all it can be a very fragmentary perspective. Not every copywriter has made the transition gracefully, and not all the web copy you see is graceful.
But the huge change in mediums hasn't meant a huge change in fundamentals. On the contrary. Copywriting isn't a kind of writing. It's a kind of thinking. It's asking the question: what can you say that will persuade a person do something? What combination of words will grab attention, change a mind, open a wallet, move a heart? Answering that question is still the goal.
David Pascal has nearly twenty years of freelance and in-house experience in marketing, advertising, and corporate communications. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of the State of New York, and a second bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, David began his career in marketing and advertising as an illustrator, became a marketing agency copywriter, and subsequently added web design skills to the mix. He has taught copywriting at the nationally celebrated writing center Writers & Books, published numerous articles, and spoken on marketing and other subjects at the Rochester Institute of Technology and other colleges and institutions. Contact information and samples of his writing and design work for clients is available at his web site at www.davidpascal.com.
Email:
davidpascal@gmail.com
Company Profile:
Pascal & Associates
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