USER ORIENTED WEBSITE INTERFACE Relevant Content & Copywriting YOU ARE HERE!

WEBSITE USEFULNESS: PERSUASIVE COPYWRITING

Communicate Your Distinctiveness to Your Prospects

You've found significant features in your products and services, and turned them into benefits. You've identified and developed your USP. It's potentially a winning combination. You still have to successfully communicate your distinctiveness to your prospects.

"The quality of your life is the quality of your communication. The quality of your communication is the quality of your questions. The quality of your questions come as a result of good listening. Good listeners ask great questions. Listen to the needs of your clients. Then you'll know what questions to ask." (Jay Abraham)

You've studied your targeted audience carefully, as defining your audience and their goals and needs foregoes the process of information architecture design. Therefore, communicating to your target audience should not represent a problem. Especially because there are quite a lot of concepts and tips on persuasive website copywriting. Most based on common, everyday logic. You should create:

• an attractive layout that attracts your prospect's attention, and conveys it to the headline
• a appealing headline that arouses interest in your product or service
• several paragraphs on the most impressive benefits your product or service offer
• several paragraphs demonstrating how others have benefited from specific product or service - to establish it's credibility (testimonials, case studies, results, etc.);
• a call to action - if you want your users to buy, or just go to the next page, you should state it clearly.

So, if you recognize the needs and problems of your prospectors, and know how to present your products or services as the solution to problems, why is it still possible that your website copy is not compelling to them, and does not motivate them to act?

Your target audience is NOT uniform. What motivates some may or may not motivate others, if they belong to different personality types. Learning about people's personality types helps us to understand their reactions to situations, and ensures the most effective way to communicate with them.

Ideally, you would know which personality type the majority of your prospectors represent. But even if they belong to the most commonly encountered category - research shows that "over 40% of Americans fall into the Steadiness category" (Karon Thackston, copywriting expert), what about the other 60%? Your website copy might still be repellent to them. That's why basic knowledge on Personality and Social Psychology could be quite helpful when writing a persuasive website copy.

There are different theories on personality types, from the well-known Jung research to Briggs-Myers theory, based on the sixteen personality types, to Moulton-Marston's DISC model, defined on four main descriptors.

Regardless of the model you find the most suitable, different personality categories typically react differently, and their basic motivational factors and behavioral patterns could be recognized. That way writing a persuasive website copy becomes less complicated.

Likewise, you should concentrate your message around solving problems and offering benefits connected to three primary consumers' needs, to ensure a motivational copy on any product or service:

The above suggestions, based on common logic principles, could be used to "sell any product or service - it works for online advertising as well as for ads in brochures, magazines and newspapers", according to Jennifer Stewart.

The bottom line is to know your target audience, meet their needs, keep the emphasis on the prospects and not the products, and communicate successfully with people on an emotional level. The believability, sincerity, intensity and the focus of your communication will significantly influence the persuasiveness of your website copywriting.

Although it's crucial to utilize user-oriented website copywriting, the fact that ONE IN THREE AMERICANS USE A SEARCH ENGINE can't be ignored. The solution is simple - integral approach that would satisfy all! Wrapping It All Up: Optimize Your Copy for Users AND Search Engines >>

User Oriented Design & Ethical Website Marketing Strategies by Distinctia, 2006