Ultimately, everything is about website conversion rate. Whether you achieve it through content writing or any other method, you constantly want to improve your conversion rate. Through targeted online copywriting you can considerably improve the number of people doing business on your website.
Once they have arrived on your website, it’s all about keeping them there as long as possible and convincing them into doing business with you through engaging online copywriting.
You have a website to promote your business, ideology, cause, or simply to waste people’s time. Whatever you want people to do, the number of people doing it compared to the number of people coming to your website, is your conversion rate. Here is how you calculate your website conversion rate:
Here is an informative blog post on What is good conversion rate. The author correctly says that the industry perception is that 2.5%-5% is considered to be a good conversion rate but it can be easily taken to 11-15%, and in many other cases, even 25%.
Read: Can a web content writer help you improve your conversion rate?
Why do people worry about improving their website conversion rate?
Aside from the obvious reason – we all want to get more business out of our websites – people want to improve the overall performance of their website to reduce advertising costs.
Suppose, you are spending $2 for every click Google sends your way through your AdWords campaign. For 100 visitors, it means you are paying $200 to Google. If your convert 3 people and you are selling a product worth $75, by spending $200 you are selling your product worth $225. Your margin is $25.
This is not a good margin to have. You can either try to reduce the PPC cost (this can be achieved by creating more efficient AdWords campaigns), or you can try to improve the number of people buying from you (you should try both).
What if instead of 3 people out of 100 people, 5 people buy from you? Suddenly, your margin is $175. What if 10% buy? Your margin is $500.
This is one of the most obvious reasons why for many businesses improving conversion rate of the website, as much as possible, is very critical.
Aside from this, who doesn’t want to improve his or her website conversion rate, whether the person is advertising through AdWords or simply getting organic traffic from Google and Bing?
The connection between content writing and website conversion rate
There is a direct connection between how much helpful information is there on your website and how well your website converts.
There is a difference between content writing and copywriting and I will come to that later. In this section, I’m going to talk about content writing.
The purpose of publishing high quality content on your website is to provide highly relevant and useful information to your visitors. When they can find solutions to their problems on your website, on an ongoing basis, they begin to trust you.
Instead of constantly asking people to do business with you, let them associate you with useful information.
Take my blog for example. Although it is obvious that ultimately, I want people to hire my content writing and content marketing services, on my blog I try to share as much useful information as I can. Most of this information can be used by people to improve business on their own without ever having to contact me.
Still, there are many people who don’t want to create content on their own. They seek help. They know that I know my stuff. They’re constantly coming across my content on not just my blog, but also on Twitter, LinkedIn and other places.
When they’re looking for a content writer they know whom to contact. When they want someone to take care of their content marketing, they know whom to contact.
The same way regular content writing on your website can help you improve your conversion rate.
When it comes to improving your conversion rate with persistent content writing, it isn’t same as calculating your rate from a landing page.
For a landing page it’s easier to track your conversion rate because you know how many visitors you are getting from a particular link (from your AdWords campaign), and how many from these are actually buying from you.
Through content writing and content marketing, you improve your brand presence and when you improve your brand presence, your conversion rate improves. You may say that content writing doesn’t directly improve your conversion rate, but it becomes a medium.
Due to the strength of your content, you begin to improve your search engine rankings and your overall presence on the Internet begins to improve. People respect you for your knowledge and expertise. They would rather do business with someone they respect than someone they don’t respect or don’t know.
Here is how strategic content writing can improve your website conversion rate
- Eliminate all doubts: There might be many questions and confusions that stop people from doing business with you. Even when they try to find a business like yours, they search for questions and queries on search engines. Try to answer as many questions as possible through targeted and engaging content writing. Create an information hub on your website. Let there remain no question unanswered.
- Optimize your content for search engines: In order to improve your conversion rate you need targeted traffic. Optimize your content so that you get people from search engines who would actually want to do business with you.
- Highlight the value you provide: This I’m also going to discuss in the online copywriting section, but people are not interested in knowing how great your product or service is. All they want to know is, how you are going to improve their lives. Giving my own example, people are not interested in knowing whether I can write like James Joyce or Zadie Smith; they want to know how I can get more customers and clients for their business website. If I can convince them, I get their business.
How online copywriting can improve your website conversion rate
Talking about conversion rate and ignoring online copywriting is like trying to improve your health without talking about food.
I don’t intend to boast, but most of my clients who work with me the second time (repeat work) come back to me because of my online copywriting skills.
Persuasive writing is needed to improve your conversion rate.
There is a difference between content writing and copywriting. Anybody who can write well can be a content writer. For copywriting, you need to be able to convince people to trust you and then do business with you. The art of persuasion and your website conversion rate are inseparable.
As I have mentioned above, copywriting is all about highlighting your benefits in as convincing manner as possible.
Your customers and clients want to know what you can offer. You can let them know in drab, factual language, or you can talk to them in a conversational, friendly style to make them comfortable and to make them trust you.
The best way to improve your website conversion rate is through storytelling. Then they can relate to the characters of the story.
A story can be woven around how your product or service helps someone in trouble.
Suppose you run a helpline service for people whose car has broken. You provide an alternative means of transport. You get the car taken to the repair shop. You can also arrange other facilities like food and stay in case these are needed.
So, you can write a story about one of your customers called George who was stranded on the highway during a rainy night. Although he was 120 km away, your rescue truck driver drove in the storm, reached George, gave him dry clothes to wear and safely drove him to a nearby motel. Afterwards, the car was taken to the service station. An alternative car was provided to George in the morning so that he didn’t miss his important meeting.
This can be a moving story and many people will relate to it.
This is the power of copywriting. There might be thousands of helpline services like these, but you tell the stories of how you have actually helped people.
Effective online copywriting can immensely improve your website conversion rate because it addresses the real issues people are facing and not just addresses those issues, but also offers solutions in an engaging, interesting manner.
Here are a few pointers to use online copywriting to improve your website conversion rate:
- Write in a conversational style.
- Empathize with your audience.
- Mention everything important “above the fold”.
- Use call-to-action at strategic locations.
- Use smaller, compelling sentences.
- Avoid using links because you don’t want to distract people.
- Keep up the pace.
- Use language people are totally comfortable with.
- Focus on the benefits.
- Convince people that you totally understand their problem and you have exactly the solution they are looking for.
After having said all this, if you want to improve your website conversion rate you have to use a mix of persistent content writing and a sprinkling of occasional copywriting to convert visitors into buyers and customers.