Web Copy Has To Stand Alone
Back in the old days when print was the rule, things were static. What you saw was what you got. Every element of an advertisement worked together to create a single fixed effect. The finished ad or brochure or billboard 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 it’s no secret why. Magazine copy, direct mail, annual reports reach only so many people. Digitized versions can reach the whole world. So even when you do print, one eye is always on the web, since that’s where print materials are likely to turn up. And stay turned up for a long long time.
But the web is a very different medium. Web browsers don’t show a fixed creation the way the designers envisioned it. Browsers take raw code and separate files and reconstruct them as best they can. So what you see can look different in each different browser.
And different can mean very different. 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.
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 able to stand alone.
Entrance From Anywhere
It isn’t just that the look can’t be taken for granted. The logical flow can’t either.
When reading print, people normally 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.
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 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 with their ears while replying to email with their hands and browsing a competitor’s site with their eyes.
How much of your site do such visitors seen? A tenth? A twentieth? What order have they seen it in? Even they may not remember. How much do they come away with?
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 readers can drop in at any point, move in any order, and see get your message in ways totally different from the way you wanted them to get it.
But is it fatal? No. The fact is, web readers follow the news, not only visit sites but comment on them, read blogs and wikis and fanfiction, and make online purchases in the billions. Clearly people read online, and take actions and make buying decisions on based on what they read.
And that’s the key to writing effective web content. Because when you find things that work, you can study the process. And re-create it.
Web studies abound tracking the way people read and react to writing on the web. (The archives at Jacob Neilsen’s www.useit.com contain 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 be asked in that order. Start with who, not 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 they want to hear about you.
Say you’re writing copy for a travel agency web site. You write about the place, the sights, the prices, the cuisine. Why? Because what potential tourists care about is not you. They care about the tour.
Both categories of reader really want the same thing: information. But they want different kinds of information. Your first task as an online copywriter is to find out what that target readership wants to know.
Think of web readers as information hunters. They want to know something, and they want to find it out as quickly 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 straight and the want it now. Bang.
What sells is relevance. And relevance is only relevant in relation to a person.
Find out about that person. If you’re lucky, review the market research. And if 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. 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 comprehensive 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 the second ad looks like a good VW deal and could go any second? Ad Two sells because Ad Two tells.
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.
Take a potential client who needs marketing. He sees one business card with the word MARKETING on it, followed by the company name address. Then he sees a second business card that says Print, Direct Mail and Internet Marketing, Branding and Strategy, In-House Design and Production, 20 Years Experience, Free Consultation, followed by name, address, phone number and URL. 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. Give it to them.
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. And brilliant and memorable one-liners really do move people 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 while finished copy needs to be concise, I never advise being concise when writing the draft. There you should sprawl. Throw in all you can. 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 sharpen it to 200 words or even 100.
But remember: you can’t sharpen 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 supports and makes possible what you do see.
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, is 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 – because it may well be – does it work?
The criteria is not the total impact of the whole site. Because the studies are blunt: people just don’t read whole sites. They pop in and scan chunks. So our criteria has to be: do the chunks work? If all the pieces work together, great. 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 print 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.
