We all know that quality design is going to attract new visitors to your site, but what doesn’t get discussed as often is how we get that design to function in a way that will enhance conversion rates and bring in more revenue...
Today I am going to offer five copywriting design tips that will help you get your pages converting faster than you can say jiminy crickets.
1. Keep it Simple Stupid, White Space Is Your Friend
The K.I.S.S. philosophy is in full effect for this one, and has proven to me time and time again that you DON’T need an outstanding design to attract conversions, all you need is a clear concise pathway or red carpet if you will, to the checkout page, lead form, phone number, whatever you are trying to convert and monetize.
White spaces make page scanning a breeze for your visitors who will mainly be panning the page looking for little tidbits of info they came crawling for, if your copy doesn’t stand out in the headlines you wont catch their attention. Short paragraphs are also your friend here as they will be read about twice as much as long ones, and that could mean the difference between a user leaving or staying.
2. Choose Appealing Fonts that STAND OUT
We all love beautiful fonts, however those beautiful fonts should never create a bad surfing experience for the user or make readability a chore. Clear, concise, easy to read, the goal here is to convey a message not a hieroglyph. The bold fonts can work well when combined with a lot of white space, and for heaven’s sake please stay away from handwriting fonts, this is the internet, not the 60’s.
3. Visual Aid Can Go a Long Way
Who was it that said a picture is worth a thousand words. Take that to the next level with engaging videos, podcasts and even digital shorts and animations to see how much you can drive your conversion rates through the roof. Most of the best sales pages on the web today utilize some form of visual aid, and it is recommended to ease the user across the page with more than just text.
4. Split Your Copy with Multiple Headings
Note how easy it is to read through this article. Everything is conveyed in its own heading and short paragraph to make reading a breeze. If you are not doing this for your readers you are driving up your bounce rates, lowering your rankings, and losing money. Categorizing your content into sections just makes sense and it helps those readers who came for something specific find it that much faster.
5. Keep it to one font color
While you may be tempted to throw up some uber headings full of zest and lifelike colors, in past studies this has shown to be a bad thing. Too many fonts and colors make your site look ugly and unprofessional, but even worse; they will hurt your conversion rates. Using two font colors can confuse your reader as to which is text and which is a link. Making headings a different color can work but again I would try to keep it as simple as possible.
Last words
Hopefully these five simple copywriting rules can make your web design and writing that much better, and I hope you have learned something at a bare minimum today. What are some other methods of usability you use for designing and writing, I would love to hear your feedback so leave a comment below and let’s start the discussion.
About the Author:
Lorne Fade is an Internet search marketer for 9th sphere a local SEO, internet marketing & web design firm located in Toronto, Canada.
About Lynn Terry
I started using multiple headings a while back and that has helped the look of my pages. I think it also helps with SEO as I try to use keywords in the headings.
Good points. There are a lot of ways to make your copy look a lot better. You can underline words to draw attention to them. Or you can highlight words. Bold text here and there works nice too. Quotation marks are good.
Short paragraphs work well online.
Squiggle lines and arrows are great too. Bullet points and subheads are wonderful. Just keep in mind. WORDS sell. Not images or gimmicks or logos. So make sure your sales copy is good.
You can do this by asking yourself this question.
“If I was sending my salesperson to qualified prospects to sell my products, would I want him or her to say what I’m writing? Will this close the deal?”
Happy selling folks.
Shane
It's also worth noting that it's a bad idea to justify text on the web. A lot of clients seem to ask me about this as so much printed copy in brochures etc are justified.
Different browsers handle this in different ways and this can lead to "rivers of white" between words which can make text very difficult to read particularly for those with Dyslexia.
I remember the "old days" where every site had those annoying blinking images to catch your attention. I am a big fan of short paragraphs, with bold headers - I like to browse an article and get to the point of interest...quickly.