Web­sites act like shop win­dows. Yours will show leads who you are and what you offer. Per­haps yours does a lot more, like gen­er­at­ing aware­ness, cap­tur­ing leads, or facil­i­tat­ing sales.

Either way, none of this would be pos­si­ble with­out the actu­al words fill­ing your pages. These words are known as web­site copy, and they have the pow­er to turn your web­site into a con­ver­sion machine.

But here’s the catch: any old copy sim­ply won’t do.

To make the most of your dig­i­tal real estate, you’re going to need engag­ing copy. For­tu­nate­ly, we’ll be going over all the ins and outs of how to do just that. Ready to ele­vate your web­site copy?

How To Write More Engaging Website Copy

Engag­ing web­site copy con­nects you with your audi­ence in ways that ben­e­fit your busi­ness. Bet­ter brand aware­ness, increased con­ver­sions, and more rev­enue are with­in reach when you can engage your audi­ence. Engag­ing copy also aces qual­i­ty and read­abil­i­ty checks, con­tribut­ing to bet­ter search engine rankings.

We’ve looked at the why; let’s dive into the how:

1. Determine Your Copy Goals

When you know what you want your web pages to accom­plish, you can refine your copy for rel­e­vance, engage­ment, and con­ver­sions. Con­sid­er what you want your web­site to do for your busi­ness. Next, think about the web pages that will sup­port these goals.

Final­ly, iden­ti­fy what you want the copy on these spe­cif­ic web pages to achieve. All of this will help you write with clar­i­ty and purpose.

2. Understand Customer Intent

Once you know what you want your web pages to do, shift your focus to cus­tomer intent. Vis­i­tors may come to your web­site for infor­ma­tion­al pur­pos­es, such as learn­ing more about your busi­ness, your prod­ucts, or your industry.

They may also want to com­pare offers and prices or actu­al­ly pur­chase some­thing. It’s up to you to under­stand what vis­i­tors intend to do on your web­site and see how you can make that expe­ri­ence as seam­less as pos­si­ble. With this in mind, ensure that your copy:

• Clear­ly states what your busi­ness does
• Artic­u­lates your val­ue proposition
• Com­mu­ni­cates the ben­e­fits of your offer
• Helps a vis­i­tor under­stand your busi­ness, prod­ucts, or indus­try better
• Helps vis­i­tors at dif­fer­ent stages of the cus­tomer jour­ney nav­i­gate your web­site and access what they need

3. Know Your Audience

To cre­ate engag­ing copy, get to know your audi­ence. Get clued up on what they want, what inspires them to act, and what makes them walk away. The fact is, with­out insight into what real­ly dri­ves your audi­ence, your efforts will fall flat.

Start your research by 1) explor­ing your cus­tomer’s char­ac­ter­is­tics and 2) under­stand­ing their point of view.

Customer characteristics

Com­pile demo­graph­ic (age, gen­der, income, loca­tion, etc.) and psy­cho­graph­ic (inter­ests, needs, val­ues, fears, etc.) infor­ma­tion about your cus­tomers. To gain an even deep­er under­stand­ing of their behav­iour, con­sult sources such as:

• His­tor­i­cal sales data
• Cus­tomer inter­views and feedback
• Social media comments
• Reviews on third-par­ty sites
• Sales and cus­tomer ser­vice staff

Once you have this infor­ma­tion, cre­ate per­sonas to bet­ter tar­get your audience.

Customer point of view

Engag­ing copy reads the way your cus­tomers speak. In oth­er words, you should describe things in their lan­guage. Doing so shows that you under­stand the cus­tomer’s point of view, and this estab­lish­es rap­port, trust, and credibility.

Cus­tomer voice can be deter­mined through cus­tomer reviews and sur­veys. These meth­ods offer unique insight into your cus­tomers’ prob­lems, expe­ri­ences, and expectations.

4. Perfect Your Offer

An in-depth under­stand­ing of your cus­tomers helps you per­fect your offer. Fol­low these guide­lines to make your offer irresistible:

Understand your offer

What is your prod­uct or ser­vice? What does it do for your cus­tomers? What makes it unique — and bet­ter than oth­ers like it? Writ­ing engag­ing copy requires you to lean into the unique qual­i­ties of your offer.

With your tar­get audi­ence in mind, gauge if your offer tru­ly fits the bill. If your offer isn’t quite right, even the best copy will only take you so far; you may need to go back to the draw­ing board to refine it. Con­verse­ly, if you’ve craft­ed the per­fect offer, your next task is to find the most effec­tive way to present it to your audience.

Focus on your value proposition

Great mar­ket­ing is about mov­ing a prospect from their cur­rent posi­tion to a pre­ferred one. Great web copy com­mu­ni­cates this so well that the prospect can actu­al­ly pic­ture them­selves in that desired state.

To achieve this lev­el of engage­ment, make your copy ‘ben­e­fit-dri­ven’ instead of ‘fea­ture-dri­ven’. While fea­ture-dri­ven copy describes the fea­tures of a prod­uct, ben­e­fit-dri­ven copy describes how the prod­uct can change a cus­tomer’s life.

Leverage your unique selling proposition

Does your prod­uct or ser­vice have a desir­able ben­e­fit that only it can deliv­er? If it does, you have a unique sell­ing propo­si­tion (USP). Hav­ing a clear and com­pelling USP can give your busi­ness a dis­tinct advan­tage, so lever­age it to engage and per­suade your audience.

5. Craft Frictionless Copy

In sec­onds, a web­site vis­i­tor scans your page to see if it has the infor­ma­tion they want. This puts a lot of pres­sure on you to struc­ture your copy opti­mal­ly. Do it poor­ly, and all your hard work goes to waste but do it the right way, and your copy becomes more acces­si­ble and engag­ing. Do this for a more fric­tion­less experience:

Front-load information

Front-load­ing infor­ma­tion means plac­ing the most impor­tant infor­ma­tion at the begin­ning of your copy. This helps read­ers spot the main points of your copy quick­ly and decide whether they want to con­tin­ue reading.

Keep things simple

To make your copy more engag­ing, keep it sim­ple and cus­tomer-focused. Use short sen­tences and para­graphs and avoid using com­pli­cat­ed terms or indus­try-spe­cif­ic jar­gon. Instead, use plain, relat­able lan­guage and avoid the pas­sive voice, as it can be more dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to understand.

Use compelling headlines

A pow­er­ful head­line grabs a vis­i­tor’s atten­tion and primes them for what’s to come. You only have a few sec­onds to make an impres­sion and per­suade a vis­i­tor to dive into the rest of your copy, so let those pre­cious bold let­ters count. Try front-load­ing your head­lines with ben­e­fits or fram­ing them as com­pelling questions.

Over time and with test­ing, you’ll get to under­stand what works best for your audience.

Use subheadings and bullet points

Large chunks of text can be intim­i­dat­ing and hard for vis­i­tors to read. To make the read­ing expe­ri­ence more pleas­ant, break your copy up into small­er blocks. Use descrip­tive sub­head­ings to turn these blocks of copy into digestible nuggets of infor­ma­tion. Where pos­si­ble, use bul­let points to make scan­ning your copy even easier.

Incorporate images, graphics, and videos

Adding visu­al ele­ments to your copy can be a game chang­er, not only for engage­ment but for con­ver­sions too. Images and graph­ics enhance the read­ing expe­ri­ence and make your web­site more appeal­ing. For even bet­ter results, incor­po­rate video into your strat­e­gy. In fact, adding videos to your copy can increase con­ver­sions by up to 80%.

Use keywords tactfully

While you want your web­site to tick all the box­es when it comes to SEO, sim­ply stuff­ing key­words and phras­es into your copy can make it unpleas­ant to read and will like­ly affect your SEO rank­ing neg­a­tive­ly. Instead, weave key­words into your copy nat­u­ral­ly to make it more engaging.

Make your copy mobile-friendly

With over 90% of the glob­al inter­net pop­u­la­tion now using a mobile device to go online, opti­mis­ing your web­site copy for mobile view­ing is cru­cial. By increas­ing read­abil­i­ty and ease of nav­i­ga­tion on mul­ti­ple devices, vis­i­tors are more like­ly to engage with your copy.

Use calls to action

When a poten­tial cus­tomer ven­tures onto your site, you want to push them through the stages of the cus­tomer jour­ney as smooth­ly as pos­si­ble. Not hav­ing a clear path to what they’re look­ing for can frus­trate a cus­tomer, so it’s up to you to pro­vide some direc­tion. This is where good calls to action (CTAs) come in: they guide site vis­i­tors and prompt them to take action.

6. Inspire Trust

To build last­ing rela­tion­ships with your cus­tomers, it’s impor­tant to estab­lish trust from the start. Trust is what deter­mines whether cus­tomers engage with your copy and do busi­ness with you. Let’s look at some of the best ways to cre­ate trust­wor­thy copy:

Let your brand values shine through

For your web­site copy to be authen­tic and engag­ing, your brand val­ues should come through in your copy. For exam­ple, if you want your brand to embody lead­er­ship and qual­i­ty, add case stud­ies, sta­tis­tics, expert endorse­ments, or cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als to your copy.

If there is a dis­con­nect between how your audi­ence sees you and how you want them to see you, your cred­i­bil­i­ty will suf­fer. To ensure this does­n’t hap­pen, con­duct mar­ket research into what exist­ing and poten­tial cus­tomers think about your brand.

Con­sid­er what val­ues they asso­ciate with busi­ness­es like yours and see how you mea­sure up. Once you have this infor­ma­tion, use it to write copy that reflects your values.

Perfect your brand voice

Your brand voice is the per­son­al­i­ty that comes through in your writ­ing. Per­fect­ing your brand voice and keep­ing it con­sis­tent helps dif­fer­en­ti­ate you from com­peti­tors. It also works as an iden­ti­fi­er and helps estab­lish an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with your tar­get audi­ence. Just remem­ber to keep your brand voice con­sis­tent. Oth­er­wise, you risk con­fus­ing your tar­get audience.

Add credibility to your copy

Incor­po­rat­ing sta­tis­tics from rep­utable sources and quotes from indus­try experts is a pow­er­ful way to enhance the cred­i­bil­i­ty of your copy. How­ev­er, it’s impor­tant to use these sparingly.

Include orig­i­nal data and research, such as case stud­ies or reports, to show­case the val­ue and suc­cess of your prod­ucts and services.

Addi­tion­al­ly, make use of cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als or social proof to make your copy more per­sua­sive and trustworthy.

Leverage storytelling

Did you know that sto­ries are remem­bered up to 22 times more than facts alone? This is because great sto­ries make con­tent more relat­able. By weav­ing them into your web­site copy, you can make your copy more authen­tic and compelling.

Not only do sto­ries build trust and con­fi­dence in your busi­ness and vision, but they also cre­ate vivid images in the minds of your audi­ence, allow­ing them to visu­al­ize your offer and engage with your con­tent in a more pro­found way.

Edit your copy

Always review and edit your copy to ensure that it is con­cise and con­sis­tent with the pur­pose of your web pages. Unnec­es­sary infor­ma­tion that does­n’t add val­ue to your copy or push you clos­er to your goals should be trimmed to pro­vide a more seam­less web­site experience.

Proofread your copy

To make a great first impres­sion, it’s impor­tant to have impec­ca­ble copy. Poor­ly writ­ten copy can be a red flag for vis­i­tors, as it is often asso­ci­at­ed with scam­my, low-qual­i­ty web­sites. To increase your cred­i­bil­i­ty sig­nals, check your copy for clar­i­ty, punc­tu­a­tion, and grammar.

Anoth­er tip for improv­ing your copy is to read it out loud, as this can help you iden­ti­fy awk­ward phras­ing. To get a fresh per­spec­tive, con­sid­er ask­ing ide­al cus­tomers to review your copy. This will help ensure that your copy is effec­tive and res­onates with your tar­get audience.

Test your copy

Don’t work on assump­tions; test your copy to see what res­onates with your audi­ence. Because test­ing every bit of copy can be resource-inten­sive, high-val­ue pages (those that prompt users to com­plete a clear­ly defined action) should be the focus of your tests.

Iden­ti­fy high-val­ue pages using Google Ana­lyt­ics and test mul­ti­ple ver­sions to arrive at the best-per­form­ing ones. You may want to test head­lines, copy length, CTAs and any oth­er ele­ments that sup­port your web­site goals.

Final Thoughts

Your web­site is the face of your busi­ness, and with engag­ing copy, you can turn it into a pow­er­ful tool for attract­ing and retain­ing cus­tomers. By clear­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing your brand mes­sage and val­ue propo­si­tion, you can estab­lish trust and cred­i­bil­i­ty with your audience.

More impor­tant­ly, you can dri­ve con­ver­sions and get that much clos­er to achiev­ing your busi­ness goals. Don’t miss out on the ben­e­fits of a tar­get­ed dig­i­tal pres­ence — take the time to craft engag­ing web­site copy.

Get in touch