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Capital letters

I learned from some of the best people in the advertising business how capital letters work. The secret is that most of the time they actually STOP people reading!

Take a headline – if every word starts with a capital, the eye stops at each word – this means that they read one word at a time instead of the sense of the whole sentence.

In some marketing material this can work – if you know how to construct a sentence using key words that connect individually with the reader – like ‘Free’ ‘New’ ‘Save’ ‘Exciting’ – just read the guru, Ted Nicholas, on what words attract people. However, when you’re writing a headline on a website to engage the reader, this is not the best way to go about it.

Stick to using capital letters for proper nouns (names), otherwise lower case letters will do the job!

Home page layout

I’ve been reviewing home pages for the last couple of weeks and after looking at around 70 different websites I feel as though I can talk about what works and what doesn’t with a degree of authority!

Let’s look at a few basics that make a home page work effectively:

1. Your brand needs to be consistent; not only on every page, but also should be recogisable as what is on your business card, letterhead and any other material you have.
2. Your menu should either be horizontal, running across the page under the masthead (your identity and brand), or vertically on the left.  Menus on the right don’t work – it isn’t where people naturally look for them.  Horizontal menus must fit comfortably across the page on a single line.  If you have too many choices to do that, don’t be tempted into a second line of choices.  And it should be one menu, not one here, one there and one somewhere else!
3. Your headline should occupy your prime real estate – that’s about one third of the way down the actual screen – and should start about 2inches (5 cm) in from the left hand edge.  People feel uncomfortable trying to start reading from right up against the left side of the screen.
4. If you’re asking people to sign up for anything give them a good reason to do so – a free report, and tell them what it is e.g.  ‘Get your free report Six secrets to a successful strategy’ etc.  Don’t ask for any more information than their name and email.  The ideal place for a sign up box is on the right hand side, below the masthead (and menu, if it’s across the page) – and it should be part of the template so it appears on every page.
5. Copy should be left aligned, in a clean sans serif font (Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet) and not something busy like Times, Palatino or Garamond.  Don’t justify paragraphs so all the lines are the same length – it’s hard to read – as is centred text.
6. Copy should not run to more than two screens and should include a call to action in the final paragraph that appears as a hyperlink (not click here, but explore your options)

If you follow these pointers your website will be clean and attractive to the eye – and you’ll have a much better chance of keeping your reader.

Visit www.insidenews.co.uk to find out more about our services.

Something unusual – read this!

I don’t make a habit of promoting products, but being, indirectly, a marketing person, I think anything that helps people to market their businesses effectively is a good thing!

Hannah McNamara, author of ‘Niche Marketing for Coaches’ is making an irresistible offer – because for this week only you can buy a copy of Niche Marketing for Coaches and receive an amazing set of bonuses worth nearly £400.

The book is a step-by-step process that will build a thriving coaching practice through the power of niche marketing.  Even if you are not a coach you’ll learn plenty about marketing that you can apply in your own business.

The bonuses?  Read on – and you’ll find that one will give you a free review for your website home page offered by us!

Bonus #1: CD worth £20 – ‘How to Find Your Niche’
Hannah McNamara, author of ‘Niche Marketing for Coaches’ is interviewed by Lola Fayemi. Listen as Lola picks Hannah’s brain to find out just how to go about selecting a coaching niche. Lola is a coach in her first year of business, so she asks all the questions that come up for both new and established coaches.

Bonus #2: Homepage review worth £125 – ‘The Goldfish Review’
Would you like a stickier website? Let readability expert Lesley Morrissey review your homepage and receive a free report suggesting changes to make your website more successful.

Bonus #3: Free directory listing worth £120 per year
A marketing space in the new and exclusive Wellbeing directory. (Launching October 1st 2008).

Bonus #4: Audio recording worth over £50 – ‘The Insider’s Guide to Online Press Releases’
Krishna De of Biz Growth News hosts this masterclass on how to attract your ideal clients and raise your media profile using no-cost online PR strategies.

Bonus #5: Free bulletin worth £29.99 – ‘How To Set Up Your First Life Coaching Website and Get Clients From It’
ICF accredited life coach, Mary McNeil offers invaluable information on how to get clients from your website.

Bonus #6: Ebook worth £20 – ‘The Beginner’s Guide to TV Interviews’
Joanne Mallon is the Media Coach, this ebook will show you how to be seen on TV as the expert in your field.

Bonus #7: Ebook worth £20 – ‘A Business To Love’
Business coach, Judith Morgan shares her A-Z of business success. Learn from the mistakes of a successful businesswoman.

Bonus #8: Free value assessment – ‘Are you selling yourself short?’
Nicole Cohen of the Marketing Gym offers a value assessment tool so you can find out what you are really worth to your clients.

Bonus #9: Discounts on books from the publisher of ‘Niche Marketing for Coaches’, Thorogood and public and distance learning courses from Falconbury

Bonus #10: Ebook worth £9.95 – ‘Getting Your Message Across’
Also known as the Book Midwife, writing and publishing expert Mindy Klein-Gibbins offers this ebook for budding authors out there.

Bonus #11: Ebook worth £15 – ‘8 Steps To A Profitable Ebook’
Sandra DeFreitas, “Tech Coach for Coaches” takes you through an 8 step plan to writing a profitable ebook.

Bonus #12: Audio recording – ‘Building Direct Response Websites’

Alun Richards of Branding You offers a downloadable mp3, and workbook on the 5 critical mistakes made by coaches with their websites.

Bonus #13: 60 days free membership of www.marketinghelpforcoaches.com

A 60 day trial of the Marketing Help for Coaches community including access to articles, downloads, interviews, forums and more….

Order ‘Niche Marketing for Coaches’ before this offer expires on 14th September 2008 – so do it NOW: http://www.marketinghelpforcoaches.com/products/item1.cfm/goldfish

Search engine optimisation

Most of us have heard of the magic mountain – the search engine list – and we all want to be number one, or at least in the top ten.  In fact, being number 10 is actually better than being number 6 or 7 – people remember the first and last better than those in the middle!

Anyway – I digress – how do you get up that list?  You could engage one of the SEO experts, and, if you’re serious, that’s a great way to go.  However, you need to know what people search for when looking for what your business sells and use those words and the problems that people associate with them in your copy.

For instance, if you sell garden furniture why do people buy it?  It’s not so they have chairs in the garden – they can get them anywhere.  It might be to create an image, to make their garden attractive so that when their friends come round they see elegant surroundings and an implied lifestyle.  So that’s what your copy needs to tell them they’ll get.

If you sell personal coaching there are thousands of coaches out there – what makes you different?  What do you offer that others don’t?  Why have previous clients been happy to work with you?  Use all that in your copy.

If your search engine expert says that you need ‘these three words or phrases’ in your copy – and may also give you a list of other phrases to try to include – remember that getting people to the website is only half the equation.  The copy must keep them there – or the money you spend with SEO and pay per click will be wasted.

Write what your reader wants to know – and do your best to include the key words, but not at the expense of engaging the reader.

Writing webcopy in black and white

It’s not that I’m old fashioned, but there’s nothing like good old black and white – as long as the writing is black and the background is white.  However, reverse that combination and you have a problem.

When the background is darker than the text, the reader has to work much harder to read.  Whilst a sexy black page may be visually appealing, the eye/brain connection is bedazzled!  Lots of little thin white lines criss-crossing a dark background create a dazzle effect, making your subconscious work really hard to actually see what the words are.

If the information is not ‘received’ by your brain, there is an instinctive (and also subconscious) assumption that the information is ‘difficult’ and many people simply won’t make the effort to continue reading.

It’s not just black and white either – yellow writing on dark blue, forest green or burgundy backgrounds all do pretty much the same thing (all of which I have seen on web pages).  A good rule of thumb is to simply ensure that the background is lighter than the text and that the differential in tone between the two makes it easy for the eye to see the words.

When it comes to headlines in nice big bold text you can get away with reversed out writing, because the lines that make up the letters are not lines, but shapes.

Backgrounds don’t have to be white (although it does create a nice crisp look) – pastel shades such as very pale blue, cream or yellow all work well (and often aid reading for people with dyslexia).  Neither does the writing have to be black, but it does have to be dark enough to to stand out against the background – so dark blue on cream or pale yellow will work; so will very dark green.

Remember – the fewer obstacles you put in front of your reader getting the message, the better!

Is your website search optimised?

One of the jobs that I do regularly is write copy for search engine optimised pages.  This entails using a handful of key words intelligently in the copy so that search engines find the page when people put those words into their search.

Having spent hours and hours wrestling with online systems such as Word Tracker to work out what people might actually be searching for – I gave a huge sigh of relief when a SEO specialist friend of mine said “The best way to find out what people search for is to ask a few people you know what they would type into a search engine when they’re looking for the sort of services you offer.”

Wow – that means working with human beings rather than automated systems!  Much better – and, given that it’s a human being that types the search terms in, probably at least as reliable (and much less confusing).

Don’t go mad – you need just 2 or 3 terms and should use each one between 2-4 times in the copy – making sure that the copy flows naturally, otherwise people just won’t read it.

There are other terms that are lower down the list that could be introduced here and there, to reinforce the message.  For instance, if you are a coach specialising in career development, the search terms might be:

How to get promoted

Fast track promotion

Career development

So you’d need to use these terms 2-4 times in the main part of the text.

You might also try to knit in:

Getting promoted

Improve your career path

Become more successful

Promotion to manager

Promoted to manager

Career path improvement

… and, although you might not get all of these in, if you can add three or four of them at least once, it will help to add to the key word ‘cloud’ – all the words that are related to the subject.

Just remember that the copy must make sense and feel natural to read – or people simply stop reading and don’t get the message.

Focus on the message

Every time I start working with a client on their website I ask the same questions:

Why do people buy you/your services/your products?

What would they be looking for when they search for what you’re offering?

What do you want them to do when they’ve finished reading each page?

Doesn’t sound like rocket-science, but I’m constantly amazed that people don’t know the answers to these questions.  These are absolutely critical – you need to not only ‘think’ you know the answers, you need to actually do some research to find out the answers to the first two – and then be realistic about the answer to the third one.

If you think people will ring you up and buy from the home page, that is probably somewhat ambitious.  Instead choose where you’d like them to go next to get more in depth information (usually your services/product overview page).  However, always have your phone number/email visible on each page, just in case.

Answer the questions for every page on your website and your copy will be much easier to focus and to connect with the reader.

Website graphics

Pictures on your website can be a big advantage or a huge drawback in helping you to get your message across.  Here are a few good rules to work by:

DON’T put picture in just to have a visual on a page – make sure that every picture works for its place.  It must help you to get your message across.

DO use pictures of real people (especially on your About us page – where YOU should appear); but beware of naff photos of people shaking hands, posing for the camera looking like ‘business people’ or other stock shots.  Ask your clients and customers if they are happy for you to take shots of them – or leave them out.  ‘Fakes’ look exactly what they are.

DO use diagrams, graphs, pie charts and so on to help to make your point, but make sure that the information is genuine, up-to-date, not copyright and is simply enough for anybody to understand.  One diagram or graph per page is enough – a whole series is confusing and puts people off.

DON’T use clip-art, holiday photos (unless you’re a travel site and they’re really good ones), nice pictures you like (but don’t add anything) or a bunch of graphics that don’t match.  It will simply brand you an amateur – and that subliminal message can leak over into your expertise.

Pictures are powerful – if they’re the right ones in the right place!

Descriptive copy

Everyone can write, but few people can write well.  The people who can’t string three words together are usually aware of their shortcomings and find the whole writing process a struggle.  Then there are the people who do write – using lots of descriptive prose and three adjectives to every noun.  This makes it really hard for the reader who will then have to pick out the pieces of information they want from all the excess verbiage.

Descriptive prose has a use – to set a scene, to create an atmosphere, to help the reader to see themselves in the situation being described – but, there is always a danger of ‘going over the top’.  When writing commercial copy you need to ensure the message is clear – so descriptive copy really isn’t appropriate, particularly on a home page.

When you get to a specific service or product there is a place for it.  For instance on the products page for a furniture company:

Imagine what it would be like to come home and be able to sink into a really comfortable sofa, that supports your back, but is just soooo relaxing. With a Supersofa this is exactly what you get – and more.

The image helps the reader visualise themselves and makes the sales message stronger.  But if the text had been:

You come home and push the door closed behind you with a huge sigh of relief.  It’s been a long hard day and you have been longing to just collapse and put your feet up.  You walk into your beautifully decorated lounge and glance into the mirror over the chimney breast – you definitely look tired.  The sofa beckons – you sink into it letting it wrap around you and feeling that firm pressure at the base of your spine, whilst the soft cushions allow you to totally and completely relax.  If this sounds like absolute luxury to you – then don’t wait a moment longer, order your sofa right away.

Now, whilst that certainly sets the scene – it’s far too much information for most people!

Good writing isn’t about lots of words – it’s about getting the message across.  Keep it short and simple and write for the reader, not yourself.

… and if it’s all too much of a struggle call in the experts!  www.insidenews.co.uk