One of the ongoing dilemmas in web content writing is not inserting keywords … with a little practice and good guidance on densities (ask your SEO experts!), the keywords are a fairly simple part. More difficult is deciding where your web copy should lie on the informational versus sales continuum. Today we give you a few guidelines.
Does your web copy inspire trust?
Informational copy versus sales copy
The difference is not always apparent when you are the one behind the keyboard! As a general guide…
Informational copy
- Gives the reader information about a product or service, looking mainly at the features
- Usually doesn’t mention company names
- If a company is mentioned, there is no bias towards them in the copy. May mention several companies at once.
Sales copy
- Looks mainly at the benefits of taking out a product or service with a particular company
- Mentions only one company name
- Tells readers about how to take action towards purchasing a product or service
Benefits of informational copy
There is a heck of a lot of sales copy on the internet … and people really tend to distrust it. Anybody can write anything they like and publish it on the internet – there is little governance and few checks and balances in that regard. So sales copy is taken with an enormous grain of salt.
Having informational website copy makes your site seem much more trustworthy to visitors. You have no interest in giving bad information, because there is no direct financial gain to be had from doing so.
Additionally, people that aren’t ready to purchase will come to your site, building traffic and branding, purely for the information. However, when they’re ready to purchase (a week or year down the track), they’ll remember your site and trust it.
Benefits of sales copy
At some stage, if you’re selling something, you’ll have to tell your prospect about why they should buy from you rather than Joe Blow down the road. If you don’t let your customer know why your company is good, they might assume that it isn’t!
Several studies have shown that people have trouble finding products related to informational copy if there isn’t a direct ‘sell’ … and might then Google to find the very same product on the site they were already on … YOUR site! Thgis is one reason why some sales copy is essential.
There is a compromise between the two. For sales copy to be trusted and effective, it should have plenty of informational, factual backup – like user reviews, testimonials, technical data, etc.