The Digital Business Start-Up Workbook: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide to Succeeding Online from Start-up to Exit

3. Persuasive, Clickable and Indexable Web Copy to Convert Visitors into Customers

Many moons ago, the Poynter Institute established with eye-tracking studies that web visitors look at text first, at photographs next, followed by graphics.

You only have a few seconds to convince visitors why they should stick around and buy what you are selling. As such, the words you choose to use could make or break a potential sale. Words persuade. If you spend the first few sentences telling visitors ‘Welcome to so and so, we do this and that, aren’t we great’, you will lose them.

The copy you use on your site – what you say (the message/language) and how you say it (the technique/readability) performs the same function as your navigation and content. It ...