Web Content

It’s not about the details, it’s about the overall customer experience.

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stuck on detailsAfter you have read a hundred articles by various people about how in the world of ecommerce it’s all about the details, step back and ignore them for a few minutes.

Yes, the details can make a difference.

But they won’t do you a lick of good unless you get the big picture right first. In fact, all the details should point in the same direction – towards optimizing the customer experience.

Whatever your online business, you won’t be remembered for moving that image from the right side of the page to the left side. You won’t be remembered for the size or font of your headlines either.

But what every visitor and customer will remember is the quality of the experience they had at your site, whether they have made a purchase yet or not.

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Copywriters: Understand people’s obsession with Cause, Effect and Simple Answers.

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seek simple answers signAs copywriters, part of our job is to understand our audience.

What makes them agree or disagree with what you write? What makes them form opinions about our products or services? What makes them buy?

We need to understand this, because the decisions people make, and the opinions they hold, are hardly ever based on careful, rational thinking.

We all like to think we form opinions and make decisions in a purely rational way, but we don’t.

As an example of how we avoid thinking too carefully, let’s take a look at…

Cause, Effect and Simple Answers.

Humans have a deep-seated desire for everything to make sense. If something happens, we immediately want to know why. What was the cause?

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Copywriters: Prime your readers with a few carefully chosen words, before you start selling.

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prime your readers with wordsLet me introduce you to the Florida Effect.

Conducting a study with students at New York University, psychologist John Bargh told the student the first part of the test would take place in one office, and then the students would be asked to walk down a corridor to another office for the second part.

Half of the group was asked to arrange brief sentences including at least one of the words: Florida, forgetful, bald, gray, or wrinkle. The other half were presented with a completely random list of words.

He didn’t include the words old or age in that first list. He simply used words associated with being old.

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Are you engaging your readers with questions?

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ask questionsLet’s begin with a well-worn analogy.

Trying to engage your readers online is like going on a first date. If you talk about nothing but yourself, there will be no second date. If you want a second date, you should stop talking about yourself and ask your companion some questions.

We have all read this advice 100 times. We all know it’s good advice.

The thing is, it doesn’t seem to make a lick of difference.

The vast majority of posts, articles, Facebook updates, tweets and Google+ posts are the equivalent of the person who never stops talking about himself.

Look at me! Listen to me! Look at what I found! Listen to my 5 killer ways to achieve something amazing!

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101 Topic ideas for your money-making website.

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Coffee Detective website screenshotAs some of you already know, in addition to my regular work I make a second, passive income with some hobby sites.

My largest hobby site, CoffeeDetective.com, has made me over $250,000 in passive income over the last 7 years. Not bad for a site I work on in the evening and at weekends.

I have also written a program, based on my own experiences, so that other people can do the same.

I have spoken and corresponded with hundreds of people who have taken the program, and many have told me the part of the process they found the hardest was coming up with a topic idea.

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Keep readers coming back with streams of related content.

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5 related kidsIn one sense, all the content on a website is related. At least, it should be.

If you sell coffee, all of your content will relate to coffee, in one way or another. If you sell garden furniture, all your content will relate to gardens and furniture.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

What I’m suggesting is that you create a series of streams of content that are much more closely related.

For example, if you sell or write about coffee makers, you might create a series of content pages which focus on all the different brands and models of single serve coffee makers. That’s a subset of the coffee topic, but gives you enough raw material to create a series of 5 to 10 pages of content.

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