A few months ago I launched a quest to find a new dentist, and it was not an easy task. My last dentist, while trying to poke around inside my mouth, informed his assistant that I was a hypersensitive patient (and sent her off to fetch the nitrous oxide). I’m sure that had something to do with the fact that I was maniacally clutching the armrest while burrowing my head into the dental chair. Oh yeah, and my mouth kept closing all by itself every time he lunged at me with a sharp instrument.
A few dental procedures gone wrong had made me wary, if not downright fearful, of dentists. So I need a professional who is compassionate toward patients with dental phobias and anxieties. I’m looking for a dentist with an extra-special skill set.
Since I’m one of those technology-savvy generation Xers and because I am also an internet professional, I launched my search online. Google gave me plenty of options, and I got busy perusing the many dentists within a fifteen-mile radius. Within minutes I had about a dozen potential dentistry websites opened, and I got busy reading through them to see which one would tell me what I wanted to hear: We are sympathetic to your fear of dentists. We won’t hurt you.
I happened across one such dentist early in my search. The text on his site was friendly and comforting. There was even a photo of him. He looked like a nice guy and not at all like the demented dentist from Little Shop of Horrors. But I wanted a list of dentists to choose from. So I kept his site open and continued my search.
A short time later I found another one that looked pretty good. As I started reading through this other guy’s site, I got this weird feeling. Haven’t I read something like this before? Haven’t I just recently (in the past few minutes) read these exact same words in this exact same order?
Two dentists. Same city. Same exact copy. Bad for business.
Good Marketing vs. Bad Marketing
I realize that small businesses have budget guidelines they must follow and sometimes they have to take shortcuts. But using generic copy on a website is never a good idea.
First of all, it was a little creepy. I mean, why would two different dentists have the same exact message? I’m not talking about similarities where one dentist says “Scared of dentists? We understand.” and another says “We understand that you’re scared of dentists.” I’m talking about the exact same copy, down to the periods, commas, and conjunctions.
At one point I had both of these sites open and was clicking back and forth between them, trying to sort it all out. My first concern was that these two dentists had been duped by the same copywriter. I quickly deduced that they had indeed used the same copywriter, but it wasn’t an actual copywriter; it was a copywriting service. Except the copywriting wasn’t a service; it was a product.
The clues let me to an outfit that was selling generic website copy to professionals. Even worse, the professionals were buying it.
Let’s Get Personal
In some situations, discovering duplicate copywriting on two different websites might not rattle me one bit. I probably wouldn’t have thought much of it if I had been searching for a mechanic or a home inspector, professionals who offer relatively generic services. But I am searching for a dentist. I’m going to let this person medicate me, drill holes in my teeth, and then fill them up with strange substances. He might even pull a tooth, and he’s certainly going to do whatever it is that dentists do to give you a sparkling smile. And if the same text on his site is on several other sites, well, then I know the words do not convey his unique message and don’t represent him specifically. It’s just out-of-the-box text. And for all I know, he might not mean a single word of it.
Now, maybe the cost of losing one perspective customer was worth the savings that these two dentists enjoyed by buying canned copy rather than hiring a copywriter. But I doubt I’m the only individual who noticed the duplicate copy and I also doubt that I’m the only person who was completely turned off by it.
I realize that because I’m professional website copywriter, I have a special way of looking at this situation. And because I don’t sell generic text, one would expect me to find such practices… well, distasteful. But I’m also a customer, a client, and a patient. Especially as a patient with some measure of dental phobia, I am anything but comforted by this plastic messaging.
When is Generic Acceptable?
Businesses are always trying to find a way to make a buck. I guess someone, somewhere thought it would be a good idea to write some web content for professionals and then resell that same content over and over. The idea is probably profitable for the person who thought up that scheme. It probably also seemed like a good idea to all of those professionals to whom they sold generic copy.
Some products and services can definitely get away with being generic. Website templates and stock photos are a good example of marketing materials that could be considered generic but are often employed, even by big businesses with large budgets.
But website copywriting just can’t get away with being generic. There’s a difference between a generic photo used for business and generic words used to speak to your customers. My own reaction was something like, “You don’t care enough about your patients (or your work) to send a more personalized message, and now you expect me to let you inside my mouth with pointy tools?”
Entrepreneurs and professionals need to be cognizant that marketing copy is a direct form of communication. While imagery and design can be powerful, language allows you to speak to your customers clearly and personally. There’s nothing clear or personal about canned text.
Last Words: Generic Website Copywriting and the SEO Effect
There’s one more consideration that I want to quickly address and will discuss at greater length in a future article: SEO (search engine optimization) and duplicate content. Because not only did these two dentists engage in online marketing tactics that have a distinct capacity to discourage (rather than encourage) new patients, this generic copywriting strategy could also have a detrimental effect on their search engine traffic.
Most SEO specialists agree that duplicate content across different websites is frowned upon by search engines. In other words, if a search engine sees that two sites are using the exact same copy, they both lose points and fall back on the search engine results page. This means that in addition to scaring off prospective clients, the copy that these two dentists were using could be hindering the amount of traffic they attract to their websites from search engines. That means fewer visitors and customers.
Like I said, generic website copywriting is just bad for business.
I’m sure that the two dentists have successfully brought in new patients from their websites. But they’ll never know how many potential patients they have lost.
You Say You Want Web Content Writing
When you’re doing business online, it’s essential that your written content is fresh, compelling, and written specifically for your target audience. Good website copywriting can make or break a website. It can turn a casual visitor into a loyal customer or convince a shopper to buy.
Hiring a professional website copywriter is a pretty good idea, but what if professional copywriting is not the service you really need?
Tell Me What You Really Want
I get requests from clients all the time for website copywriting projects that aren’t copywriting projects at all. Here are a few examples:
- How much will it cost for you to rewrite my home page? I need to get more traffic to my site.
- I’d like to get a press release published on several major media sites. How much will that cost?
- People who visit my site aren’t buying my product. Can you review my site and give me a quote to rewrite all of it?
Before you hire a website copywriter, you need to do one simple thing: identify your primary objective.
Figuring Out What You Need
In the examples above, written content was not necessarily part of the business owners’ true goal. Let’s take a closer look at each request.
How much will it cost for you to rewrite my home page? I need to get more traffic to my site.
You don’t want a new home page; you want more traffic. A freshly written home page might help you get more traffic, but this request has more to do with online marketing and search engine optimization than it does with website copywriting.
To draw traffic, you usually need to do one of three things. First you can pay for advertising or use search engine marketing (SEM). Second, you can find ways to get links to your site from other sites. Finally, you can optimize your site so it draws people who are looking for your product or service using search engines. This is called search engine optimization (SEO).
Note that search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are two different things.
SEO in particular is closely linked to website copywriting because the copywriter must use keywords in the composition of the text. However, SEO is its own field of study, and I’ll talk more about what SEO is and how it can help you get more traffic in an upcoming post.
I’d like to get a press release published on several major media sites. How much will that cost?
Every time I get this request, my first question is always, “What’s the news?” And the answer is almost always “We want to tell people about our site.”
A press release is a news item and is usually a time-sensitive announcement. If your website sells eyewear, then a press release probably isn’t right for you unless your sunglasses allow people to travel through time or your spectacles give a wearer the ability to fly. That’s news!
You can create news, of course, and then a press release will be entirely appropriate. Running a major promotion or special could be newsworthy. A new product or website launch may also be newsworthy.
Interestingly, this request isn’t really for a press release. Like the first request, what this client actually wants is more traffic. There are a lots of ways to get traffic and a press release is only one of them.
People who visit my site aren’t buying my product. Can you review my site and give me a quote to rewrite all of it?
The real question being asked is this: why aren’t people buying my product?
It may have nothing to do with the written content and everything to do with the type of traffic the site is attracting. Or, maybe it’s not so much that people aren’t buying – they just haven’t found the site at all.
What you want to know is:
- How many visitors are coming to the site?
- Who is visiting the site? Where are they coming from?
- Why aren’t they responding to the call to action?
When people aren’t buying your product or hiring you, the first thing you need to do is check your traffic statistics to see how many people have stopped by. Your stats should tell you how long they stay on your site and which pages they read during their stay.
Next, you want to know the source of the visitors. Are they coming in through links? Social media? Search engines? Maybe the traffic you’re getting isn’t your target customer base.
For example, let’s say you’re a florist named Kate Tomlin and you grow your own lilies, so that’s the flower you feature most on your site. Due to the combination of the words “lily” and “Tomlin,” you often get search traffic for “Lily Tomlin.” In fact, you get a lot of it.
Rewriting your home page is not going to make these visitors buy your lilies because they’re not looking for flowers, they’re looking for the actress Lily Tomlin.
When Website Copywriting is Appropriate
A really good website copywriter should be able to tell you if you’re ready for copywriting services and many web content writers provide SEO copywriting and a host of other online marketing services that are designed to help you get more traffic or increase sales. A professional website copywriter can also review the existing content on your site and determine whether it needs to be polished, revised, or completely rewritten. Weak copy can have a negative impact on sales. Refreshing the written content leads to better writing, which will have a positive effect on sales margins.
This post was originally published on Writing Forward (May 5, 2008). It has been slightly updated for republication here.
Freelance writers live in their own special universe. It’s a universe full of words, clients, and bottom lines. Many people dive into this universe headfirst and find out fast that it’s sink or swim. Doesn’t it sound tempting? Setting your own hours, having control over your income, making business decisions, trying to find clients, and establishing yourself as a worthwhile contender in the galactic enterprise that is your one-person business.
Make no mistake, freelancing is a business. Visions of lounging on the sands of your own private island quickly evaporate into late nights spent staring groggy-eyed into a computer screen that has become the center of your world. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and the light is success. Before you reach the light, before you even step into the tunnel, you have to ask yourself, are you cut out for freelance writing?
Skill
Some people will argue and claim that skill is not really a requirement for freelancers. Have a look around the web. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are fairly optional here. Proofreading is unheard of, and most web writers seem to have never discovered the editing process. That’s fine. They can peddle $1 articles at the bidding boards. If you have serious writing skills, you can actually earn a livable wage as a freelance writer.
Drive
You’ll need someone who can pilot your space shuttle into the freelance universe and guess what? If you’re freelancing, it’s going to have to be you. This is a business, not a hobby, and it requires a considerable amount of ambition. You’ve got to want it. Badly. You won’t have a boss or any coworkers asking how that project’s coming along, but you will have endless distractions and temptations vying for your attention. If you can’t commit your energies, then your ship’s going to crash.
Sacrifice
I bet some people slip into freelancing and never notice a change in their work hours. Don’t ask me where these people are. I’ve never met them. You can call yourself a freelancer until the sun spins out of its orbit, but what you really are is an entrepreneur and you know what entrepreneurs do? They work hard, long hours. They give up social activities and hobbies so they can throw their energies into the business and make it succeed. Is the sacrifice forever? I don’t think so, but expect to have very little free time during your first year or two.
Educability
Perfect! I thought I was making up the word “educability” but it turns out that it already exists. And that’s my point. You have to be willing to learn. You have to be willing to grow. I’m now in my second year of freelancing. I love it, and one of the things I love most is that every single day I learn new things. I learn new stuff about writing, about people, about business, and about the universe. I learn what works, what earns money, and what kind of limits or goals I need to get myself to the next level. Much of freelancing is trial and error, especially in the beginning. Learn and live. Live and learn.
Flexibility
Some freelancers still probably operate in the real world but most of us are living and working on the Internet. The Internet changes at a rapid pace and if you’re a web-based freelancer, you have to be able to keep up. Sometimes this means adjusting your rates. Other times it means offering new services. Usually, it means updating your website so it doesn’t look like an antique UFO from the 1990s. If you like a fast pace and think you can keep up, then freelancing online might be right for you.
Acumen
Not just any acumen, you’re going to need business acumen. Can you balance a checkbook, manage a spreadsheet, keep track of your income and expenses? Do you know what marketing is? Can you negotiate? Pitch yourself? Convince a client they need your services? Do you know the difference between being in the red and being in the black? Do you always have a backup plan? Sure, you can start freelancing and learn the business stuff as you go, but it’s good to have an advance grasp on the basics.
Spine
People will try to take advantage of you, so you’re going to need a spine and some thick skin. Clients will ask for special discounts. People who make five times as much money as you will ask for special discounts. Prospects will steal hours and hours of your time going back and forth ironing out project details and then they’ll never sign the quote because they found someone else who offered a better discount. Negotiating a little is fine but if you agree to give everyone under the sun a discount, you’ll find yourself working for pennies and then you’ll scratch your head wondering why you don’t have enough money to pay rent even though you had plenty of work all month. Can you say no?
Love
Okay, so some freelance writers probably don’t love freelancing. Or writing. But I do. People ask me how my business is going and I tell them I’m exhausted and overwhelmed. I’m working longer hours than ever before and until recently I was making much less money than ever before. But I absolutely love it. This is a big, wide open universe and it suits me perfectly. If you don’t love business, or writing, or working on a computer all day, then you probably won’t be happy doing this. And that is really the goal, right? To find happiness.
What are some other qualities that a successful freelancer needs? Have you thought about quitting your job and taking the plunge? What’s holding you back?
We’ve already taken a brief look at back-end website performance assessments. Today, we’ll examine the front end of a website and discuss how to test and assess its performance.
Websites are comprised of code, text, images, and other media. Visitors view the website through a browser, and the code tells the browser how to display the site’s content.
The code says “Put the logo up at the top. Below that, place a navigation menu. Over on the side, let’s display some links. And right in the middle, let’s put a big block of text.” The back end of your website is all that raw stuff from which your site is made — the stuff that your website developer manages for you.
The front end, however, is the side of your site that is publicly accessible. When you open a browser (such as Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, or Internet Explorer) and visit a website, what you’re seeing is the front end.
For metrics, we track website performance from the back end. How many visitors come to the site? Where do they come from? How long do they stay? This information helps us understand how the site is being used and whether it’s successfully selling our products and services.
Website Performance from a User’s Perspective
Front-end website performance assessment looks at a website from a user’s perspective. Also known as quality-assurance (QA) testing, these types of assessments provide insight that will help you keep your site friendly and functional so visitors will be more likely to stick around and soak up your content, products, and services.
Here are a few questions that are answered by looking at website performance from a user’s perspective:
- How does the site look across different platforms and browsers?
- Are any links or images broken?
- Is the site user-friendly and easy to navigate?
- Does the site clearly communicate its purpose?
- Is the content presentable and relevant?
QA Testing
Cross-platform and cross-browser testing involves viewing the site from different operating systems and browsers. The two most common types of platforms are Mac and PC. There are several popular browsers in use today and your site should be thoroughly checked through each browser and platform combination.
Broken Links and Images
For your website to be fully functional, you have to identify broken links and images, and then fix them. Broken links can be hard to catch, especially if your site has a lot of written content and external links. You have no control over external links — if someone moves a page or changes the content on another website, your link to that URL becomes faulty. You have more control over the images that are displayed on your site. Users have a better experience with your website when all links and images are fully functional.
Functionality and Navigation
User friendliness and a navigable structure are essential. If you site is difficult to use, visitors will quickly click away in search of friendlier pastures. Make sure it’s easy for users to get around the site with a clearly labeled navigation menu. Also, ensure that the site displays properly and that everything works as it should — for example, make sure that all videos play and contact forms work and issue confirmations – again, test these from various platforms and browsers.
Clarity
It’s tempting to use clever language on a website, but this can confuse visitors. Nothing scares off a potential customer faster than cryptic sales messages that they can’t decipher or vague offerings that they don’t understand. Be especially conscious of using internal or industry-specific jargon. If you’re a web designer, you probably want to talk freely about FTP, HTML, stylesheets, and flash animation, but if your visitors already know all that stuff, do you really think they need your services?
Content
Your site’s content should be easy to access and relevant to the site’s overall purpose. Every word, image, video, and link should be working toward a common goal. That goal might be to get more subscribers to your blog or newsletter. Perhaps you’re trying to sell products using e-commerce. Maybe you want visitors to pick up the phone and give you a call. Whatever your goals are, the content should be directly related to achieving them.
When to Assess Your Site
Your first quality-assurance review should take place after the design is done but before the site launches. You should also do a careful website performance assessment after any major redesign. Whenever you update, add, or change the content, a quick check is in order to make sure it looks good and works properly.
You should also think about doing an annual assessment of both front-end and back-end website performance. It’s too easy to notice a broken link and think, “I’ll take care of that later,” only to completely forget. After all, you’re a busy entrepreneur. If you schedule regular reviews, you’ll be more likely to catch problems and get them fixed.
Most small business owners and independent professionals invest considerably in their websites. They pay good money for design and content, and in return, they expect the site to perform well.
But what does that mean? How do we measure website performance? And what are the benefits of website performance monitoring and assessment?
Some website owners track their statistics obsessively. They log in to their statistic tools several times a day to see how many visitors they’re getting. We’ve come to think of website performance purely in terms of traffic. How many hits? How many pageviews? Then we go out and try to increase these numbers, forgetting that a proper assessment is far more involved.
Website Performance Monitoring Tools
There are a vast number of website performance monitoring tools available. Your website hosting company may provide a statistics tracking tool as part of your hosting package, and if not, there are plenty of options to choose from. Some of these tools require payment while others are absolutely free.
My favorite statistics tool is Google Analytics, and it happens to be one of the free options. It offers plenty of detailed information that you can use to understand how your website is performing.
Google Analytics uses your Google account, so if you have Gmail or use Google Reader, then you’ll already be logged in, which makes for fast and easy access. Plus, if you use Adwords or any of Google’s webmaster services, everything is nicely connected and easy to use.
Basic Statistics
At the most basic level, you want to have an idea of how many people are visiting your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Additionally, you should know what the visitors are doing while they’re on your site. How many pages are they viewing? How much time are they spending on your website?
Below is a list of data that Google Analytics and most other statistics tools provide so you can assess your website performance:
Visits is the number of times your website was visited in a given period of time (most statistics tools allow you to specify a time period). This is also sometimes referred to as the number of hits your site is getting.
Absolute Unique Visits provides you with the number of unique visitors to your site. One person might visit your site five times in a week. This statistic tells you how many visitors you had instead of how many total visits.
Pageviews indicates how many pages on your site were viewed. One visitor might have looked at five pages, so comparing the number of pageviews to the number of visitors can help you determine how much content the users are experiencing.
Time on Site shows how much time visitors spent on your website. This number is averaged to show you how much time each visitor spent perusing the site. Keep in mind that visitors might have your site open in their browsers when they’re not actively exploring your site, so this data has the potential to be misleading, however, it is worth noting.
Bounce Rate tells you the percentage of visitors who “bounced” away from your site immediately. If your bounce rate is high, that means visitors are not sticking around to check out your content. If it’s low, that means folks who visit your site are exploring it in more depth.
All of these statistics help you gain a basic understanding of your website performance. But knowing how many visitors are coming to your site may not be very helpful in a true website performance assessment. To get a better perspective, you’ll need to dig deeper and ask relevant questions.
Asking Questions
Before you engage in any kind of website performance assessment, your first step should be to identify your website’s primary purpose. The purpose may very well be to attract as many visitors as possible, in which case the basic statistics could tell you almost everything you need to know.
However, most businesses are concerned with another primary goal: turning a profit. So, the real question is not how many visitors are coming to your site, but how is your website performance contributing to the overall growth of your business and revenue? Are the visitors who are finding their way to your site looking for what you offer? When they get to your site, are they responding to your call to action (clicking on a link, subscribing, or making a purchase)?
Let’s say you’re a makeup artist who provides services for bridal parties. In your bio, you’ve stated “I started learning how to apply makeup when I was nine years old. My mom was a beautician and she always let me experiment with her cosmetics.”
One day, you check your statistics and are thrilled to discover that your site is getting over 1000 visitors per day. You sit back, thinking that business is going to boom any minute now. But what if out of those 1000 visitors, 999 were searching for “how to apply makeup?” Those folks weren’t looking for your services, and it’s doubtful they need your services at all.
Advanced Statistics
Digging deeper into your statistics will help you assess your website performance in a meaningful way that contributes to your business and online success, and this means going beyond the basic number of visitors or number of pages those visitors are viewing on your site.
Let’s look at some of the more advanced statistics that you can use to assess your site’s performance:
Traffic Sources: How are people finding your site? Are they entering your URL into their browsers (direct hits)? Are they using a search engine? Are they clicking on a link from some other site? Understanding the channels through which visitors are arriving is essential, especially if you plan on growing your traffic.
Traffic source information will not only tell you how visitors are arriving at your site, it will specify which sites are sending traffic your way. You can also learn which search engines send you the most visitors. Then, you can leverage this information to your advantage during future development and expansions to your site.
Keywords is one of the most important statistics because it shows you which keyword searches are generating traffic to your site. Why is this so important? Because this data tells you whether search engine users who are landing on your site are a match to your business offerings.
Going back to our example of a bridal makeup artist who is gaining most of her website traffic from the phrase “how to apply makeup,” one would assume that folks searching for “how to apply makeup” are not looking for a makeup artist, but are probably looking for articles or tutorials that deal with application of cosmetics. Instead, our makeup artist should work at gaining traffic that is more targeted to her service offerings.
Content gives you an in-depth look at which pages on your site are most (and least) popular. You can extract an ordered list that shows your most-viewed and least-viewed pages. If your goal is to lead the majority of visitors to your sales pages, then this information can tell you whether you are reaching that goal.
Top Landing Pages shows you which pages are the point of entry for visitors. There’s a good chance most visitors are landing on your home page, but you might want to make some adjustments if visitors are instead landing on a less desirable page (especially if they’re then quickly clicking off-site).
Top Exit Pages gives you the same information, but focuses on which pages visitors are looking at when they decide to leave your site. Perhaps you’ve got a link that’s driving visitors (and prospective customers) elsewhere. Try to keep visitors on your site until they respond to your call to action!
There are additional statistics that you might want to look at. For example, let’s say you’re planning to redesign your website and want to use some advanced technology in the new design. It would be helpful to know which operating systems and browsers your visitors are using so you can figure out whether those visitors will have access to your flashy new site (or whether it will crash their computers).
Assessing Website Performance
When you are assessing your website performance, it’s essential to first identify your website’s core objective. Then, ask thoughtful questions about which statistics will provide you with the data you need to properly assess whether your website is fulfilling its purpose.
Once you know what basic data to collect, you can use that data to draw conclusions about how your website is performing. You can also use this information to make decisions about how to move forward with your website, especially if you’re planning to expand or redesign your site.
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