How to write the perfect web copy for your eCommerce site

How can you tell your prospects what you do, describe your product’s features, and talk about your services on your eCommerce site?
You do all these with web copy—those written words on your website. It can be a few lines explaining your value proposition, brief notes on your About Us page, or hundreds or thousands of words on your homepage detailing why you exist.
Beyond telling your brand story, great copy helps your eCommerce business rank higher on Google and out-rank your competitors, generates more leads and increases your ROI. So you need to know how to write the perfect copy. Here are some tips to guide you.

Create a Graphic Image of Your Buyer Persona

our copy is not just a collection of a thousand words on a pixilated screen. Your eCommerce copy is your product, and you want your readers, visitors, and buyers to consume it. The best way to get them to read, share, and act upon it is to create a buyer persona. Then make a graphic picture to have anytime you sit down to write your copy.
A buyer persona is a sample representation of your target customers. When you create a profile of your buyer persona, it will help you to imagine your ideal customer. This will, in turn, help you tailor your brand messaging and copy around their specific needs.
Luckily, creating a profile of your customer persona is easier than you might think. Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you build your customer persona profile:

• What problem(s) does my product solve?
• What categories of people have these problems?
• What are the key benefits of my product?
• How is it different from other products?
• Where are my customers located?
• How do my customers make purchases?

You can now paint a picture of your ideal customer based on the answers to these questions, and you can use the profile to craft compelling web copy that addresses their needs.

Write Specifically for Your Buyer Persona

Let’s start with the headline.
It’s the first thing that your prospective buyer will see in your copy, so it has to be magnetic. To achieve optimal magnetism, you have to make the title ultra-specific. In other words, write it for your reader, the buyer persona that you crafted down to the smallest detail.
If you have truly captured them in your mind, then you can write a catchy headline that speaks to them.
The next thing is to write in the language they speak. Before you write a single word, you should know the specific language that your buyer persona speaks. In today’s technological world, it is easier to stalk your ideal buyer’s Facebook profile, Instagram, or Twitter feed to find out the exact language they speak. Then use it in your copy to specifically persuade them.
Finally, keep your message crisp, simple, and easy to read. According to the Web usability guru, Jacob Nielsen, people don’t read eCommerce pages. They scan them in an F-shaped pattern.
In other words, Internet users typically scan through the content of your page. They only read the entire content when you format it correctly.
So, how do you format your copy correctly and glue users to your page?

• Use short sentences to make your text easy to read
• Use bullet points to help scanners find what they want
• Use short paragraphs to make your content more interesting to consume

Besides these, you also need to press your customers’ hot buttons — to convince them to take action.

Press Their Hot Buttons to Push Them to Buy

How do you press your buyer persona’s hot buttons? How do you appeal to their emotions and push them to take action when they finish reading your web copy? You do this in one of three ways:

1. Inspire them with emotional stories. There’s nothing as captivating as a good story. It’s like the engine that drives the buyer to open his wallet. To write an incredible story that stirs emotion, you need to base it on your customers’ pain points and/or desires.
2. Use power words to bolster your copy. A story with no powerful words falls flat. You need to weave powerful words into your copy, words that evoke emotions and excite readers, so they will want to revisit your eCommerce site. Here’s a collection of power words you can use in your day-to-day copywriting tasks.
3. Use action words to convert readers into customers. One of my favorite copywriting tricks is the use of action words. While power words touch readers’ emotions, actions words push them to take action. Words like add, act, buy, call, and click are all action words that command a prospect to take action.

The goal is to make your copy so useful and effective that your ideal buyer feels compelled to act.

The Bottom line

Writing great web copy is a skill that every eCommerce vendor should master - because it’s a tool that tells your company’s story and appeals to your target market. When writing your web copy, always start with your reader in mind.
Picture your buyer persona and write specifically for them, not you, not your company, not your product. Write for your buyer. Then optimize your copy with emotional stories that will hook your readers and persuade them to become customers.

Author: Vikrant Bhalodia is a Head of Operations with 10+ years of multi-functional expertise across Sales & Marketing, Consulting, Web Content Management, Operations and HRM at WeblineIndia. Having passion towards technology and with multi-functional expertise in a Software Development Company based in USA and India, Vikrant loves sharing insights on optimizing the success and internet visibility of the customers’ businesses.