When readers fire up a web browser, you can be sure of one thing, they are getting online for a purpose.  They have a question, or a goal they want to achieve and they want to meet it quickly.

Ask yourself these important questions when you examine your website.  Does my site facilitate my visitors finding what they want quickly?  Do I even know what they are most likely looking for?  Have I thought about any questions they may be trying to answer by visiting my site?

If you answer no, or have not taken the time to answer any of these questions in the first place, you are losing visitors.  In terms of sales, its money out of your pocket.

The world wide web was never created for you to promote a product and sell it.  The web was created for the sharing information, views and opinions.  If you think I am making that up, just take a look at the sites that are more popular today.  Granted, Amazon.com gets a lot of traffic; but what is it compared to the number of hits Youtube.com or Facebook.com get daily?

The Web as a market place is an afterthought, brought about by its convenience of making a purchase without leaving your home.  What this means to an online copywriter is this; in order to create effective copy, you must understand what drives the web.  The web is driven by its users and to write good copy, you have to learn how they communicate with one another.  You have to find out what is important to them and ‘how they talk about that subject’.  Your copy has to be user-centric.

When a visitor comes to your site, what do you believe will appeal to him more in his quest to reach that goal mentioned at the beginning of this article?

Corporate copy that has been used for print advertisement centered on how great the company is, how long its been in business or how much its stock has increased in value all wrapped within a style guide created by the company to control its marketing, or a website who’s copy is centered on the subject matter he is interested?  Providing him with information on that subject in a language he uses everyday to communicate with others via social and content driven websites?

Unless he truly is interested in how long your company has been in business, instead of that widget you are marketing, he will leave your site within 5 seconds, and most likely, never return.

Find out what question is in your visitors head when he lands on your page, answer it quickly and with authority and proof, and he will become your friend.  And then you can sell to them.  Mess up, exaggerate a claim or use hyperbole in the wrong situation and it becomes very public, very quickly.