What if the problem wasn’t with your products or services, but the way you wrote about them?

Too many companies spend enormous amounts of money on marketing to drive traffic to their websites—only for this to unravel when potential customers read the words on those websites.

Marketing should always be a two-tier approach that includes high-quality, engaging writing on websites because this is what converts website visitors to customers. Some of that marketing investment, therefore, needs to focus on that critical point of first contact with your business website. Otherwise, everything else is a waste of time and money.  

Website design and graphic imagery help to captivate visitors. But this won’t convince prospects to commit to your business. High-quality writing—or “copy” as it’s known in marking—does that job. And it does it exceptionally well if you do it right.

Take a hard look at the copy on your website homepage. Are potential customers using a machete to get to your core sales message and value proposition? Is this buried somewhere in bloated paragraphs halfway down the page? If it is, no one is reading it.  

Here’s a formula that's guaranteed to convince website visitors to stick around on your website. Lead with a problem > solution formula right at the top of your homepage, over a background image or video clip. State the main problem or interest of your customers, which they are looking to solve by visiting your website. Then, tell them about your solution to their problem or interest in as few words as possible. This offers them the immediate assurance that you understand their needs and that they’re in the right place.

If you use this formula, you’ve achieved something that most websites fail to do: hook their readers’ interest. Now you have to provide a payoff, or you’ll lose their interest and trust.

Next up: build a compelling narrative that deepens their interest and prompts them to commit to your business. Achieve this with a less-is-more approach to writing. Trim every piece of fat out of your content so it’s as lean as possible. People don’t read large paragraphs on websites; they scan them. Take your large paragraphs, break them into smaller ones, and strip them down to key messages.

Once you’ve done that to all the copy on your homepage, look at the flow of information you’re presenting. Is it logical? Do you keep the focus on the customer benefits of your products and services—

because that’s what people care about: themselves and their problems and interests.

Writing too much about who you are and what you do will bore your prospects, and bored people don’t make purchasing decisions. They visit competitor websites that are easier to understand, and they buy from them—even if their products and services are inferior to yours—because they know how to sell them in writing.