Web copy

Video transcript

Five Surprising Practices to Make Your Web Copy Sing

Too many home pages read like damp doormats. Instead of inviting web visitors into the site, they push them away by using a writing style that’s impersonal and indistinct.

Your website should attract your audience to you with a unique, powerful voice. The words shouldn’t just lie on the page—they should sing out with the personality and strengths that define you and/or your organization.

Why do so many websites, especially those produced by academic experts, fall flat?

The reasons might surprise you. Lack of writing skill isn’t usually to blame since academics get plenty of practice writing.

When a website projects a feeble voice, the writer is probably missing one or both of two key requirements for success: (1) a genuine emotional connection with the target audience and (2) self-confidence.

Here are five practices to help you achieve both of those success factors. You may be surprised to discover just how simple and easy they are to implement.

The worst thing you can do is to create your web copy in an isolation chamber.

As you draft or revise web pages, invite members of your Impact Audience to respond to the emerging content.

Explain to your target user that you are trying to increase awareness about your research so it can help more people like them. Get them excited about the prospect of contributing to your mission. And be sure to thank them heartily once they’ve provided their feedback.

Developing emotional intelligence requires a certain kind of imagination. To recognize what someone else is feeling, we must be able to envision ourselves in their situation, seeing the world through their mind.

Want to deepen your emotional connection with your audience without taking the time to hold a focus group or series of interviews? Here’s a shortcut: read what they’re reading.

The Internet offers a treasure trove of articles that can give you penetrating insight into what your audience is thinking and feeling. Consider, for example:

• Blogs by reputable consultants
• Blogs by community groups or individual consumers of health care
• News stories
• Stories in consumer magazines
• Reports by reputable consulting firms on trends related to your audience’s sector
• Websites of professional and industry associations
• Websites of community or advocacy groups
• Social media discussions 
• Websites of past and upcoming conferences

As you consider such resources, keep an eye out for accuracy--but you're not just reading for facts. You're reading to get a sense of your audience's beliefs and emotions. If they are holding false beliefs, and responding emotionally to them, that's important to know!

Notice we didn’t say “reading your site.” A website differs from a document in that it’s meant to be interactive. It should provide multiple pathways for users, nudging them deeper and deeper into the content, closer and closer to engaging with you directly.

To role-play your audience reacting to your site, give yourself no more than a minute or two to explore the whole site (no more than 30 seconds for the home page). In other words, mimic the hurried behavior of most web visitors, whose limited attention darts from heading to heading, stopping occasionally on a key word or image that grabs their eye.

Notice the parts of the copy that stand out to you. Are they the most important bits you want to arrest your audience’s attention?

Also notice the links you click. Does your browsing lead you deeper into the site, to second- and third-level pages? Does it guide you to a compelling call to action that encourages you to take some kind of action, such as downloading a fact sheet or tip sheet?

Writing should feel as natural as speaking, but for many people the act of putting thoughts into print causes anxiety. Worried about the kind of impression they’re creating in their readers’ minds, they turn out sentences that come across as stiff and pallid.

There’s an easy cure for this rigor writis: craft your web copy as notes for a presentation. Doing this will force you to picture yourself speaking to, and interacting with, a real audience. As you form the words on the page, imagine your audience reacting to them. At what point do they lean in? When do they get restless or look up at you with glazed eyes?

To take this practice to the next level, practice giving your presentation. As you vocalize the words you’ve written, you may find opportunities to make the language simpler and more engaging.

 Find yourself a no-BS audience, someone who will instantly call you on any posturing. Choose a friend or family member who knows and loves the real you so they can point out places where the writing sounds overly formal, too technical, or impersonal.

So much web copy goes wrong because the writer believes they have to “fake it”--they have to sound more clever, more intelligent, or more blustery than they are in real life. Express yourself in your own professional but personable voice, and you'll encourage web visitors to trust you.

Five simple practices, each promising a big payoff. The more you engage with them, the easier you’ll find it to craft seamless web copy that resonates with your Impact Audience and makes them want to hum along with your tune. You’ll soon find that producing singing web copy is as easy and enjoyable as singing in the shower!

Curated Resources

• Sites offering royalty-free stock photos: unsplash.com, pixabay.com, pexels.com
• Top 10 design mistakes in 2021 with Jakob Nielsen (Nielsen is a leading thinker in web usability, a pioneer in the field of user experience, or UX)
• Designing for web accessibility

Downloadable tool

Guide to Creating Copy for a KT Website

Try this!

Using the Guide to Creating Copy for a KT Website, create three personas representing your Impact Audience.

Then reflect on what the personas have taught you about ideas and key words that will resonate with your Impact Audience.