Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Not sure where to start? That’s okay. This article will teach you the fundamentals. You'll learn how to drive audiences to read every word you write. You’ll learn how digital copywriters -- you know, marketers who use words to convert people online -- get and keep the most valuable commodity on the internet: attention.

However, in order to command an online reader’s attention, you have to first understand how they read.

The answer, of course, is that they’re not reading at all. On the internet, the majority of people are actually skimming. In fact, according to research performed by Jakob Nielsen, of the Nielsen Norman Group, only 16% of people online read word-by-word.

Just about everyone else is a scanner, picking text apart for the bits that are valuable to them.

Knowing that, there are several ways you can write to make the process easier for people, ensuring that your message is entirely received.

Ready to learn a valuable skill?...

Your website copy is responsible for more than just presenting your visitors with basic information. In fact, your words alone have the ability to influence how visitors feel about your brand, what they choose to click (or not click), and how your site ranks in search engines.

How can you ensure that it's working the way you want it to? Testing. Sometimes the tiniest change in word choice can have a major impact on your conversion rates. While the difference between a checkout button that reads “Add to Cart” rather than “+Cart” might seem insignificant, it can significantly alter your website's performance.

Still not convinced? Check out these 13 case studies that prove word choice does indeed matter when it comes to optimizing for conversions....

Optimizing your own copy is a bit like scaling Mount Everest without a Sherpa. It doesn’t matter if you’re in shape; if you go it alone, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll end up a crumpled human popsicle.

Well, help is here.

To save you (and your copy!) from a shallow, frosty grave, I’ve put together 51 bottom-line questions that will help optimize every element of your online copy....