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35% Revenue Increaseà from Your Website!
2 Golden Rules for an Engaging Website
35% of visitors fail to achieve their goal when they visit
company websites! By following 2 simple rules, you can
increase your web-derived revenue by 1/3 or more!

By Glenn Murray *

Renowned website usability researcher, Jakob Nielsen, today
(Nov 24) published results of his latest study. His test
subjects used 139 websites. On average, they failed to find
what they were looking for 35% of the time. Shockingly, 37%
of users couldn't even find company location details!

What was surprising was that users didn't give up. They
generally found the information they were after û but they
found it at a competitor's site!

So how do you stop potential customers falling into the
hands of your competitors? Nielsen is right when he suggests
user research. Yes, it's imperative that know what your
users need at your site. But what he doesn't say is how to
structure your website so it meets users' needs.

There are two golden rules:
- Write first, build later
- Write to your customer

Write first, build later
The real message on most websites is in the writing. It
makes sense, then, that the writing should determine the
structure.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for most businesses. For
them, the writing is an afterthought. They structure and
design their website first, then try to fit the writing to
the structure. This flies in the face of common sense. When
you speak to someone, you structure your speech around your
message. You don't decide on a structure, then change the
message to suit!

For a truly usable website, you need to plan what you want
to say before you create the site û perhaps even write the
whole thing. The message û the writing û should determine
the structure.

Write to your customer
So how do you decide what to write?

Firstly, don't think, "What do I want to say?". When you're
writing a website, you have to think, "What does my customer
want to know?". It's a very subtle difference, but it's the
key to engaging writing. And that's what you want to doà
engage the customer.

Most customers will want to know the basics:
- What do you do?
- What benefit do you offer them?
- Why should they choose your service or product?
- Why should they choose your service or product and not
your competitors'?
- What does it cost?
- How can they contact you?
- Where are you located?

Your website has to communicate a lot of information. And to
make matters worse, you're going to have limited screen
real-estate. Ideally, your customer won't have to scroll û
especially on your homepage (all your information will fit
within a single window). And you can't fill the whole screen
with writing, either. The design and navigation elements
take up about a third of the window, and you should leave a
bit for white space (you don't want to overwhelm your
customer). As a rule of thumb, you should expect to have
about 1/3 û ¢ of the window at your disposal for the
writing.

Chances are, right now you're thinking, "How am I going to
fit it all in?". Well, that's where your writing skills come
in. Choose your words very carefullyà

Websites can be an extremely powerful piece of marketing
collateral. You can reach millions for just a few hundred
dollars. Unfortunately, your competitors can do the same
thing. It's a level playing field, but there are a lot of
players. It's important that your thoughts are structured,
otherwise your site will be a mess. If your message is
clear, your site will be simple and easy to use. It's all in
the wordsà

8 More Reasons to Write for Your Audienceà
1) There are approximately 550 billion documents on the web

2) Every day another 7 million are added
3) Workers take so long trying to find information that it
costs organisations $750 billion annually! (A.T. Kearney,
Network Publishing study, April 2001)
4) Reading from a monitor is 25% slower than reading from
paper. (Sun Microsystems, 1998)
5) Helpful content develops site loyalty. The average person
visits no more than 19 websites in the entire month in order
to avoid information overload. (Nielsen NetRatings in Jan
2001)
6) 79% of users scan read when online (Sun Microsystems,
1998)
7) Information gathering is the most common use of the
Internet - 73% (American Express survey, 2000)
8) 48% of people use the Internet to find work-related
information as opposed to 7% who use magazines. (Lyra
Research, 2001)

* Glenn Murray heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can
be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at
glenn@.... Visit www.divinewrite.com for further
details.