5. Content questions you should be asking:
o When should I start planning out my
copy?
o How do I align my content with design
and development?
6. Planning for Website Copy
● Start ASAP!
● Develop a team consensus on:
o Core company & product messages
o What is the story
o Target audience & their language
o Features vs. benefits
11. Your target customer
Demographics
● Name
● Type
● Gender
● Age
● Profession
● Income
Back story
(Problems)
● What challenges
are they having?
Their Needs
● What do they need
to solve this?
How to exceed their
needs?
● What do we need
to do?
14. Why WordPress?
Pros
● Easy
● Inexpensive
● Content
● Mobile
● SEO
● Community
● Learning curve
● A lot of “noise”
● Still requires some
custom work
● Security
● Updating
Cons
15. Platform opportunity
● Content marketing
o Blogging, social, e-mail
● E-commerce
o Digital sales, product
● Membership
o Paywall, premium content
18. How to make your copy ROCK
o What makes a great headline?
o How do I incorporate keywords?
o How much copy is too much?
19. Writing Awesome Headlines
Specific, well-defined benefit -- not feature!
This: NOT this:
The 5-Minute Improvement that Brings in 500 More Customers. The Top Customer Acquisition Tool
23. Recipe for a Great Headline
● Lead with the most important word(s), i.e. benefits
● Avoid being clever when you can be clear
o Stay away from typical, overused words like “Save time”, “save
money”, etc.
● Keep it short without leaving out the meat
Spend more time writing your headline than writing the
rest of the page!
34. Pros v cons
● Affordable
● Fast
● Determined layout
● Attractive
● Do it yourself
● Doesn’t fit brand
● Not for every use
case
● Determined layout
● Not content ready
36. Pros v cons
● Fits the brand
● Made for the
content
● Unique experience
● Scalable
● Aligned w/
marketing
● Time
● Budget
37. Designer questions
Are you competing in a competitive space?
What are your conversions worth?
Do you have too little or too much content?
How does this transcend into mobile vs desktop experiences?
(see planning phase)
40. Iterate, Iterate, Iterate!
● But, what do I iterate?!
o Short answer: Everything!
o Specifically:
Headlines
Calls to action
Layout of content
41.
42.
43. Tools & tech for testing
(Outside of WP)
● Unbounce
● Google Analytics
● Google Webmasters
● Crazyegg
● Zopim
44. Learn & Improve
● What headlines worked (and didn’t work)
● What CTAs converted the best (and worst)
● Which layout converted the most users?
Speaker: matt
Welcome
Overall goal of webinar
Who we are: brief intro
Intro into agenda
Speaker(s): Kristin & Matt
Speaker(s): Kristin
Speaker(s): Kristin
There are a million different directions you can take a content discussion but we’re going to focus it in on how to plan your copy for a new website or website revamp. first up, let’s go over how you should be thinking and planning for website content...
Speaker(s): Kristin
To best plan for a website launch, you need to think about copy the right way.
Especially for startups, it’s a natural instinct to just jump in and begin writing, trust me i’ve been there, but save you and your team time in the long run by taking some time to frame your content strategy, even if it’s a brief plan.
It is also, seriously critical, to understand how content fits in with design and development processes, as Matt will explain in a bit
Speaker(s): Kristin
Content & messaging planning come first -- always.
And getting on the same page as soon as possible with your entire team on messaging, targeting, benefits and the overall story must be done before copy is written.
Without it, everyone comes into a copy review after you’ve spent hours upon hours on the copy, with their own opinions and it will get torn apart. Seriously, i’ve seen it happen.
So if you’re responsible for copy, it’s your responsibility to get all decision makers in a room and decided upon the direction of the copy and messaging so you can kick it off on the right foot.
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Kristin
It can’t be emphasized enough how important it is to come up with the content strategy ASAP – its initial development should be underway before design & development begins.
Matt will chime in on why this is so helpful from the design & dev perspective
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Kristin
So once the planning has been done, the dirty work begins. After you’ve set the stage for your content direction, you need to now execute on it -- and im’ going to show you how
Speaker(s): Kristin
First of all, who doesn’t want their copy to rock? But its easier said than done.
3 really important things to pay most attention to as you dive into content creation. I’ll be explaining what makes for a great headline, how to appropriately incorporate the right amount of keywords, and how to determine the right amount of copy
Speaker(s): Kristin
Your headline is the first, and maybe only, impression you make on a website visitor. Without a compelling promise that turns a visitor into a customer, the rest of your words may as well not even exist.
Remember that every element of compelling copy has just one purpose — to get the next sentence read. And then the sentence after that, and so on, all the way down to your call to action. So it’s fairly obvious that if people stop at the headline, you’ve already lost them.
There is an entire separate webinar that can be made on headlines alone. But if I were to choose the #1 thing to focus on for headlines, it’s to focus it on a specific, well-defined benefit -- not a feature!
Speaker(s): Kristin
You should keep these quick tips in mind when writing each and every headline
And Matt’s going to dive into where, specifically, headlines fit into your page layout and what matters
Speaker(s): Kristin
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Kristin
Don’t jam pack your pages with keywords and phrases just because you think that will get you found. As quickly as it’ll get you found, you’ll then lose them. I value white space and brief, impactful copy instead.
If you want to emphasize an important keyword or phrase, find a good way to point to those words you want them to notice. That could be done by inserting it into a headline, making that word larger on the page or the focus of a video, image or infographic that demonstrates it too. If you really hone in on the most important keywords, don’t be afraid to repeat them in a way that still flows well, to truly emphasize it.
Speaker(s): Kristin
Do you research. Understand, through tools such as Google Analytics, what keywords and phrases people are coming to your site from. Note those down. Also take note of how people talk about you on the web (by searching for media coverage, customer writeups, organic tweets, etc. and even from customer emails) and note those keywords. See where the strongest overlaps are and where the most successes came from (i.e. did the most conversions come from the keyword “keyword checklist”)
Speaker(s): Kristin
Remember: headlines come first. Make those awesome. Then focus on your supporting copy. Make that rock solid. Then your CTA -- that needs to convert
While you want to keep your copy succinct and to the point, don’t take that as you need to limit yourself to X number of words. Figure out what the right amount of words are based on what you need to say, and how succinctly you can say. Always start with more and remove from there -- but never remove the most important parts just to shorten text.
You can’t sell everything at once. Take copy section by section, page by page and focus in on exactly what a visitor needs to read just at that moment, not everything about you all at once
And as Matt mentioned earlier about “above the fold”, it’s not really important to cram everything above the fold, because as he explained, the fold is sort of...dead
Speaker(s): Kristin
They’ve replaced long words with short ones
Keep it targeted -- match your supporting copy w/headlines and CTAs so it all ties together and remains specific. Do not go off on a tangent
They also group & chunk text -- no big paragraphs!
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Kristin
Speaker(s): Kristin
I’m a big fan of testing. i’m never convinced that even if my team and I completely love a headline, layout or CTA, that it’s right.
So that means you can test essentially everything!
Speaker(s): Matt
Speaker(s): Kristin
Running tests is not enough. You need to not only check out the results (often) but you need to also learn from it. Did a headline really suck? Find out why. Did one far outperform another? Find out why. Your metrics will tell you if you dig in enough.
Learn which color buttons work best. Learn what words on your CTA buttons converted the most.
Understand your user flow. Do they want to get right to the point and just click through rather than scrolling down?
Or do they want to learn a lot first (such as if it’s an expensive enterprise grade product) and want a long landing page with all the info they need before even daring to click a CTA button
Test all of these, all the time, and always learn from it. Once you learn one thing, make the appropriate changes and then run another test! Marketers should never be satisfied, I see that as a failure on our part.