Use your web space efficiently with copy relevant to customers

Summary:  When writing product copy, consider the page where the copy will appear in, note what you want the web user to do in that page.  Then attract, interest and build desire in potential customers through giving relevant information on why the product will be useful to them.  You have just a few seconds to do so, so put the meat right in. Whimsy copy is useless and turns off customers.

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Finally, one local coupon site has stopped using psycho and useless product copy.  Hallelujah!
Another site who does this practice has hidden the weird copy in the middle of the product page.
 The only local coupon site that I've seen who used copy optimally is Cashcash.  The others were just yikes.  (Or maybe I'm not subscribed so I missed it.)

As a loyal customer and a copywriter for usability, I always cringed at their weird product copy.

Example:

 ... Traditionally, lasers have been used to point out important portions of slideshow presentation, to shrink one's children, or as a super villain's go-to weapon of mass destruction.  Find out what good things lasers can do for you with...   ?

This is from an email I received just this June.  

As of today,  their site only has 1 product with weird copy, the others are more efficiently written.  

 The writer definitely knows how to write, but it is big waste of web real estate.  I click these ads when I want to buy something, and I expect the blurb on the email to tell me:  

• a bit more about the product,
• if the feature I'm excited about is mentioned, or 
• if  I have a question, seeing it answered immediately on the snippet under the attractive picture.

Any of these would really excite me to click "View It" to lead on to the product page.  And of course, if all information and terms are satisfactory to me, I would buy at that very moment.

In writing copy, let us treat each page as having its own objective.  Then we write according to that objective. In the photo I posted above, the conversion objective is:  to click on the View It! button that leads to the product page.  I am not clicking to read on shrinking one's children.  Truth to tell, since I did not glance at the title, I didn't know what the product was.  If I liked the picture and price, I would click the button, but the desire for buying is held off until the next page, when desire to buy could have been built directly on the email received, even before landing on the product page.  Time is wasted.

Unfortunately, hurt as it may, but as your buyer too, I can say that most of your sales come from the pictures, the price, the no-nonsense product headline, and in the product page.  But that blurb, it turns me off, and I'm sure a lot of us cringe at those blurbs because it's (sorry) quite cheesy, given the context.  In the past, there were instances when I see people in my timelines snickering about the product copy.  Many times, I have been impatient with this copy as it is not helpful and quite annoying and takes up my time when all I want is to learn more about the product.  

 I am not sure if it's a management policy to write this way, or a personal preference of the writer, but whoever decided to stop it, well, props to you.




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