5 ms·

Ask HN: Tips for writing compelling web copy.

71 points by pmjoyce 16y ago

I'm in the planning phase for the redesign of my SaaS application as it launches out of private beta and into the wild. Part of that is writing the sales and marketing copy including explaining what the product is, it's benefits, calls to action etc. Writing decent web copy isn't a strong suit of mine but I would like to get a better grounding in some of the basic principles. Do any of you have any tips or pointers to good source material I can read up on? I don't expect to turn into Don Draper overnight, but I'd like to be able to avoid common pitfalls. Failing that, do any of you have any experience with decent copywriters and, given that I'm a bootstrapped single founder who has finite runway (i.e. I don't have tons of cash to throw at this problem), any personal recommendations for individuals you've worked with? EDIT: Spelling, grammar and, er, general copy :/

petercooper 16y ago
Sadly I haven't got the time to give as detailed an answer as this deserves but.. even if you do the lion's share of the writing yourself, at least hire a professional writer to give it the once over once you're done in order to catch any particularly bad syntax or constructions (and to get another set of eyes over it, too). This should only take a couple hours of their time if it's a typical SaaS site and would be worth the $50-$200 peace of mind. I give this advice as someone who's written for a living for > 10 years and who still benefits significantly from third parties looking over his work.
niccolop 16y ago
I think I have mentioned this before, but an excellent guide to advertising copy can be found in: David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man (ISBN 1-904915-01-9). It's considered a seminal text among copy writers. I found it very helpful, for exactly this purpose.
- pmjoyce 16y ago
  Thanks for the tip, amazon has my order. Does he delve much into online copy writing techniques? I'd imagine it's quite a different beast to traditional print/display advertising.
  - niccolop 16y ago
    He doesn't per se discuss online copy writing... it was written in the 60s :-) But he talks about direct response ads, which can be seen in light of A/B testing, on web pages. For example, by changing one word, the response rate was increased 20-30%. I earnestly don't think it's that different a beast. The techniques always remain the same, so why not learn from the master? For more recently written stuff, I think groupon do a really good job, and you can find their stuff online: https://docs.google.com/View?id=dmv9rbh_11gtqx983t https://docs.google.com/View?id=dmv9rbh_11gtqx983t
    - pmjoyce 16y ago
      I've ordered the book, even if it's not current it might help put me in the frame of mind I need to approach this. Thanks for the Groupon link.
kalid 16y ago
Copyblogger (http://www.copyblogger.com/ http://www.copyblogger.com/) is a pretty good resource.
- shankarg 16y ago
  I second that. It is a great resource for not just bloggers, for web copy related tips in general. Take a look at their series of 'Magnetic Headlines' posts: http://www.copyblogger.com/magnetic-headlines/ http://www.copyblogger.com/magnetic-headlines/
il 16y ago
Read Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, the granddaddy of all copywriting books. Do it now. It's very short, it's available online for free, and it has no fluff and all useful information. It was written a few years ago, so it doesn't have the latest techniques for maximizing conversions for SaaS products. However, it's written for direct response advertisers and not brand advertisers, so it covers the basics of getting sales, tracking, split testing, etc very well. You can take the techniques Hopkins presents for writing short, effective classified ads and apply them very effectively, with minimal modification, to your AdWords ads and landing pages. These techniques have been tested by dozens of advertisers since, and they work VERY well. A good copywriter will usually charge $10-$15K plus a percentage of sales. I would strongly recommend bringing your copy skills to "Good enough" and doing it yourself.
- pmjoyce 16y ago
  $10-$15K + % ... wow! That's way outside of my price range and an order of magnitude higher than I was expecting. Thanks for the Claude Hopkins tip.
- rarestblog 16y ago
  Ok, I've got to ask. $15K for one text? Percentage? It's THREE orders of magnitude more other than other general text writing. How can this be justified? (Kind of looks like daylight robbery to me)
  - il 16y ago
    If good copy can result in even a 10% increase in sales for a mass market product, that could be worth millions of dollars, much more than $15K. This isn't for a blurb, it's for several thousand words of copy(think something like a 10 page salesletter, or all pages on a website). Keep in mind that writing the actual text is a very small portion of the work. 90% of a good copywriter's time is spent researching your competitors, customers, and target market...understanding your product in great detail to fully highlight its benefits...finding which psychological hot buttons exist in the specific segment of the market you want to target, and how to push them in just the right way to create a red-hot burning desire in your prospect's minds to buy your product NOW. To write good copy, you need an absolute understanding or a market, basically all of the steps of a comprehensive market research project. This takes time and money. You can definitely find someone to write you an article for a few bucks. It won't convert, and it won't represent your product/startup in the best way. That's why I recommend startup founders learn the basics and write good copy themselves, You already know your product and customers best- you can skip the through research a copywriter would have to engage in.
bloggergirl 16y ago
I've been writing web copy for 7 years, and, although the advertising guys referenced so far (e.g., Hopkins, Ogilvy) are great, their tricks focus largely on direct response (i.e., long form letters). Use those tricks for writing PPC ad headlines, etc -- but be careful on your website. On your site, your copy should set a tone for your service; get your value proposition right; be scannable; and err on the side of clear rather than clever. Tone can be tricky because it's easy to get carried away... but check out Mint.com for examples of how to stay light & friendly but also professional & credible. As for your value proposition, check out MarketingExperiments for their tips on writing a value prop that resonates --- and that goes beyond "save time and money" (which every company seems to default to, making that phrase totally meaningless). Regarding scannability, that one's pretty straightforward. Short, snappy headlines. Bullet lists with 3-4 bullets; concise copy in your bullets. No paragraphs over 3 lines long. Bolding used only for things that will be important to users (not just things you wish they would care about). Great typography to help users see the words they're supposed to. Not too much dedication to the rules of grammar (keep the reading level at about grade 5 or 6; Word can help you run tests to see what level your copy's at). As for clear over clever, that means writing "88% of our users saved 6 hours on payroll last month" rather than "Payroll, meet your match". (SEO, persuasion, emotion, etc. can always follow after you launch.) If all else fails, I'm happy to read over your copy and offer recommendations. I'm at joanna AT page99test DOT com. Good luck!
- photon_off 16y ago
  I remember the page99 video submission here, I was impressed and the name stuck. How did you go about making those videos, and which one did you end up picking? I loved the second one, by the way :) I'm going to drop you a line via e-mail, because I'm going to do an overhaul of http://www.dashler.com/toolbar http://www.dashler.com/toolbar , and could certainly use some advice if you have a few minutes to spare. At the moment, I'm almost embarrassed by it. Best of luck with page99, I have a couple of writer friends that might like to check it out if there's a private beta available.
Ataraxy 16y ago
Go to amazon and search for the book called 'Cashvertising".
- 1-2-3 16y ago
  Cashvertising Cheesy name, excellent book. An ad execuetive split tests common copywriting techniques. Very helpful http://www.cashvertising.com/ http://www.cashvertising.com/
- bmr 16y ago
  I came here to say this. Ignore the silly title - it's one of the best marketing books I've ever read.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
sahillavingia 16y ago
I useful trick I learned is to try and avoid a "Features" link (unless you have a very deep app). The user should be able to tell if the app has the features he wants from the front page. Also, sell. I learned the hard way that under-promising in order to over-deliver may work for the users that do sign up, but it's not worth it for the actual drop in users that do.
iuguy 16y ago
There's a lot of good advice here. If you can find a good marketer, it might make sense to use them in the short term while you study up on the reference materials here. There's no reason why you can't attempt to come up with some copy at the same time as the marketing agency and see how you do.
gallerytungsten 16y ago
The opening words of Strunk & White were never more applicable: vigorous writing is concise. Keep it short and to the point. Test it on readers. Do they understand? Great writing is produced by great editing. An iterative process. The $10-15k comment sounds wacky to me. You can hire a decent editor off your local craigslist for 25-50 an hour. But you probably need to bring it in-house; you'll need to pivot your prose points pretty phrequently. PS: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=the+elements+of+style+strunk+white&sourceid=mozilla-search http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=the+element...

71 points by pmjoyce 16y ago

petercooper 16y ago

Sadly I haven't got the time to give as detailed an answer as this deserves but.. even if you do the lion's share of the writing yourself, at least hire a professional writer to give it the once over once you're done in order to catch any particularly bad syntax or constructions (and to get another set of eyes over it, too). This should only take a couple hours of their time if it's a typical SaaS site and would be worth the $50-$200 peace of mind. I give this advice as someone who's written for a living for > 10 years and who still benefits significantly from third parties looking over his work.

niccolop 16y ago

I think I have mentioned this before, but an excellent guide to advertising copy can be found in: David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man (ISBN 1-904915-01-9). It's considered a seminal text among copy writers. I found it very helpful, for exactly this purpose.

pmjoyce 16y ago
Thanks for the tip, amazon has my order. Does he delve much into online copy writing techniques? I'd imagine it's quite a different beast to traditional print/display advertising.
- niccolop 16y ago
  He doesn't per se discuss online copy writing... it was written in the 60s :-) But he talks about direct response ads, which can be seen in light of A/B testing, on web pages. For example, by changing one word, the response rate was increased 20-30%. I earnestly don't think it's that different a beast. The techniques always remain the same, so why not learn from the master? For more recently written stuff, I think groupon do a really good job, and you can find their stuff online: https://docs.google.com/View?id=dmv9rbh_11gtqx983t https://docs.google.com/View?id=dmv9rbh_11gtqx983t
  - pmjoyce 16y ago
    I've ordered the book, even if it's not current it might help put me in the frame of mind I need to approach this. Thanks for the Groupon link.

kalid 16y ago

Copyblogger (http://www.copyblogger.com/ http://www.copyblogger.com/) is a pretty good resource.

shankarg 16y ago
I second that. It is a great resource for not just bloggers, for web copy related tips in general. Take a look at their series of 'Magnetic Headlines' posts: http://www.copyblogger.com/magnetic-headlines/ http://www.copyblogger.com/magnetic-headlines/

il 16y ago

Read Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, the granddaddy of all copywriting books. Do it now. It's very short, it's available online for free, and it has no fluff and all useful information. It was written a few years ago, so it doesn't have the latest techniques for maximizing conversions for SaaS products. However, it's written for direct response advertisers and not brand advertisers, so it covers the basics of getting sales, tracking, split testing, etc very well. You can take the techniques Hopkins presents for writing short, effective classified ads and apply them very effectively, with minimal modification, to your AdWords ads and landing pages. These techniques have been tested by dozens of advertisers since, and they work VERY well. A good copywriter will usually charge $10-$15K plus a percentage of sales. I would strongly recommend bringing your copy skills to "Good enough" and doing it yourself.

pmjoyce 16y ago
$10-$15K + % ... wow! That's way outside of my price range and an order of magnitude higher than I was expecting. Thanks for the Claude Hopkins tip.
rarestblog 16y ago
Ok, I've got to ask. $15K for one text? Percentage? It's THREE orders of magnitude more other than other general text writing. How can this be justified? (Kind of looks like daylight robbery to me)
- il 16y ago
  If good copy can result in even a 10% increase in sales for a mass market product, that could be worth millions of dollars, much more than $15K. This isn't for a blurb, it's for several thousand words of copy(think something like a 10 page salesletter, or all pages on a website). Keep in mind that writing the actual text is a very small portion of the work. 90% of a good copywriter's time is spent researching your competitors, customers, and target market...understanding your product in great detail to fully highlight its benefits...finding which psychological hot buttons exist in the specific segment of the market you want to target, and how to push them in just the right way to create a red-hot burning desire in your prospect's minds to buy your product NOW. To write good copy, you need an absolute understanding or a market, basically all of the steps of a comprehensive market research project. This takes time and money. You can definitely find someone to write you an article for a few bucks. It won't convert, and it won't represent your product/startup in the best way. That's why I recommend startup founders learn the basics and write good copy themselves, You already know your product and customers best- you can skip the through research a copywriter would have to engage in.

bloggergirl 16y ago

I've been writing web copy for 7 years, and, although the advertising guys referenced so far (e.g., Hopkins, Ogilvy) are great, their tricks focus largely on direct response (i.e., long form letters). Use those tricks for writing PPC ad headlines, etc -- but be careful on your website. On your site, your copy should set a tone for your service; get your value proposition right; be scannable; and err on the side of clear rather than clever. Tone can be tricky because it's easy to get carried away... but check out Mint.com for examples of how to stay light & friendly but also professional & credible. As for your value proposition, check out MarketingExperiments for their tips on writing a value prop that resonates --- and that goes beyond "save time and money" (which every company seems to default to, making that phrase totally meaningless). Regarding scannability, that one's pretty straightforward. Short, snappy headlines. Bullet lists with 3-4 bullets; concise copy in your bullets. No paragraphs over 3 lines long. Bolding used only for things that will be important to users (not just things you wish they would care about). Great typography to help users see the words they're supposed to. Not too much dedication to the rules of grammar (keep the reading level at about grade 5 or 6; Word can help you run tests to see what level your copy's at). As for clear over clever, that means writing "88% of our users saved 6 hours on payroll last month" rather than "Payroll, meet your match". (SEO, persuasion, emotion, etc. can always follow after you launch.) If all else fails, I'm happy to read over your copy and offer recommendations. I'm at joanna AT page99test DOT com. Good luck!

photon_off 16y ago
I remember the page99 video submission here, I was impressed and the name stuck. How did you go about making those videos, and which one did you end up picking? I loved the second one, by the way :) I'm going to drop you a line via e-mail, because I'm going to do an overhaul of http://www.dashler.com/toolbar http://www.dashler.com/toolbar , and could certainly use some advice if you have a few minutes to spare. At the moment, I'm almost embarrassed by it. Best of luck with page99, I have a couple of writer friends that might like to check it out if there's a private beta available.

Ataraxy 16y ago

Go to amazon and search for the book called 'Cashvertising".

1-2-3 16y ago
Cashvertising Cheesy name, excellent book. An ad execuetive split tests common copywriting techniques. Very helpful http://www.cashvertising.com/ http://www.cashvertising.com/
bmr 16y ago
I came here to say this. Ignore the silly title - it's one of the best marketing books I've ever read.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

sahillavingia 16y ago

I useful trick I learned is to try and avoid a "Features" link (unless you have a very deep app). The user should be able to tell if the app has the features he wants from the front page. Also, sell. I learned the hard way that under-promising in order to over-deliver may work for the users that do sign up, but it's not worth it for the actual drop in users that do.

iuguy 16y ago

There's a lot of good advice here. If you can find a good marketer, it might make sense to use them in the short term while you study up on the reference materials here. There's no reason why you can't attempt to come up with some copy at the same time as the marketing agency and see how you do.

gallerytungsten 16y ago

The opening words of Strunk & White were never more applicable: vigorous writing is concise. Keep it short and to the point. Test it on readers. Do they understand? Great writing is produced by great editing. An iterative process. The $10-15k comment sounds wacky to me. You can hire a decent editor off your local craigslist for 25-50 an hour. But you probably need to bring it in-house; you'll need to pivot your prose points pretty phrequently. PS: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=the+elements+of+style+strunk+white&sourceid=mozilla-search http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=the+element...