Fuel Design Blog

4 easy website headline writing techniques

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:41:00 GMT

How do you go about writing headlines that’ll get noticed?

If the job of a headline is to get people to stop and take attention of your marketing message, how exactly do you do that? How do you get a headline to cut through all the other advertising messages and “noise” and busy-ness?

In short, how can you grab your readers’ attention and engage them in just a few words?

How to engage your readers

The key to getting your readers’ attention is to engage them. That means, getting them to pause for long enough so that they’ll want to read more.

There are a number of ways in which you can write headlines which engage readers, and you can use these techniques either in isolation, or by combining them.

We’ll look at these techniques by applying some examples: the “before” is the kind of introductory text you’ll often read online or in an advertisement. The “after” gives an example of a more effective headline.

1 - Ask questions to engage your readers

A very popular and very effective way to engage readers is to ask a question in your headline.

Example – website designer:
Before: We design e-commerce website
After: Do you wish your website generated more sales?

Example – fruit and vegetable store:
Before: Apples $3.50 a kilo
After: Do you need to increase your 5-a-day fruit intake?

2 - Use customer-focused words

Make it about the reader: make sure you use the words “you” and “your” as much as possible – and try to avoid “we”, “us” and “our” as much as you can. Certainly avoid using the latter at the beginning of the sentence.

Example – plumber:
Before: We fix leaks.
After: You don’t need to put up with that drippy tap!

Example – fence manufacturer:
Before: We specialise in the manufacture of high quality fences.
After: Are you looking for a stylish way to secure your property? (In this last example, notice how the question-asking technique has also been used.)

3 - Offer a solution to a problem

Offering a solution to a problem that your reader is having is another common headline-writing technique. That’s why you see so many headlines beginning with “how to...” or “why...”.

Example – landscape gardener:
Before: Shrub pruning
After: How to enjoy more fruit this summer with this easy shrub pruning technique.

Example – gym:
Before: Supervised weight lifting sessions.
After: Why lifting weights will slim you down.

This also means that you’re talking about benefits rather than features, e.g. enjoying more fruit or slimming down... the things the consumer really wants! Pruning or weight lifting is just the means to the end: we don’t necessarily want to spend our time pruning or lifting weights, but we do want more fruit in our garden, or to be slimmer.

4 - Using emotional trigger words

There are certain words that are said to grab people’s attention because they generate an emotional response.

Examples of trigger words include:
achieve, amazing, bargain, beautiful, easy, exclusive, formula, free, imagine, important, luxury, power, results, revolutionary, savvy, selected, shocking, urgent, valuable... there are dozens more of these.

Just look up “emotional trigger words” in your favourite search engine.

Example – hairdresser:
Before: Hair straightening service
After: With this revolutionary hair-straightening technique, you can enjoy 25 valuable minutes longer in bed each day!

Example – business coach:
Before: Dealing with debtors
After: Is your cash flow suffering because you’re not using this important financial management technique?

Health warning: use emotional trigger words in moderation

If you over-use them, you could come off as sounding phoney, insincere and too good to be true.

Here’s the business coach example again, with too many emotional trigger words:
"Imagine the amazing results you could be achieving with this valuable, revolutionary formula!..."
This example is so over-hyped, it would be very hard to believe what’s being said next.

By all means use emotional trigger words, but go easy on them!

Summary

These are just some of the ways you can use headlines to engage your readers: there are other techniques as well, but these are a good starting point as they are quite easy to implement - plus, "they work amazingly well"

One final word on headlines: they shouldn’t be too long. If you can’t easily say a headline in one breath, you need to re-visit it and shorten it.

Why? Long headlines are confusing and cluttered... and after all, the whole purpose of the headline is to cut through the noise and busy-ness (rather than adding to it).

What’s a “normal” open rate for email newsletters and campaigns?

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:42:00 GMT

Sending email newsletters can be a weird experience... sure, you’ve got some numbers telling you how many people have opened your message – but what do the numbers actually mean?

Sending email newsletters & email campaigns can be a weird experience. You have a feeling that you’re doing the right thing by keeping in touch with your clients... but how can you tell if they’re actually having an impact? You've invested a lot of time and effort in making your newsletter or email campaign look good, it would be nice to know this is paying off - right?

How to deal with the Great Online Void

First of all, if your email newsletter campaigns feel like a Great Online Void, you need to remember why you’re sending the emails in the first place, and that reason is to stay in touch with your customers, and therefore stay front of mind. It’s all about communicating with them; making them feel valued; and maintaining a relationship with them.

If that doesn’t give you warm and fuzzies, then the fact that these newsletters are likely to be producing repeat business and also referrals should definitely leave you feeling good!

Tell me about facts, not just about emotions...

Facts are vital when it comes to email newsletter campaigns, and that’s why using professional email newsletter software is so important (rather than just your local email software).

The software measures your campaigns, and gives you data, with one of the key measurements being the “open rate”. That is, how many people opened your email newsletter.

But what does this open rate data mean?

Having the open rate data by itself can be meaningless.... how are you meant to know if the numbers are “good” or “bad”? You need something to benchmark against.

Email newsletter benchmarks

Here’s that all-elusive benchmarking information...

a good email open rate is considered to be between 20% and 40%.

If you’re in a business-to-business industry, then the open rates should be at the higher end of that scale; and if you’re dealing with consumers, then the open rates are usually at the lower end of that scale.

But wait a second, that seems really low – most people aren’t opening my newsletters!

Ah, but let’s remember WHY you’re sending your newsletters. That is, to keep in touch with your customers so you stay front of mind, and you’re doing that just by them seeing your company name in your In Box.

OK, so it’d be nice if they were to open your newsletter, but it’s done its job to some extend if...

your customer has seen your name, and
they don’t Unsubscribe.

Of course, it would be nice in the ideal world if everyone were to open your newsletters all the time, but we don’t live in that ideal world. We have to be happy with what we’ve got, and work our darnedest to improve things by continually sending top-quality newsletters. It’s a constant effort to maintain (or increase) those open rates.

What does it mean if open rates start dropping off?

If your open rates are falling issue after issue, don’t panic straight away. There are a number of different reasons as to why open rates decline:

The database is ageing: open rates tend to fall over the years, as people tend to switch jobs and make other changes in their lives, meaning that their email address becomes invalid, or that they don’t need your product or service any more. That’s totally normal.
You’re not attracting new subscribers: the issue in the previous point is enhanced if you’re not regularly attracting new subscribers. Gaining new subscribers takes continual effort.
The subject lines are boring: many people will decide whether to open your email or not based on the attractiveness of your subject line. If your subject lines aren’t enticing, many people will stop opening the emails. Great subject heading lines are vital, and some split-testing around this will help you discover which subject lines work best for your target market.
The content is falling short of expectations: if people aren’t enjoying your content, they’ll stop reading your newsletters. However, this is the first conclusion that many business owners jump to, yet you need to look at the previous bullet points first of all before making any radical decisions about your newsletter content.

Summary

If you do spot your email open rates dropping off, the above list gives you a remedial tool kit to work through. However, don’t be tempted to change everything at once – you could be throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. Do some tweaking and testing over a number of issues to see how that goes, and if you’re not getting anywhere, then try something else.

The main thing is that you do keep communicating with your customers, despite any hiccups in your open rates. Keeping the relationship going is vital. Remember, you’re communicating with the Great Online Void: you’re communicating with your best customers.

Buying decisions are only 20% logic and 80% emotional

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:42:00 GMT

Buying decisions are based on 80% emotion and 20% logic: here’s how to incorporate that into your copywriting and marketing.

Imagine that you’ve just come into some money, and you can finally replace your old banger of a car with something a little more modern... and possibly a little faster. Who knows, you may even end up with some wheels that turn heads!

Stop a minute – what’s all this about head-turning? Cars are about getting you from A to B... so what’s all this stuff about head-turning? Shouldn’t we be studying fuel economy charts, crash data and safety testing websites?

Yes, you may well research all that information on some sensible websites... but chances are you’ve already got a brand, model and colour of car in your mind. Correct? These things all relate to emotion. Different brands have different emotional links: some car makes are perceived to be practical; others are perceive to be upmarket; others are perceive to be sexy, and so on...

Similarly, different colours have different psychological links too. Even someone who doesn’t give a hoot about cars will still have some very firm likes and dislikes. For example, they may prefer a Toyota to a Porsche; or a neutral-coloured car to a bright coloured car.

Before you even walk into the car showroom, you’ve already got some ideas and preferences. Those preferences will be linked to a reasonable degree on how you’ll look and feel in your future new car. That’s all linked to emotions.

Drawing on emotions is vital in your website copywriting, about 80% of buying decisions are based on emotion; and only 20% are based on logic. So if you want your marketing piece to be effective, it’s absolutely imperative that you drill into those emotions.

If you just go into the facts, that’s boring. Yes, the car’s engine might have special features – but will it make the driver smile when it goes VROOOOM? Yes, the car has special brakes – but will it keep my family safe? Yes, there may be dirt-resistant paint – but isn’t that about leaving the customer more time to do fun stuff?

Look at that last sentence again. What we’ve done here is to separate the products practical features from the emotional benefits. This is the really interesting thing In the showroom, we choose the shiny red car because we think it looks cool, and it has a nice state-of-the-art stereo with bass tones that gives you goose bumps. But when you get the car home, you’ll start justifying your purchase to your other half with logic. We’ll say stuff like: “Ah, yes, this car has a special eco-engine and only uses 2 drops of fuel to drive a hundred miles, plus look at these seatbelts! They’re meant to be the best on the market – it’s what our kids deserve!”.

Your marketing piece shouldn’t be all about emotion – even though that’s the attention-grabber. At some point, you do need to provide your prospect with some factual data so they can then justify their head-turning vroooom machine when they get home.

Our eCommerce Websites have powerful features that can be found externally, like email marketing capabilities. Some of these services are pretty good and are often free (to a point). What makes our eCommerce Websites different is...

"our eCommerce Websites have 5+ systems all in one place - so you have everything at your fingertips. No more trying to remember numerous logins for systems that don't talk to each other - which means you can get things done faster and have more time to do spend your money your website is earning you..."

As we say in the industry "sell the grass, not the seeds", or "sell the sizzle, not the sausage".

Is your home page doing its job properly?

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:42:00 GMT

Nearly every website has a “home” page... but what is its purpose? Here are some of different elements your home page needs to convey.

You’re wandering through the mall, in need of a new pair of shoes. Walking around, you check out the shops from the walkway.

Hmmmm, that shop looks like it only has trainers and casual shoes – that’s not what you’re after! That shop looks far too pricey; keep walking, keep walking, don’t get tempted by those expensive shoes! But ewwwww, that shop looks really cheap and nasty. You want better than that.

You keep walking round the mall, and finally you find a shoe shop that looks just right.

Notice what you’ve just done?

You’ve been making judgements on the shops without even setting foot inside them. You were quickly able to guess whether a shop is suitable or not just by looking at their window displays and into their open doorways.

A website home page is like a shop window

One of the most important jobs of the home page is there to entice the right customers to enter.

Think about it in terms of the website user: they’ll be wondering if your business is the right company for them, in terms of products, services, culture, personality, and price.

In short:

Can your business fulfil their need?
Do you have the right solution?
Can they trust you?

The reader’s attention span is short

Not only does your website have to convince the reader – it has to do it very quickly. Website users have short attention spans and make snap decisions. In fact, you have just 5 seconds or less for your website to make a good first impression and to lure the prospect to read on.

It’s a bit like the shoe shop in the mall: you might wander in, thinking the shop is the right one for you. But then you see the prices, and you walk straight out again. Thus your website home page needs to make a good initial impression, and then earn the reader’s eyeballs for the next 50 seconds.

Sounds like the home page needs to do a lot!

Yes, your website home page has to work very hard indeed.

So make sure that it:

Clearly identifies who your target customer is.
Demonstrates your understanding of your target customer’s key challenges.
Begins to hint at your solution... but don’t go into too much detail. (That’s the job of your Products or Services page.)
Sums up what’s unique about your business (i.e. why should they choose you, rather than a competitor?)
Conveys that your business is trustworthy and reliable.
Looks professional; is easy to use; and has an attractive design.

If you manage to do that successfully, you’ll have an attractive shop window that’ll attract your target customers. Leaving you to sit back and admire your new shoes when you’re talking to the new clients your website has attracted.

At Fuel Design we design a website to 'talk' to the decided target market. As mentioned earlier, you only get a few seconds to engage the viewer - but there is a lot more to a home page than just the look and feel...

Home pages and search engines

Another thing worth noting is that Search Engines (like Google, Yahoo and Bing) will put a lot of weighting towards your websites home page. So not only do we need to fulfil the above requirements on the home page - but it also needs to have a good amount of keywords (with links to inner pages if possible) and general content. Generally about 500 words+ is good for a home page - but too many can cause your page to look too text heavy to the potential shopper.

One method we sometimes use is to ensure there is plenty of 'textual content on a home page for both informational, marketing and search engine purposes - but keep the textual content elegant and uncluttered; is to add 'accordion' style drop-downs lists (see the Fuel Design home page - the 'Website design with a difference' section). That way the search engine sees the keyword rich content and customers see bullet type lists that can reveal more information if clicked on (or even rolled over etc).

The home page will often (but not always) be shown in search engines and the homepage 'meta description' will often be used to describe your website to the viewer, yet another important aspect of a homepage.