Copywriting is a powerful tool for ecommerce stores. If done well, your copy can help customers understand what you have to offer, persuade them to buy from you and build loyalty. During the CRO audit, we pay special attention to the text we see on the page. But how do you write good copy? What makes some ecommerce stores more effective at this than others?
These questions can be answered simply and briefly: what you write and how you write are important. To understand how good a text you wrote, let your friends and colleagues read it and ask them to answer the following questions:
If you don’t have four positive answers, you need to work on the text again.
Obviously, a good copy is the one that makes money. Some of the characteristics of great copy:
We could end this article there, but let’s try to understand the details.
Here are five helpful tips for writing excellent copy for an ecommerce store.
The primary role of a headline or any other heading is to get you to read the first sentence of the paragraph or page. Unfortunately, when people see the text at the top of a web page, they don’t read it closely and instead scan through it. This makes it imperative for you to make your headline stand out with engaging language that appeals to your target audience.
If you’re writing an article about how much money (or time) can be saved by choosing one product over another, don’t write “Why Product A Saves Money.” Instead, write something like: “Save $100s per year with Product A.” Remember this rule: The benefit must be clearly communicated for someone to understand why they should keep reading!
The copy you write for your ecommerce store should evoke emotion in the readers. You want them to feel something when they read it, whether that’s excitement, fear, anger, or anything else.
To do this, you need to use words that are familiar and easy to understand, as well as authoritative.
For example: “Dozens of items are added every day.” This sentence is easy for anyone who has shopped online before (or even heard about shopping online) and can relate their experiences with it because it evokes a strong emotion—excitement!
Remember that the goal of your copy is to help your target audience, not just to sell a product. You want to show that you understand their problems and can offer a solution (your product).
So what does this mean? It means you have to be authentic, sincere and keep it simple.
“Remember, your goal is not to describe every single feature of a product but to communicate the benefits of buying it from you.”
And remember that people don’t make decisions based on facts and figures, they buy because of their emotions and desires. So keep in mind that when writing copy for an ecommerce store, you need to focus on the benefits of your product rather than its features.
The benefit is what customers get or receive from using or purchasing your products/services, while the feature is what makes up or constitutes a product/service. You can have a fantastic website, but if your visitors do not know how they will benefit from visiting it, they will leave immediately without spending 2 seconds on it!
To write good copy for the ecommerce store, find out who are the ideal buyers for your business and what problem does each person want to solve by using your product? Think about how this specific problem affects them personally (not just in general), then list down all possible solutions that can be offered by using other similar services/products which may exist already in the market before creating yours so that you know exactly why should anyone choose yours over existing ones!
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. People are influenced by others’ behavior and tend to follow it when they see other people have done so, especially in cases when they feel uncertain. This is because they believe that it must be correct or safe if many people are doing it.
For example, you may use social proof as a way to convince someone to buy your product. You might show that many others have purchased your product from this store before and that it worked out well for them- thus making them more likely to make a purchase themselves!
A unique value proposition is a promise to your customers that you can deliver something that no one else can.
You need to be able to explain why you are better than the competition.
You can do this by being more transparent, more affordable, or more convenient.
“Copywriting isn’t just about writing words, but how you use those words as tools that help build bridges between customers and ecommerce stores.”
It’s about helping customers make buying decisions and understand the value of what you are offering them.
Imagine walking into a store with no prices for any displayed products. How would you decide which product to buy? Can you compare one item against another? Most likely not, because knowing what each item costs is necessary for someone like yourself (who doesn’t have everything memorized) to know their options and whether they were getting a good deal.
To put it simply: copywriting is your guidebook on how best to approach potential customers with your brand’s message so that they will pay attention to what it has to offer—and hopefully become repeat customers!
Homepage copy
A Homepage is where users who know nothing about your site and business land. Therefore, making it clear from the first seconds who you are and what you do is essential. In user testing, we use a 3-second comprehension test in which users see the home page for 3 seconds, and then we ask a few questions, such as:
So you can use the following formula to give the most straightforward and most helpful information about yourself:
Evaluate your current value proposition by checking whether it answers the questions below:
Use the headline-paragraph-bullets-visual formula to structure the answers.
ProductPage copy
A product page is where you sell the value of your product and where the user takes action (adds to cart, sign up, makes a purchase, etc.).
From our observation of the sales funnel – 90% of our clients have the most bounces and exits on the product page.
Below, we show a list of what should be on the page so that the user gets the most helpful information about the product / service and move to the cart.
“In case you missed it, here’s a list of 10 Tips on how to create a converting Product page.”
What you now have in place is like a checklist. The next step would be to start writing the draft version of the copy by filling in the blanks.
One thing before we end the article – after you write a copy, you can use a VCC test (thanks to CXL Institute for that info).
Value, clarity, credibility (VCC) test
The exercise is quite simple yet very effective. We go through the whole copy, line by line, and evaluate each statement for value, clarity, and credibility.
Here’s what these three criteria mean:
Value
What’s in it for me? Is there a benefit to the user?
To get people to pay money, they need to understand its value.
Clarity
Is this sentence simple and clear? Can we make it shorter? Improve clarity?
Clarity trumps persuasion. We aim to eliminate all confusion, complicated words and jargon, and make sentences as short as possible.
Credibility
Is this believable?
Convert superlatives and vagueness into specific statements, and back up all claims with proof.
There you have it, the five key takeaways for writing excellent copy for ecommerce stores.
If you have any questions about your current store or are interested in Conversion Rate Optimization, please, book a time for a Free Strategy Session!
.png)
