James Cope

Hopefully anyone interested in improving their site has checked out the subject of my previous post, and now has a little more of an understanding of how to structure a site and the elements that are important from a search engine perspective.

I attended a presentation run by Intergage back in May, and have been meaning to mention it ever since. The session included a really good slot from Roan Fair their Digital PR Manager. He has years of experience of copywriting working at one point as the Business Editor of the local Echo, and speaks really well on the topic.

The subject is an area of focus of the Business Link website reviews, and is commonly an area that is weak in small business websites. His basic principles are really easy to follow, and echo a lot of the points that I make when meeting customers.

He takes a simple 5 step strategy:
1. What is your readers’ biggest headache? Feel their pain!
2. Why have others failed to solve this nagging problem?
3. Why is your solution different? Prove it works!
4. Tell them how much better their lives will be with your solution
5. Calls to action – tell ‘em what they need to do!

The presenation, attached for anyone who is interested, has some really good tips in there that can be implemented to improve the effectiveness of business websites. Perhaps it’s time to ditch the company history from the homepage and think customer focussed!

Intergage Presentation Copywriting May 2009

Would be interested to hear from anyone who has made or is making similar changes to the site and the impact that it has to improve conversion rates. If you found that useful and feel that a Business Link run seminar would be worthwhile to learn more leave a comment and we will see what we can do.

Roan has a useful twitter feed for anyone who wants to keep up to date with the topic http://twitter.com/roanfair

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