How to Craft a Website Voice Your Readers Will Love

Have you ever wondered what is meant by the “tone and feel” of a webpage, or by a website’s “voice”?

You’re not alone. Having received a number of questions from folks about just this subject, Heather addresses the importance of your web pages’ “voice” in today’s SEO copywriting how-to video post, and specifically how to use it to “speak” to your readers.

1.  You hear a lot about a page’s “voice” or “tone and feel”: so what does that mean?

• It’s as simple as writing online copy in the same manner as you would speak to a prospect.

It really is as simple as that. So when you are writing content, you want how you say what you say to be in a way that the prospect will think, “okay, this person is just like me…they understand what I need and I feel more comfortable buying from them.”  Establishing that resonance with your readers helps them take that next conversion step.

• As discussed before, with online copywriting, it is all about the prospect: that prospect is wondering “what’s in it for me?”

It’s one thing to have benefits – and it’s very, very important to have benefits – in your copy, but if you can convey those benefits in your writing in a way that resonates with your target audience, that can make a HUGE difference with conversions.

• So generic online writing = bad, in that you won’t get the conversions that you want, or the readers that you want, because you’re not connecting with you target audience.

2.  A mini- case study of achieving target audience resonance by changing up a website’s tone and feel:  Fashion Forward for women 25 -35 years old.

This is a well-defined demographic – women 25 to 35 years old – and the copy talks about this discount sterling silver jewelry that’s designed for both daily and evening wear.

That “evening wear” may not be resonating with that target audience, and you can be sure that it’s definitely not resonating with those who shop exquisite Oscar de la Renta jewelry. So if you’re dealing with a younger target audience, they’re probably not shopping high-fashion designer jewelry, especially through that site.

3.  Solution:  copywriting that “sells” the benefits in a different way…

We completely tweeked the copy – altered it’s tone and feel — so it fit that particular target audience.  The site ended up getting a huge increase in conversions because while the copy was saying the same thing, it was saying it in a way that really resonated with the target audience.

The site ended up with a completely different tone and feel – a completely different voice – and that made a huge difference in its effectiveness.

4.  So, before you upload a new page, ask yourself:

• Does the writing reflect how my target audience communicates?
• What can I do to make the copy more personal?
• Am I using terminology that my target audience may not understand?
• Does the copy “pop” off the page and make you want to take the next action step?

Remember you want your content’s tone and feel to match – resonate with – your target audience, and there is no excuse for boring copy!