Who is your website talking to?

Have you read your website lately?

Have you asked anybody who matters to you to read it and give you an opinion?

You might be shocked by what you see and hear if you do.

Too many websites talk to themselves. Almost all of them do. It’s as if we’re trying to reinforce in our own minds what we purport to be.

Here’s the problem. That kind of writing alienates website visitors because the implied message is, Get interested in us, because we obviously aren’t interested in you. So they leave your website, figuring the content isn’t relevant to them.

Instead, write to the visitor – the potential customer, investor, partner, vendor, future employee. Isn’t that why we established our websites in the first place, because we want to communicate and do business with these key parties?

Check out the stark different between a company whose website talks to itself versus one that talks to its visitors. This first example is from the FrontRange Solutions website.

About us

Headquartered in Pleasanton, CA., USA, FrontRange is a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT Service Management, IT Asset Management, and Customer Service Management solutions. These solutions enable IT and Services Transformation by providing Enterprise-class capabilities that deliver fast time to benefit, high ease of use, and rapid return on investment. With an award-winning tradition and recognized as a leader by industry analysts, FrontRange’s products and solutions are used by over 13,000 customers in more than 80 verticals and 45 countries to quickly improve interactions with external and internal clients and achieve better business results.

How does that feel? Not exactly a warm embrace for the visitor. What we need to keep in mind is that every visitor is subliminally asking themselves, What does this have to do with me?

FrontRange is a fine company, but it’s joined the ranks of the 98 percent who write website copy that is company-focused rather than customer-focused.

Compare that writing to what you’ll find on the Mint website.

What is Mint?
Your financial life, all in one place

Mint pulls all your financial accounts into one place. Set a budget, track your goals and do more with your money, for free!

How it works
See all your accounts in one place

See all your balances and transactions together, on the web or your phone. Mint automatically pulls all your financial information into one place, so you can finally get the entire picture.

The difference in tone and feel between these two sites is pronounced. Mint answers the question, What’s in it for me? FrontRange spends its time saying, Here’s what we do.

Notice that Mint uses the word “you” rather than the company-focused pronoun “we.” If, as many marketing experts proclaim, your name is the most beautiful word in the language, then the pronoun “you” must be the second most beautiful.

Pull the customer toward you with copy that has some allure. Make sure you’re speaking their language, not using industry jargon and clichés. That will make your site sound like thousands of others, and it will make it difficult for the layman to understand. Confuse your visitor and you lose your visitor, it’s that simple. That kind of copywriting will get you nowhere.

This trap befalls so many of us because we tend to get so wound up in our agendas – our goals and objectives and product lines – that we become self-obsessed with our website copy. If we’re writing that way on our website, we’re probably doing the same with our marketing brochures, sales letters, sales pitches, case studies and so on.

Instead, look outward. Talk to your audience. Write to a single person, not the group. Make the individual who’s reading feel as though you’re speaking directly to them. Group language depersonalizes the statements we make.

While writing we should think about the prototypical or ideal person we’re trying to communicate with, then write directly to that person. That way, we can write in as personal and specific a manner as possible.

Visualize him or her sitting on the other side of the desk and start “talking” with the same warmth and individual focus that you expect when being addressed by a potential service provider.

Now we can get some traction with these customers and start thinking in terms of getting people to stick with our site, reading multiple pages and getting to understand why they should do business with us.

So, again, I ask you: Who is your website talking to?

Do visitors see and hear themselves echoing through the paragraphs and pages? If not, scrap that self-obsessed copy and retool your site with copy that speaks to your visitors.

 

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