You need your website to convert visitors into buyers. The language your site uses can make a world of difference in those conversions.
A common mistake made with websites is to treat them like a digital business card or brochure. If it’s sales your looking for, it needs to be a digital salesman.
As a salesman, there are elements and progressions you go through with a customer. You have a system for making the sale. You have a clear goal in making the sale. Overall, there are a lot of steps and variables that make a good salesman.
There are a lot of variables that can lead to higher conversions on your site as well, the language used is one of them.
Quite often the sites I see, talk AT their audience instead of TO them. Instead of being conversational, they read very impersonal and don’t draw the visitor in.
Talk TO Your Audience, Not AT Them
The typical language you will find on a site that talks at its audience, is one that uses a lot of third party type conversation. There’s a lot of talk about the business by using the business name. Even if they do mention the customer, the word “customer” is what is used.
For instance:
”ABC Company puts its customers first. With a commitment to serving our customers, choosing ABC company is a sure way to guarantee satisfaction.”
Completely impersonal and reads like an information packet rather than a conversation with the visitor. This language happens more often than not on business sites.
2 Words That Help You Talk TO Your Customers
The 2 words that can instantly make a site more conversational and help you speak TO your customers are, “We” and “You”. Instead of robotically referring to your company by name all the time, use words like “we”, “us”, “our”, etc.
In a conversation, you wouldn’t use your name to refer to yourself over and over, would you?
Let’s make a couple of changes here and see how it reads.
“At ABC Company, we put our customers first. With a commitment to serving our customers, choosing us is a sure way to guarantee satisfaction.”
Notice that a minor change of adding words like “we” and “us”, already make this copy more personal.
Now let’s add in “you” and see how it reads.
“At ABC Company, we put you first. With a commitment to serving you, choosing us is a sure way to guarantee your satisfaction.”
There’s more that can be done to make this better, but just those minor changes make it far more conversational.
Here are some other examples:
From the AirTran website
“AirTran Airways reservations agents are trained to offer customers the lowest available fare in the market”
Modified:
“Our reservations agents are trained to offer you the lowest available fare in the market”
From Avaya’s website
“At Avaya, our commitment to our customers is a two-way street. We want to provide them the best possible products and services, and we eagerly seek out their thoughts and reactions so we can keep on improving and innovating to meet their needs.”
Modified:
“Our commitment to you is a two-way street. We want to provide you the best possible products and services, and we eagerly seek out your thoughts and reactions so we can keep on improving and innovating to meet your needs.”
You don’t always have to remove the company name, but using it sparingly is a good idea in most cases. They already know who you are, they are on your site and there should be plenty of other elements that highlight your company name.
By personalizing your site’s copy and talking to your visitors, you will see an increase in conversions.
Try it out with your site. How often are you talking at your audience, instead of with or to them?
Watch for next week’s post as I share the most important word you can use on your site!