Yesterday I was helping to analyse why a pay-per-click campaign wasn’t performing as well as it should, and rather than spend time first looking at the adverts and keywords, I decided to look at the website the leads were landing on.
Apart from the fact that the PPC campaign was pointing straight at the home page rather than a bespoke landing page or set of pages (not a terminal error when the whole site is only 4 or 5 pages), I was struck by the fact that the copy on this particular home page was in no way, shape or form customer-centric, something it’s always easy to spot by the dreaded overuse of that little word: “we”. (Substitute a company name for “we” too, the effect is the same.)
This particular site was for a company offering wide range of services that, to my mind, really needed to be explained briefly, succinctly and with the needs of the client foremost. Instead the text went like this:
“We have extensive experience…”
“We have a hand-picked team…”
“We can help with any matter…”
“We are based in XXXXX, next door to the XXX, where we’ve been since 19XX”
Blah blah blah.
The customer must come first
This is how to me the text ought to have been pitched:
“Looking for a XXXXXX? Many of our clients find that our XXXXXXX service solves this for them.”
“Need a quick solution to your XXXX problem? 90% of such clients can be helped on the spot, the rest within 48 hours.”
“If you need someone to do your XXXX for you, you can relax in the knowledge that our fixed-fee approach will help you budget…”
Don’t get me wrong, “we” is fine in moderation, but trying to write without it forces the company to think of its customers 100% of the time. It’s about anticipating your customer’s needs and directly addressing them.
Money’s too tight to mention
Turning to the pricing section of the website, again a lack of customer focus was immediately apparent: “We will offer a quotation, we offer a wide range of services, we are competitive…” followed by some deliberately vague blurb about competitiveness. (This particular site wouldn’t actually give any real pricing information – bad when people are hunting for facts online. “What might they be hiding?” could be a potential customer’s first thought.)
What would have been wrong with: “Pricing is foremost in our clients’ minds. All of our clients benefit from a simple and easy to follow fee structure: The initial consultation is free…” etc. Simple stuff, but again insisting on including the words “you”, “our clients” and the like forces companies to think about their customers, not themselves.
This particular site wasn’t the worst offender I’ve ever seen, but alongside cheesy photos of staff members (what’s wrong with real pictures of clients using the product?) and the aforementioned lack of real substance (say exactly what you do, why you’re different from the rest, and what it will cost) it was obvious that for this client, something as simple as a morning’s brainstorming and a rewrite of the copy could pay dividends, aside from the PPC campaign itself.
Websites are no place to tub-thump. People are there because they have a problem they are looking to solve. Recognise this, and your site will always convert traffic better. Ignore it, and all that paid-for PPC traffic will hit “Back” and click on someone else’s ad.
Tags: copywriting, coustomers, pay per click, PPC
LOL
We this, we that, nothing like your website then? : )
True, banning the word “we” is probably taking it too far, but it’s just a tool to keep copywriters thinking about their customers.
When on our own site we’ve got link titles like “Who we are” and “What we do”, in our case it is hard to avoid a few uses of the word! But we do like to think that our site remains customer-focused.
Take your point, though