This has to be one of the most frequent questions I get asked about writing website copy.  I can understand why.  It seems everywhere you look there is different advice about how many words/pages it takes to sell a widget.  When you lay out all the different pieces to the puzzle, however, it gets easier to make a decision.

People First… Everything Else Second

The primary goal of any piece of copy is to persuade the reader/watcher to take the action you want them to take.  Everything else – including search engine optimization – comes second (or third or fourth).  After all, there are dozens of ways to drive traffic to a website. There is, however, only one way that site will be successful: if people buy, subscribe, interact or otherwise do what you want them to do.

That means that the #1 criteria for copy length is that it is suitable to the target audience to which you’re writing. In fact, I have a F.A.C.E. formula I created to guide copy length decisions that includes “audience” for the “A” in the acronym.

If your audience responds to short copy, use that. If you get higher conversions from longer copy, go that route.  How do you know what they will respond to? Constant testing is the only way to know for sure because each target audience is different.

Stereotypically, audiences filled with CEOs, high-ranking military and other power players will most often respond better to short copy or long copy broken into short segments.

“Don’t I Know You from Somewhere?”

The “F” in the F.A.C.E. formula stands for “familiar.”  Just how familiar is the audience with your company/brand/product?  If you’re Coca Cola, you won’t have any trouble with this element whatsoever.  The rest of us will probably have to build a little trust with our prospects to make them comfortable enough to buy from us.

The vast majority of us will need some way to familiarize prospects with our business/product/service. That usually means offering proof of performance and/or social proof to reinforce prospects’ sense of trust. Testimonials, endorsements, videos, accolades and others can serve that purpose.

“It Costs How Much?!”

As price increases so does the sales process and the hesitation of your buyers.  Cost (the “C” in the F.A.C.E. formula) is one of the primary sources of friction in the sales funnel. The higher the price goes, the more it will take to convert a looker into a paying customer.  That means more copy.

If all else is equal, lower prices mean shorter copy and higher prices mean longer copy.

If They Don’t Understand it, They Won’t Buy it

The “E” in F.A.C.E. stands for “education.”  If customers don’t know what your product/service is or fully understand how it will benefit them, sales won’t happen. Depending on just how complicated or innovative your product/service is, you’ll have to go further to educate your prospects on why this item is just what they need.

Whether it’s written copy on a page or narration in a video, education always takes more words.

Never arbitrarily follow the crowd.  Just because one person/business uses long copy doesn’t mean they tested it or that it is pulling well for them.  Making the mistake of guessing or doing what you think you should be doing with regard to copy length usually ends in failure.

In the end, the only way to know for sure is to analyze and test your copy length. This will show you what brings about the highest conversion rates for your products or services.

About Our GE Network Expert - Karon Thackston

Karon Thackston is President of Marketing Words (http://marketingwords.com), a full-service copywriting agency specializing in web and search engine copywriting. She has over 25 years combined experience in marketing, advertising, copywriting and SEO copywriting. Karon has a strong understanding of the processes involved with creating successful advertising strategies.

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Starting a new business isn’t as simple as picking an office space to lease and setting up shop. Some owners of new companies are anxious to put the cart before the horse, but creating a suitable work environment from home is the best method for establishing greater financial stability for your business to blossom. If you have an idea, you’ll need a place to execute it. Most fledgling businesses start inside the home. Whether your office is in the spare bedroom, garage, or in the middle of your living room, it’s important to keep overhead costs low, especially when your business is idling for flight.

Once you’ve developed your product concept, you may not be fully prepared to branch out from your homestead and find office space. That requires collateral and increases costs, which could take a serious chunk from your profits. Maintaining, repairing, and upgrading your home will not only allow your business to expand, but it will keep you from the sticker shock of higher bills when you inevitably expand your company prospects.

The first home improvement project you may want to pursue is creating a “business space.” When the kids are running rampant and the television is blaring, it’s difficult to concentrate. Sure, one of the luxuries of being your own boss is setting your own hours and creating your own terms. But as a professional working from home, you must maintain a safe environment from which to run your company. If you cannot separate your work self from your personal self, productivity will wane.

Consider converting a third bedroom into your home office or, if the space is not conceivable, you may wish to add on to your home. Sure, it’s a financial burden you must assume, but consider the advantages. You’ll increase the value of your home by adding more livable space and you can build the room to suit your needs. Find the outdoors inspiring? Add a large window that overlooks a scenic view. Need a rustic fireplace? Have one installed. The possibilities are endless when you’re building your workspace from the ground up.

The initial costs for expanding your floor plan may seem out of your budget, but construction loans are available to homeowners for such projects. These loans can either be stand alone, or tied to your existing mortgage. Once you’ve cleared zoning regulations with your local municipality, consult with a reliable contractor to determine costs and need. Many contractors offer free estimates. Shop around and attain several quotes to determine what best suits your needs and at what price. Qualified construction companies will offer you suggestions on what’s most suitable for you.

Before deciding on a contractor, research reviews on the company and verify their reputation through the Better Business Bureau. Once you’ve discovered these vital bits of information and you’ve worked out conditions of the construction loan with the issuing bank, you can break ground on expansion. Soon, you’ll find you now have the space you need to keep your new business growing.

Depending on your business model, at some point in the future you may very well want to develop your company outside of the home. When the time is right, you’ll know because your business has been profitable and the four walls of your house can no longer sustain your needs.

Consideration was given for the editing and publishing of this article.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is what determines the rank of your company website when it appears in internet search results. Sites that have strong SEO tend to rank higher than sites that have weak SEO, or no SEO at all.

The website’s rank determines where it appears on a results page. For example, if you do a Google search for “wombats” the first result is a Wikipedia article. The second result is the official site for a rock band called The Wombats. These two listing are ranked first, and second, respectively because of their SEO rating. Both pages have such a high rank that they beat out the National Geographic page on wombats, which was ranked third.

SEO works differently depending on your search engine. A search for “wombats” on Bing shows the same top three results, but the fourth result is different. Bing lists the Wombat Information Center fourth, while Google lists WOMBATS – Women’s Mountain Bike & Tea Society.

These differences occur due to slight differences in the way each engine searches the web, and indexes the information it finds.

So why is SEO important?

Let’s say you have a blog site with affiliate links. In order to make money, you need to drive traffic to your site so people will click your links. Or, let’s say you are using your website to advertise your own services. Without traffic, you’ll be advertising to the void.

Just creating and publishing a site does not guarantee that it will show up on the first page (or even the fifth page) of a web search. And, if it’s not on the first page, then people are not likely to see it, and you’ll get very little traffic.

How does SEO work?

There are several different ways to optimize your website for high search ranks. One method is to publish content that uses keywords that match popular web searches. For example, if you have a website devoted to dieting, then content with words like “lose weight,” “weight loss,” and “how can I trim my middle” would give you a higher ranking.

Another option is to apply tags and keywords to the site itself to make it more visible to search engines.

But SEO isn’t just about throwing popular words and phrases onto a website.

When done right, SEO-rich content and tags appear natural and seamless, yet are very effective in driving traffic to your site.

When done wrong, they look awkward and contrived, and your site could still be overlooked by major search engines.

If it sounds daunting, that’s because for many people it is.

This is why a lot of business owners rely on search engine optimization services to help them improve their rankings.

A good SEO service can take over and make your company site a lean, mean, SEO machine so you can spend your time on other aspects of your business. On a basic level,  an SEO service can review your current site and offer suggestions for improving SEO. In more advanced cases they can take over designing your site, and provide SEO-boosting content and tags.

Whether you decide to tackle the task yourself, or work with a professional company, SEO is crucial to improving your presence on the web.

Consideration was given for the editing and publishing of this article.

Article Contributed by Chris Burgess

As the job market gets more competitive and the promise of a career for life goes the way of the dodo, entrepreneurship has become more popular than ever, with many schools and colleges now offering classes in private enterprise. Go to any bookstore, and chances are you’ll find literally dozens of books on the topic, each promising to hold the key to startup success.

But can entrepreneurship really be taught in school, or does it represent a more intangible set of skills that can only be acquired through real-world experience?

Educators will argue that learning entrepreneurship isn’t really all that different from learning business, and that most of the same skills apply. This argument is bolstered by the fact that research in the field has improved drastically in recent years, with educators now much better equipped to help students avoid many of the pitfalls of turning their dreams into reality.

Some lessons are still best taught outside the classroom

While it’s true that many of the skills that underpin good entrepreneurship, such as effective time management and financial planning, can certainly be taught, there are a handful of less-easily-defined skills and qualities that identify the real entrepreneur – and many would contend that the only way to gain them is by doing.

One of these is, quite simply, people skills. As an entrepreneur, it’s inevitable that you will have to deal with many different personality types. Virgin founder Richard Branson, who was actually a painfully shy child, was thrown into the deep end at age 7 by his exasperated mother: she dropped him off several miles from home, requiring that he find his own way back. He didn’t show up until 10 hours later, but in that time he’d learned many invaluable lessons on how to communicate with adults in order to arrive home safely.

Another is the ability to take on calculated risk, along with the willingness to accept failure and uncertainty. At the end of the day, you simply have to do it, and this will get easier with experience. Otherwise you risk getting stuck in an endless cycle of planning and product development.

Instinct is important, but data is better

Many entrepreneurs pride themselves on their impeccable business instincts and their innate ability to spot trends before the competition does. “Gut feel” is a good thing to have, but it shouldn’t take the place of hard data if available. One common example is underestimating the time and resources required to have everything in place and reach a state of profitability.

If self-employment remains your dream but your fear of failure is too great, there are still options – you could buy a franchise, for example, or partner up with someone with more business experience.

While there’s no substitute for simply doing it in some areas, the teachability of entrepreneurship continues to increase, due to the emergence of alternative learning methods such as role playing, self-evaluation exercises, and working with mentors. The result is that while not everything about good entrepreneurship can be taught, most of it now can. It just takes time, commitment, and acceptance that not everything in life can be predicted.

About the Author

Chris Burgess is the CEO of Mailplus and has extensive experience in the courier services and business-to-business service market, having successfully franchised over 150 territories throughout Australia. Mailplus currently has franchises for sale in all major metropolitan areas.

One of the main problems with those who’re new to online business is they easily get attracted with the design of the month. Flash was quite popular in recent times, while sliding banners were considered as the ‘real deal’ later on.

Today, many online businesses gear their efforts towards search engine optimization, but they forget that the real success lies in user experience. Visitors coming to a particular website go through thought conversations such as ‘why am I on this website?’, ‘where am I supposed to place the order?’, ‘how do I contact the owner?’ etc.

Thankfully, web design elements can be used to guide users through sequencing and create the best user experience on a blog/website. There are many web design services that have expert knowledge on how design elements work such San Diego web design and similar companies in other states.

Here are some of the design elements that are considered important when it comes to user experience:

1. Shapes

Shapes have an important connection with the visitors as they’re used to communicate and appeal to their emotions.
For example, many of the bloggers who write about making money online use dollars ($), giving the readers an impression of money. The brain also processes shapes much faster than simple text.

2. White space

A website is going to be more attractive when it’s filled with banners, ads, opt-in forms, messages, pop ups etc. This is a misconception that needs to be cleared. There should be plenty of white space in the design of a website (see Huffingtonpost).

White space makes it easy for the readers to consume the information posted on the website, while banners, forms and the likes can possibly distract them from the main content.

3. Size

Size is important for emphasizing the visual and text content on the website. In case of web design, bigger is better when it comes to shape, front or graphics.

The bigger size is used to emphasize the importance of a particular element. It also becomes easy for visitors to skim through widgets, messages, content etc.

4. Position

Position is a tricky element and text, banners and other properties of the website need to be placed carefully, as they can prove to be the difference marker in the end. For example, for some, putting advertisements above the fold is the main source of revenue, while others say it reduces the user experience and the visitor should be able to see more of the content above the fold.

A website should place the most important information above the fold, because that is the area the eyes of a search engine visitor scans first when he/she lands on a particular web page.

5. Motion

Motion can directly impact how a user behaves. The size, shape and color on the web page can be combined to make a motion to direct users towards a particular action.

A simple arrow moving downwards towards a form that says ‘pre-order now and get a free dock connector’ has the ability to tap into the will of users and prompt them to make a purchase.

These design elements come together to provide the best user experience. They also help businesses to gain the trust of the visitors and communicate their message effectively, which leads to better conversions.

Consideration was given for the editing and publishing of this article.