Six Fundamental Rules for Writing Web Copy
By Sandy Franks

They can be one sentence, a short paragraph, or in bullet form.

They can be serious, funny, and sometimes a little quirky.

And often you’ll find them right next to or underneath a product image.

But no matter the style, these projects are simple to complete and lots of fun to do.

And they pay well too.

I’m talking about product description pages for your client’s website. Do one and you could get paid as much as $1,500 for what might take you just a few hours to complete.

Heck, you could make them your weekend writing projects. And if you write product description pages for two different clients over a single weekend, you’d be making an extra $156,000 a year.

If you’re not familiar with the term product description pages, you’ll find them on just about any type of e-commerce website. Their purpose is to provide website visitors with all the important details about a particular product.

And while they may be small bits of copy, a well-written product page helps consumers make their purchase decisions, which is why when it comes to shopping online, they’re considered an important element.

But even though a product description may be short, it holds incredible power and can be difficult to write unless you know what you are doing. Luckily, there are fundamental rules to follow when writing a product description page, which include:

Fundamental Rule #1: Know your target audience. The first step to writing a product page is to know your target audience. This starts with creating a buyer persona, which includes a breakdown of the characteristics of your prospect. This helps you understand what matters most to the buyer.

In your persona, you’ll want to answer questions such as how did this person arrive on your client’s website, what is his or her interests, why would this person be interested in this product, and which benefits matter most.

Fundamental Rule #2: Focus on product benefits. You know from your copywriting training that prospects buy with emotions, not logic. So in your product page copy, you’ll want to highlight the benefits of the product and not just the features.

If you’re not certain, here’s the difference between a benefit and feature. A feature is a factual statement about the product that provides technical information, whereas a benefit tells how the product improves the buyer’s life.

Fundamental Rule #3: Use a conversational tone. You don’t want your copy sounding like a computer generated it, which is why you want to make sure you are writing in a natural, conversational tone. This means you want to use words your prospect understands and uses in everyday life. Be sure to avoid complicated vocabulary words or complex sentences. Make your product page copy easy to understand and read.

Fundamental Rule #4: Embed emotional trigger words. Since prospects buy based on emotions and not logic, you want your product page copy to be emotionally compelling.

One of the easiest ways to do this is making sure you have emotional trigger words sprinkled throughout the copy. Those are words such as miracle, eye-opening, sensational, magic, courage, devoted, jaw-dropping, uplifting, and fearless.

Fundamental Rule #5: Make your copy easy to scan. Your prospect has a short attention span and will read about 16% of the copy he or she sees. So you’ll want your product page copy to have bullet items and subheads that stand out. This makes it much easier to capture your reader’s attention. And the easier your copy is to read, the less likely a prospect will pass it over for something more satisfying and interesting to them.

Fundamental Rule #6: Be sure to optimize your copy. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the easiest way to attract prospects to your product page, which is the first step in convincing them to make a purchase.

Optimization begins with keyword research for the search terms a prospect plugs into their search bar. Those are the words they use to find products they need and want.

By making sure keywords are embedded in your product page, you stand a good chance of getting that prospect reading your copy.

Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what you need to know to write attention-getting product pages. And it’s also just one of many different web projects clients need completed.

For instance, you might be asked to write homepage copy for which you could charge up to $4,000. Or maybe your client wants you to write a series of emails where you could charge as much as $3,500. Or maybe your client needs lead-generation pages written, and for this you can charge up to $5,000.

By taking on a variety of web-related copy projects, you could easily earn your way to a comfortable income of $10,000 a month (or more).

And you could earn that income for a long time to come because the demand for web writers is constantly growing. E-commerce reached $612.8 billion, up by 18.1% in the first three quarters of 2020. Basically, consumers are getting increasingly comfortable purchasing online as retailers have made improvements to their online process, including web copy and content.

This is just one reason product description pages have become vital to your client’s online growth. So there is no better time than right now to learn how to write those pages, along with all the web copy and content your clients need to keep their businesses strong and attracting new customers.

Why not add web copywriting to your portfolio of writing services? You can find out about those projects and this opportunity by going here.