Don't Make Your Website Look Like and Ad

Depending on which source you believe, the average person is exposed to anywhere between 1,500 ( Media Literacy Report published  by Unicef) and 5,000 ( Charles Pappas, Yahoo! Internet Life columnist) advertising messages per day from TV, billboards, radio, the Internet, practically everywhere we turn. The last thing we want to see when we land on a website is yet another ad.

     Yet many online business seem to go out of their way to make their websites look like ads, billboards, or another commercial media. Don't fall into this trap and turn away potential customers. Your website should provide the solid information that your prospect is looking for, and it should have an editorial  feel to it. Above all, it should be free of hype. Why? Because people usually go online to find information. Few people log on saying, " I can't wait to see ads, and I can't wait to buy stuff!" No, that usually doesn't happen.

     People go online to find information. That's why they call it  the information superhighway . Even if they are shopping for something - say a DVD player or a hair restoration product they are generally seeking information, not advertising, about those products. There is a myth that the Internet is an advertising medium or one big shopping channel. It's not.

     Here's the first distinction between offline advertising  copy and effective web copy. Web copy needs to have an editorial feel to it; that is, it cannot look or feel like a sales pitch.

Editorial -Style Web Headlines

• Don't buy a DVD Player Unless It Meets These 5 Criteria
• Facts You Must Know Before You Buy Any Product That Promises to Grow Hair or Stop Hair Loss
• Can Streaming Audio Really Double Your Website Sales? A recent Internet research study says you can.

     Where does the selling come in? It comes from compelling content- expertly crafted for hidden selling. In plain English, this means:  Develop irresistible  content that slides smoothly into a covert sales pitch for your product.

     Why? Because people online do not want to be sold to. A study conducted by web usability experts John Morkes and Jacob Nielsen ( reported in a paper titles Concise, Scannable and Objective: How to Write for the Web) showed that  web users " detest anything that seems like marketing fluff or overly hyped language (marketese) and prefer factual information". If web visitors ever do get sold on something, they want to be finessed, not bombarded by blatant advertising.

     It bears repeating that your sales pitch should not sound like an ad, but rather it should read like an editorial, testimonial advice, case study, or endorsement. If you want an example of this kind of writing in the brick-and mortar ( meaning offline) world, think "advertorial" ( editorial-style ads) or press release.

     If the offline world, editorial-style ads boost readership significantly over standard-looking ads. David Ogilvy, legendary advertising man, wrote his book, Ogilvy  on Advertising . There is no law which says that advertisements  have to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract  more readers. Roughly six times as many people read the average article as the average advertisement (emphasis mine). Very few advertisements are read by more than reader in twenty. In fact, in a split-run test conducted in Reader's Digest, an editorial-style ad boosted response by 80 percent over the standard ad layout.