Once potential customers land on your website, you have just 50 milliseconds to make a positive first impression. Sure, this initial “gut feeling” about your brand, your credibility, and your competence is based on visual elements – but it also stems from your copy.

In fact, it could be argued that aligning your website copy and design is essential for driving business success. After all, even though your website’s visual elements represent the components that initially attract user attention, the copy (and the way it’s presented) is what motivates people to click the “buy” button.

A strategic piece of sales copy on your website — text that’s not just well-written but also properly formatted and positioned — will engage your audience, forge an emotional connection between the reader and your product, and boost conversions. In other words, spending the time to perfect your website copy can help you elevate your business and achieve the results you’re after.

This article will teach you everything you need to know about successful sales copywriting. 

You will find several tips to unite the words and visuals on your site, resulting in a significant boost in conversions and an overall positive brand reputation that will widen your reach and increase your customer base.

1. Prioritize Customer Benefits Over Product Features

One of the easiest copywriting hacks you can implement (without having to make extensive web design overhauls) is to reframe the way you describe your products.

When trying to use words to sell products and services, the thing you mustn’t forget is what consumers want. According to research from JungleScout, consumer priorities in 2022 include:

• Low shipping prices
• Affordable product cost
• High product ratings and reviews
• Impressive features
• Flexible payment and delivery options

In other words, although product characteristics do attract buyers, they’re not necessarily the main thing driving conversion. 

Contrarily, it could be said that, in 2022, shoppers will spend their hard-earned money on solutions that offer the most tangible benefits. Not convinced? Research shows that 46% of people switched brands in February 2022 to get better value for money or easier availability.

With this in mind, it’s easy to conclude that the first tip for writing conversion-boosting sales copy is to highlight product benefits. 

Something as simple as tweaking your product descriptions to explain the features from the customer’s POV — as done below by Columbia — can help you encourage sales by calling web visitors’ attention to product characteristics that will deliver a great experience.

Note how the brand promises “advanced warmth” and “pockets galore,” and how it highlights these benefits by employing bold formatting. Yes, this strategy may verge on the traditional side. But the truth is, it works, which is what ultimately matters when trying to boost conversions.

2. Align Your Products with a Specific Outcome

According to a recent report from Forrester, almost 20% of brands have seen a drop in customer experience quality. And that’s not all. The same report revealed that the number of businesses prioritizing customer satisfaction has decreased as well.

Now you may wonder, what does customer experience have to do with website copy? The answer is quite simple: most businesses fail to properly frame their promises, which inevitably leads to customer disappointment.

Some businesses do employ sales copy that under-promises, then aim to overdeliver. But there’s a much better strategy for writing copy that is meant to inspire conversions. 

By ensuring that your unique sales propositions aren’t vague but realistic (and measurable), you can help potential customers grasp the benefits of your solutions and motivate them to convert. Moreover, by being truthful about the outcomes you can provide, you can ensure your buyers get a great shopping experience and turn into loyal customers of your brand.

A quick look at KURU Footwear’s ‘Best Plantar Fasciitis Shoes for Pain Relief’ page shows how well the headline addresses customer pain points and promises a sought-after outcome. In this case, that result is pain relief, which is not just what the brand’s audience needs but also a much more specific benefit than something vague like “comfort” or “treatment.”

If you check out the Jira Software homepage, you’ll see how this brand mentions a frustration that its target audience understands all too well. The copy invites customers to “Let developers focus on code” instead of updating issues. 

The page includes impressive statistical data on customer results. This allows Jira to effectively describe a highly-specific outcome guaranteed to attract prospects, and encourage middle-funnel customers to convert more quickly.

3. Speak Directly to the Audience

Another great way to write sales copy that converts is to speak directly to your audience.

Successful, conversion-inspiring website copy treats all web visitors as if they’re already customers of your brand. Instead of speaking in the third person and risking alienating people by promising to solve someone’s frustrations, sales-boosting copy addresses the reader directly. 

It employs “you” as a pronoun, describes the benefits a particular person will enjoy after converting, and invites the specific web visitor to take action.

A quick look at the January AI homepage reveals how the business employs this sales copywriting tactic to help visitors visualize their experience using the product. Sentences such as:

• “Wear a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) once, and January’s AI will learn to monitor and predict your blood sugar even after you remove the sensor.”
• “Your purchase includes…”
• “AI calibration to monitor your glucose without a CGM.”

All work perfectly to give readers the impression that they’ve already made a buying decision. 

Considering that January’s product is about personalization, the more direct approach is a great way to drive that message home, as it creates a unique and individual experience from the first moment the prospect encounters their solution.

4. Double Down on Your Key Differentiators

When writing sales copy that aims to convert, you need to understand how you differentiate your brand from its competitors. This will play a crucial role in whether you are successful at generating sales or not.

Think about it this way: the purpose of your value proposition is to call your audience’s attention to the things your business does better than anyone else. This could be anything: speed, convenience, value, quality, or longevity. 

But if you want to be sure your prospects see the significance of these promises, you must make sure that your unique differentiators are:

1. Super-easy to perceive
2. Placed in highly-visible spaces on your website

If you check out the Eve Hansen homepage, you’ll see how this natural skincare and essential oils brand doubles down on its key differentiator – the fact that it uses natural products. The word “natural” is repeated a total of four times, just in the main benefits section. 

Furthermore, the copy includes similar words like “clean,” “organic,” “non-toxic,” and “balanced.” All these words are used throughout the website and, perhaps most importantly, in the first visible area of the homepage. And that’s where web visitors are likely to spend 54% of their page viewing time (which means they’re guaranteed to notice them).

5. Don’t Let Sales Copy Overwhelm the Conversion Trigger

When writing sales copy for your website, you might be tempted to mention every little detail that makes your product great. And that’s understandable. After all, you should be proud of the solutions you offer.

However, there’s one thing you must keep in mind if you wish to achieve a good conversion rate: web users don’t have much patience. Scientists found that almost 80% of people don’t read web pages but only scan them for relevant information. Data also shows that people’s attention spans are getting shorter as well. 

So, if you want to turn web visitors into customers, you must grab their attention with copy and visuals. Then, convince them to convert by presenting information in a concise, accessible, and easy-to-read manner.

By taking the time to identify the precise benefits that will encourage your audience to convert, you can avoid wasting their time and energy and ensure they immediately understand the value you provide.

The Affinda Invoice Data Extraction Software & API page does this beautifully. The value proposition it uses is short — nine words in total — but it does everything needed:

• addresses a customer pain point (invoice processing)
• promises a benefit (time-saving)
• encourages users to solve their most frustrating time-waster by inviting them to try the software for free

6. Let Happy Customers Write Sales Copy for You

Social proof is a conversion-boosting design element that should unquestionably be a part of your web design strategy. 

• 98% of buyers seek out social proof at least “occasionally” before making a purchase
• 60% of buyers say they’re more confident in their choice after using a review site 

It’s no wonder that most design-related advice encourages brands to use the power of testimonials.

But here’s the thing. While using video to tell customer stories and embedding user-generated content (UGC) on your website go a long way in encouraging conversions, it’s not always enough. Especially when the customer experiences you’re trying to describe don’t have anything to do with your sales proposition. 

By designing your site in a way that allows you to display specific, curated reviews and testimonials from your customers, you can effectively address customer pain points. Moreover, this copywriting strategy can help prove that your brand delivers an exceptional experience. And it gives prospects a genuine reason to put their trust in your business, with proof to justify their confidence. 

If you choose testimonials or quotes that represent the voice of your target audience, you can make your product feel more real and genuinely helpful. That will certainly make it a more attractive solution than the competition.

Take a look at the Dress Forms USA homepage. Knowing how important customer experience is to its visitors, it includes a “Verified Purchase Reviews” flyout on the left side of its hero section, which displays several 5-star reviews pointing out the quality of the product and the positive customer experience of shopping with the brand.

7. Strive for Balanced Product Information

As you explore ways to write copy that works with your website’s design and inspires conversions, don’t forget this: great results require a strategic approach.

You may have heard that copy needs to be simple and to the point, and that it needs to focus on customer benefits instead of product features. After all, we covered these tips earlier in this article. But the only way to make your website copy truly work for your brand is to hit the right balance between simplicity and detail.

When choosing how to describe your products and how to position copy on your pages, you must do so with a clear idea of what info your audience needs to hear next. 

For instance, the exact milliampere hour (mAH) value of a smartphone battery isn’t most buyers’ top priority — which is why manufacturers don’t use it as their main selling point. However, knowing that battery life does matter, it’s common for brands to boast a long battery life, then provide technical specs further down the page. That way the information won’t risk overshadowing other significant selling points, like a great camera system or advanced processor chip.

Google’s Pixel 7 Pro product page shows this precise strategy in action, with the copy positioned based on priority. The value proposition promises an “all-pro Google phone.” The main benefits section touches on the top 5 experience-boosting features. And the bottom of the page lists the phone’s technical specs, helping well-versed phone enthusiasts check whether the product offers everything they need.

8. Pay Attention to Structure

As you work to write website copy that complements your site’s design, don’t forget about the visual aspects of text that impact readability and allow your audience to quickly find conversion-inspiring information. 

The general guidelines you should follow include:

1. Using the right font. Most accessibility resources recommend Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Lucida Sans, and Helvetica.
2. Ensuring readability with the right font size. When designing for the general population, choose a size that’s at least 12 points. However, if your target audience consists of seniors, you should go bigger to make reading your copy easier without extra effort.
3. The optimal length should be between 50 and 60 characters per line. Anything wider than this will make it difficult for your readers to focus on the point of the text, while shorter lines will break up their reading rhythm and can cause them to become stressed.

9. Connect Your Brand with the Right Emotion

When honing your sales copy to boost conversions, it’s always a good idea to incorporate some elements of emotional marketing. Several studies have proven the positive effect emotional marketing strategies have on consumer product perception and purchase decisions. 

So, if you’re looking for ways to upgrade your website copy, consider whether you could benefit from using emotive words and concepts — especially if you’re selling lifestyle or B2C products. Common emotions used in marketing are happiness, frustration, fear, envy or FOMO, and friendship or fitting in.  

The key is to balance logic and emotion based on what the customer needs at that exact moment in their website journey.

In some cases, addressing consumer frustrations can help you position your products as the perfect solution, as done by ATH. This brand addresses negative emotions like risk and fear to motivate web visitors to take their health into their own hands. 

It achieves this by doing something as simple as asking web visitors whether they’re getting enough protein, then encouraging them to calculate their daily protein needs.

10. Clearly Address a Common Conversion Obstacle

In some cases, the best way to prove you understand your audience’s needs is to directly address their conversion obstacles.

Consumers want to put their trust in competent brands that understand their needs (and have the experience to solve their pain points). By demonstrating that you know exactly what’s worrying your potential customers, or what barriers they face before making a purchase decision, you’re underlining your competence and automatically inspiring conversions.

An excellent example of this sales copywriting strategy comes from the Buy a Website page on the FE International site, where the copy addresses the one concern first-time business buyers are likely to have about making a considerable investment.

The brand points out how its expert advisors will help customers find the perfect business and guide them through the purchase process. Thanks to this approach, FE International shows that it has its customers’ best interests at heart and is committed to helping its clients get the best value for their money.

If you check out the Everlane product pages, you’ll see that the most conversion-inspiring piece of copy on the page consists of a Transparency section, where the business breaks down the cost of its garments. 

By stating what it costs to make the product, Everlane addresses a common conversion obstacle in its industry, makes sure to build trust, and proves to potential buyers that its garments are a good value for money.

The Takeaway

There you have it, sales copywriting tips that will help you craft web copy that harmonizes with your website’s visual design, and inspire visitors to convert.

Don’t hesitate to apply every single one of these tactics to your copy. Yes, it might take a lot of work, but all of these tips represent foolproof ways to upgrade your site copy for improved conversions. 

If you only have the time and resources to make incremental changes, that’s okay too. Just keep your eyes on the right goals: proving your brand’s credibility, showing prospects that you understand their pain points, and formatting your copy to help visitors easily find conversion-inspiring details.

If you do that, you’ll be on the path to success.