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Landing Page Makeover Clinic #28: IntelligentEditing.com

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This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work. Daniel Heuman’s software helps writers, editors, translators, and proofreaders prepare error-free documents with greater ease and speed. He tried and abandoned PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, as he discovered the folks who clicked through weren’t his best prospects. (That’s a technique that almost certainly deserves some more thought and attention another time.) Daniel is now marketing directly to prospects via email and showing some success, but he feels more can be done. Let’s see what we can do. The Goal: Generate enough free-trial downloads to sell 3 licenses a day. The Problem: If folks are downloading a free-trial and not converting, it’s a product vs. value problem. If the problem is growing the numbers of prospects to take the free trial, that’s a traffic problem. If interested prospects are visiting the site or landing page and not engaging with the message, that’s a conversion problem. The Current Landing Page (homepage): http://intelligentediting.com Value: $90.00 Click image for larger view The Maven’s 10-Point Critique My personal take is that Daniel needs to generate enough traffic – via organic, SEM and social media channels – to grow his own mailing list to which he can continue marketing to his heart’s content. A stronger, more effective homepage would offer an overall boost to his ongoing marketing efforts. #1– Make your case in the first screen with a strong, provocative headline. Why would a professional writer or editor pay $90 for additional proofreading functionality? The rational reason: Cleaner, error-free documents. The emotional reason: To look better in the eyes of a boss/client/customers. Sloppy work reflects badly on the writer and the company represented. Clean work makes everyone feel good and confident. So while the current headline: “Proofread Faster, Proofread Better” is a clear statement, I’m wondering how we can juice it up a little? How about: Just One Typo Can Rob You of Credibility and Cash You’ve just gone from “reasonable” to “irresistible” with a provocative headline that resonates emotionally with the visitor. #2 — Add more oomph to the tagline. Again, your tag is very clear on the most basic of benefits: Cleaner, Smarter, Better Documents That’s a good start, but then I’m thinking … why and for what? A great exercise for headlines and taglines is to take your basic feature or surface benefit and “Why? Because!”or “So what?” your way through it until the core emotional truth is revealed. Try working these words (or their variants) into your tagline: polished presentation reflection #3 — Invite your visitors to take your video tour from the get-go. You already have a nice little video, yet you’ve basically hidden it from view. Slap it on your homepage and do a voice-over track. I found watching the material without a guiding voice unnerving. Your voice-over would allow you to expand on the action in the video and highlight those areas of greater interest. Don’t hide the good stuff. Warm it up and share it. #4 — Be upfront about who this product is and isn’t for. The only place I see “MS Word for Windows” is in teeny type under your box illustration. I’d give this more push so Mac users can grunt and grumble under their collective breath and move quickly elsewhere. #5 — Keep sprinkling the goodies that keep visitors thinking “This is for me!” Highlight the product’s ability to proof both British and American English. This capability strikes me as huge benefit for writers/editors working internationally. You also have a strong guarantee. Get it on a homepage badge and show it off. And you make customized versions — another wow, especially for those working in big organizations. #6 — Rework your navigation for greater clarity. You’ve hidden a lot of the product goodies in secondary position in terms of your primary navigation. I suggest the following revisions: Primary navigation HOME Features Success Stories (Testimonials & Case Studies) Reviews Resources Download & Pricing Contact Us Secondary navigation: About Us — FAQ & Tutorials — Forum — Blog — Support #7 — Build your traffic organically with smarter SEO. This is your current title tag for search: Intelligent Editing — Cleaner, Smarter, Better Documents A tagline, though, isn’t necessarily a good meta title — and it’s the title tag plus the content that Google sizes up and determines your topic and site relevancy. So let’s adjust and get some primary keyword phrases in the front of the title like this: Proofreading & Editing Software for MS Word Documents :: Intelligent Editing I didn’t do the research to determine if these are indeed the best keyword phrases , but you get the idea. Frontload the terms that your prospects are using to find you … and add the product name, too. #8 — Build your mailing list with a newsletter and a blog. Since your email campaigns have been pretty effective for you, that means you need to add more names to your list so you can continue doing — and expanding on–– what works for you. Add a newsletter sign-up and offer one or more of your current resources as a bonus for subscribing. Add a blog, too. It doesn’t have to be fancy or involved. See tumblr.com or preposterous.com for some easy-to- implement ideas. #9 – Connect with your prospects with social media. Build your authority in this niche space on this niche topic via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If there are writer/editor specific social media venues, make sure you have a presence there, too. Social media is a long-term strategy to building credibility and a fan base that trusts you and ultimately your products for purchase #10 — Tweak your homepage with one big Call to Action. Click image for larger view I’ve tweaked your current homepage to reflect and illustrate the suggestions I’ve made here. (I know you didn’t want me to, but honest, I just couldn’t help myself. ) You could easily flip the placement of the video and headline/bullet/call-to-action sections. (Mea culpa for the incomplete sentences, dangling participles, and other little idiosyncrasies that make editors weep and gnash their teeth. All I can say in my own defense is this: “I’m a copywriter.”) My thanks to Daniel Heuman for his patience and support of Heifer International. Look for my next makeover in approximately 4 weeks. About the Author: Roberta Rosenberg is The Copywriting Maven at MGP Direct, Inc . Find her @CopywriterMaven on Twitter. If you’re interested in a private page makeover, site audit, or other services, please email Roberta directly .

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The Foolproof Cure for Weak Content: 4 Ways to Get Some Perspective

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When I was fifteen, I wrote a novel. I thought it was pretty good, and daydreamt about literary stardom. Fast forward ten years. I recently found my old notebooks and read that novel over again. And … let’s just say it wasn’t as good as I remembered, and leave it at that. It’s amazing what a difference perspective makes. Usually, you’re not going to be revisiting work from a decade ago. You’re going to be busy trying to get that new website copy done, or that sales page written, or that ebook finished. Problem is, when you’re writing, you’re working at a zoomed-in level. You’re so deeply into the words that you can’t get a grasp on the whole piece. You’re emotionally attached to your work, and even if it doesn’t seem perfect, you simply can’t see any way to change or improve it. Here’s how to zoom back out and get the big picture. 1. Let it rest Ever since I started writing as a teen, I’ve heard this piece of advice. Put your first draft aside for a few days (or at least 24 hours ). Leave it alone. Yes, it’s hard; you’re itching to get your piece finished . You’ll need to plan ahead: give yourself a few days in the middle of a project to take a break. Your unconscious mind will carry on mulling over that project while you’re away from it. When you pick it up again, you’ll come to it afresh. You’ll have new insights. You’ll see different possibilities. Mistakes will jump off the page at you. How long should you put your work aside for? I’d say, the longer the piece, the longer you let it rest. For a blog post, leaving it for a day is probably enough. For a novel, give it at least a couple of weeks — preferably a month. 2. Read as a reader When you pick up your piece again after a break, try to get into the mindset of a reader. Imagine it’s the first time you’ve read this. It helps to make a clear physical break between your writing mode and reading mode. Depending on your project and how you like to work, that might mean: Printing out the whole thing and reading it in a coffee shop Turning it from a word document into a PDF so that you can’t keep changing the text as you read Creating a “real book” version of your manuscript on Lulu Reading through the whole thing in one session While you’re reading, watch out for: Anything vague. Have you assumed knowledge which your real readers might not have? Anything extraneous. It might be interesting to you, but if you can cut it out without losing any meaning from the piece, it should go. In fiction, I ask myself “Is this part of the story?” Anything redundant. When you’re working on a project over a long period of time, you’ll often end up with two similar sections, or very similar phrase or word choices close together. Next to impossible to spot when you’re writing, glaringly obvious to readers. 3. Ask for feedback However great your imagination, you can never truly put yourself in the position of a first-time reader. You know your writing and your topic too well. There’s an easy solution, however: Find some actual readers Ideally, pick people in your target audience. You could try: A writing circle — either a group that meets in real life, or an online one Regular commenters on your blog Participants in a forum or membership site which you belong to (I’m sending out my ebook draft to some fellow Third Tribers this coming weekend) Unless she happens to be a writer too, or typical of your readership, your mom is not the best person to ask for feedback. Ditto for your spouse. They’re likely to be kind rather than constructively critical. When you ask for feedback, be clear about what you want If this is a first draft, you’re not primarily concerned with typos or the occasional clunky sentence. You want to know if whole sections should be cut, or whether your angle works, or if your call to action is clear. I always give my guinea-pig readers a free copy of the finished piece, if appropriate. It’s also nice to offer to reciprocate if they ever want feedback on a writing project. 4. Proofread Once you’re past the revisions stage and into the final version, you’ll need to proofread. Although you can get away with the occasional typo, spelling mistake or grammatical slip in most blog posts, you’ll want to avoid any embarrassing mistakes in your shiny new ebook or your slick sales page. I find that I’m great at finding typos in other people’s work … and awful at spotting them in my own. Usually, I find a long suffering friend to proof-read for me, but if I’m proofreading my own material, this is what helps: Proofread on paper For some reason, it’s easier to spot mistakes on paper than on the screen. Perhaps it’s because we’re more prone to skimming on the screen, or because our eyes glide over any mistakes which the spellchecker hasn’t picked up. Regardless of why , it works. Print out your piece, and go through it slowly with a red pen in hand. Proofread backwards When we read, we rarely take in every word. Uur brain fills in what it expects to see — even if that’s not quite what’s there. (Ever mis-read a headline? Or a billboard?) Reading your work backwards deals with this. You’re forced to look at every single word. It’s a slow and tortuous process, but if you have a piece of work which absolutely must be error-free, it’s the best way to do it. How about you? Do you find it hard to get perspective on your writing? What methods work for you? And have you ever written something which you thought was perfect … until you looked at it again a few months later? Let us know about it in the comments. About the Author: Ali Hale writes about productivity with perspective alongside Thursday Bram on their newly-launched blog Constructively Productive: you can grab the RSS feed here .

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Four Steps to Finding Your Ideal Writing Voice

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Voice is one of the most important elements of a successful blog . Period. Without voice, new arrivals to your blog won’t read beyond the first paragraph. Give your readers a strong voice, though, and they won’t be able to keep their hot little fingers off that RSS button. But what is voice, exactly? And how can you make it come through in your blog? You probably think of people you know as having a deep voice, or a squeaky voice, or a soft voice. Obviously no one can literally hear you on your blog, but they can “hear” you through the words you use and the way you use them. Chances are, your 8th grade English teachers didn’t teach you about voice. I don’t blame them. It’s messy, abstract, and darned difficult, and I should know. I’ve taught nearly 800 young teenagers the magic of voice over the past nine years. And now I’m going to teach you. 1. Get into the flow Each day, my students do a three-minute writing warm-up. The only goal is fluency — to produce as much writing as they can in three minutes. Some of the best writing they ever produce comes from these three-minute bursts. By removing the pressure of quality and focusing purely on quantity , the students are free to flow. What comes out is natural, quirky, and authentic. What comes out has voice. Try it: Set a timer and go. Don’t let the pencil come off the paper (or your fingers come off the keyboard). Just produce. Don’t edit . Don’t censor. Simply flow. 2. Write like you talk I encourage my students to read their writing aloud and ask themselves or a peer, “Does this sound like me?” If the answer is no, I challenge them to simply talk about the subject in their compositions for a moment, while I jot down some of the words and phrases they use in their ramblings. When they insert some of these snippets into their writing — BAM — voice happens. Try it: Record yourself talking through an idea for a blog post — then transcribe what you’ve written . You’ll find some super-rich voice nuggets. 3. Forget conventions (at least at first) Many of my students have been taught by previous teachers to stifle their voices by writing “standard” English. (Whatever that means.) Yes, writing must communicate a message , and to that end the conventions of standard English are important. But in many instances, those rules actually hinder our ability to create a realistic voice. I frequently remind my students that the rules of our language evolved over time with the specific purpose of creating clarity. If breaking a rule will enhance the clarity of their writing, then they should break it — and so should you. That may mean you choose a fragment over a complete sentence, end a sentence with a preposition, or add a comma when the rule book says it isn’t needed. These deliberate choices allow your voice to shine through. Try it: The next time you write a first draft, throw a few conventions out the window. Pretend they don’t exist. When you reread your draft, make your editing decisions based on what best communicates your message. 4. Write what you know This is a biggie. For years, I have asked my students to write an essay about who they would put on the face of a new coin. The best papers, almost always, are written about their moms. Isn’t that sweet? Other students write about Martin Luther King, Jr. or Michael Jordan, or Anne Frank. Sometimes those essays are great, but many times they just sound like a regurgitation of historical facts. (Even worse, sometimes those facts are wrong: “Dr. King helped free the slaves by refusing to get off the bus with his sister, Rosa.”) Bloggers fall into the same trap of picking topics that sound smart or seem popular, even if those topics aren’t really near and dear to their hearts. The result: no voice. Try it: Make this quote from Dolly Parton your new blogging mantra: “Figure who you are; then do it on purpose.” Strive for authenticity instead of popularity . Don’t try to sound like anyone or anything except who you already are. It sure works for Dolly. What tricks do you have for finding your voice? Share your best methods in the comments. I promise not to assign grades! About the Author: Joy Tanksley is a middle school English teacher, the wife of a philosopher, and a leader of workshops for women who want to smash limiting belief systems and lead more abundant lives. She blogs about living a joy-filled life at Being Joy .

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11 Smart Tips for Brilliant Writing

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Do you sound smarter when you use big words? According to a study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology , the answer is no. In fact, complex writing makes you sound small-minded. Just consider the title of the study: Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly. Wouldn’t it be better to title this study something like The effect of using big words when you don’t need them? To sound smart, you must stop trying to sound smart. Brilliant writing is simple writing, a relevant idea delivered clearly and directly. Here are 11 ways you can start sounding brilliant: 1. Have something to say This makes writing easier and faster. When you have nothing to say, you are forced to write sentences that sound meaningful but deliver nothing. Read widely. Take notes. Choose your subjects wisely. Then share your information with readers. 2. Be specific Consider two sentences: I grow lots of flowers in my back yard. I grow 34 varieties of flowers in my back yard, including pink coneflowers, purple asters, yellow daylilies, Shasta daisies, and climbing clematis. Which is more interesting? Which helps you see my back yard? 3. Choose simple words Write use instead of utilize , near instead of close proximity , help instead of facilitate , for instead of in the amount of , start instead of commence . Use longer words only if your meaning is so specific no other words will do. 4. Write short sentences You should keep sentences short for the same reason you keep paragraphs short: they’re easier to read and understand. Each sentence should have one simple thought. More than that creates complexity and invites confusion. 5. Use the active voice In English, readers prefer the SVO sentence sequence: Subject, Verb, Object. This is the active voice. For example: Passive sentences bore people. When you reverse the active sequence, you have the OVS or passive sequence: Object, Verb, Subject. For example: People are bored by passive sentences. You can’t always use the active voice, but most writers should use it more often. 6. Keep paragraphs short Look at any newspaper and notice the short paragraphs. That’s done to make reading easier, because our brains take in information better when it’s broken into small chunks. In academic writing, each paragraph develops one idea and often includes many sentences. But in casual, everyday writing, the style is less formal and paragraphs may be as short as a single sentence or even a single word. See? 7. Eliminate fluff words Qualifying words, such as very , little , and rather , add nothing to your meaning and suck the life out of your sentences. For example: It is very important to basically avoid fluff words because they are rather empty and sometimes a little distracting. Mark Twain suggested that you should “Substitute damn every time you’re inclined to write very ; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” 8. Don’t ramble Rambling is a big problem for many writers. Not as big as some other problems, such as affordable health insurance or the Middle East, which has been a problem for many decades because of disputes over territory. Speaking of which, the word “territory” has an interesting word origin from terra , meaning earth. But the point is, don’t ramble. 9. Don’t be redundant or repeat yourself Also, don’t keep writing the same thing over and over and over. In other words, say something once rather than several times. Because when you repeat yourself or keep writing the same thing, your readers go to sleep. 10. Don’t over write This is a symptom of having too little to say or too much ego . Put your reader first. Put yourself in the background. Focus on the message. For example: You can instantly and dramatically improve your blog writing skills and immediately explode your profits and skyrocket your online success by following the spectacular, simple, and practical tips found in this groundbreaking new free blog post. 11. Edit ruthlessly Shorten, delete, and rewrite anything that does not add to the meaning. It’s okay to write in a casual style, but don’t inject extra words without good reason. To make this easier, break your writing into three steps: 1) Write the entire text. 2) Set your text aside for a few hours or days. 3) Return to your text fresh and edit. None of us can ever be perfect writers, and no one expects us to be. However, we can all improve our style and sound smarter by following these tips and writing naturally. About the Author: Dean Rieck delivers brilliant writing to his clients and shares copywriting tips for smart copywriters like you at Pro Copy Tips .

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