The age old question tossing up the benefits of good copy versus good design. When it comes to your website, you may be thinking, ‘Which of the two is more important?’ Well, we are going to make it really easy for you.
The answer is….
Both.
It’s like a Friday night movie with a block of chocolate. Or a cheese platter paired with a nice bottle of red. They just go together. One cannot function at 100% capacity without the other. They can exist independently no doubt. Yet the results are substantially under par. In our food analogies (which we so often refer to), you can enjoy a decadent cheese platter on its own, sure…. yet pair it with a bottle or two of red and you’ll have the neighbours knocking on the door to join in.
The same goes with your website.
To break it down, here is what happens when you have one without the other. The ying without the yang.
Good Copy but Bad Design
Having great copy that has high readability and good keyword research thrown in is no doubt essential to the success of your website. Yet it is worth nada if as soon as visitors hit your site they bounce out quicker than mums at school drop off.
It all comes down to attention span. Back in 2000, research showed humans had a 12 second attention span. New research from Microsoft now places the human attention span at less than a goldfish – sitting at a mere 9 seconds. Yet, Vice President of Prezi, Nadjya Ghausi puts it differently. She states our attention spans are not decreasing, they are evolving. Humans are becoming more adept at weeding out the influx of irrelevant information and focusing our minds on what is important.
This is key.
Your website needs to work in two ways – good design to break through the noise and torrent of content online, quickly followed up by effective copy that gets your user the answers they are looking for. If your website suffers from poor design, your users will be bouncing off just as quickly as they came, in search of credible content from other sources.
Good Design but Bad Copy
So you might have a brilliant web design that pops from the page, yet if you don’t tell your story quickly and concisely with effective copy, your fabulous design goes straight down the toilet. It makes sense really. Users have found you – now they want to know what you do! How can you assist them with their needs? What benefit can you and your business bring to them?
So to wrap it up, the take home message is this. You need to grab attention fast and then convert that attention to action with great copy that sells your benefits.
Top 3 Tips to Grab Attention (Fast)
- Get to the Point!
Get your Unique Selling Proposition (otherwise known as your USP – a fancy way of saying what you do best that separates you from your competitors) across in the fastest and most effective way possible. - Grab Attention with Effective Design
Use effective design to draw the attention of your reader to your key selling points / benefits. - Embed Easy to Find Calls to Action:
Think quick contact forms, buttons to contact page, email and phone links, and social media buttons or eBook downloads… whatever your Call to Action is, make it easily visible on your site so users can quickly make the next step and contact you.
To wrap it up in one simple concise sentence (that you can read in under 9 seconds flat):
Great copy with high readability and effective keyword research goes hand-in-hand with beautiful design to create a user-centred website that both google and your clients will love.
It’s as simple as that. That is why each and every website we design and build includes copywriting and professional, custom design as standard. We cover all the bases, so you can get on with your business.
