Writing Copy For A Website - Tutorial

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Nomdaploom wrote,

Copywriting...

• Do you want readable copy on your web properties?
• Or do you want to bury the benefits for your visitors in a heap of self-interested twaddle?

A request for a repository of copy writing tips and tricks, or at least a suppository to counteract tech' overload...and a test to see if GD moderators possess perspicacity…

So, this is a step away from the plethora of technical posts.  It  could be our first step in the journey to having a website that gives visitors what they are looking for.  As opposed to what we want to tell them about ourselves, our great products, and services.

As the saying goes..."sell benefits, not features."  

Now far be it for a toffee-nosed Brit to sound off, and I don't speak American....but somebody has to do it right, right?

So, some basic rules that I evidently struggle with (as this would have been at the top of the page), and that is a STM (snigger to myself) as opposed to a LOL:

• Write for 12 year olds
• Use the active not passive voice
• Use bullet points and keep the most important bits where people can see them (above the fold for the jargon-addicted)
• Sell benefits, not features
• Use Anglo-Saxon words, not Latin based words, be ready to be killed, not exterminated, if you don't-as far as being understood goes
• Never have more than five bullet points in a list, and if possible keep say what you have to in three or fewer (darn, another fail)”