Understand, first, that you have only seconds to convince your website visitor to stay on your site (and hopefully navigate further to become a conversion).
It typically doesn’t matter how well-written the majority of your body content is written because your headline is what is going to be the true test.
A well-executed headline will connect with and convince your visitors to continue reading, but just is important is to attract the right visitor(s). Another way to understand this is to realize that you can get a lot of people to continue reading, but it’s a matter of compelling the right audience (those who are most likely to convert) to stick on the site.
When writing your headline you’ve got to speak directly to your audience. Some research shows that a business owner can very often miss what is truly important to their customers as each has vastly differing goals. A business owner’s goal may be to sell a product any way possible, but the customer may have a single most important reason to buy. This can lead a business owner to dilute the most important strategy while going for the wrong strategy or too many.
The following tips can help improve the ‘qualifying’ aspect of writing website content:
1. KISS it. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) Remain succinct, easy to understand and compelling enough to your target audience. Avoid being lofty and vague, while focusing on the benefits to the audience (they don’t care about your company at this point, they’re more concerned with their time and what YOU can do FOR THEM).
2. Connect the Dots. Your headline should lead the visitor to the body text, but make darn sure there is a connection and a reason the two are interrelated.
3. Be memorable. If you lose the reader at the onset of your content you risk two things: 1. They might not continue reading and 2. There won’t be a lasting impression that leads to sharing on social media or otherwise (offline, email, blog posts, etc).
