Are you thinking there’s no ‘F’ in point? You’d better hope that your audience doesn’t think the same about your website’s copy because that thought will be quickly followed by a click of the back button.

Copywriting is a distinct form of writing (as opposed to novel writing, technical writing…). The purpose of copy is to get a response, to sell. And that’s what your website’s copy should be doing. Obvious? Then how come so many websites get this horribly wrong?

Getting to the point

Your website should be written to sell. Even if you’re selling an idea or trying to get an ad clicked, you’re still asking visitors to pay attention, to invest their time and give a response — that requires selling. Most websites must do this and sell products/ services.

So what’s the point of your site?

To tell people about what I offer and all its features and benefits

Nope. Telling people requires passive listening and isn’t how online reading behaviour works at all. Oh, and people? Better to target potential customers wouldn’t you think? And seeing as we want to sell – let’s try:

To persuade potential customers to buy what I offer by showing all its features and benefits

Mmmm… when a point isn’t concise it’s not a point, more of a lump. This lump not only has an aim, but suggests how it will be achieved — why limit yourself? It’s time to let go of the outdated persuasion-features-benefits approach and open your mind to more effective copywriting possibilities.

Why not make the point of your website:

To sell to potential customers

I like it.

The point of hair-splitting? It’s obviFous…

Now you’re probably thinking this is ‘F’ in obvious. Why was I so pedantic? Because too many sites are filled with pointless copy — copywriting without purpose. It doesn’t help sell and just gets in the way, losing visitors not converting them to customers.

The most obviFous example of to illustrate poFint is the ubiquitous ‘About me’ page. Nowhere on the web are you more likely to find such boring, self-centred, utterly pointless and utterly unread droning. The point of these pages seems to have become “to bore people to death with my life’s story”. So how did this happen?

What’s it all about?

The ‘About me’ page is usually such a disaster because it’s written under the title ‘About me’. This leads people to focus on themselves and the point becomes to tell people their life stories. Big mistake.

Of course this isn’t just confined to the ‘About me’ page – it’s a fundamental cause of so much ineffective copywriting. You have to ensure that every page, paragraph and sentence (every word if you’re good) has a purpose and a good reason for being written — to help sell.

There’s a subtle but enormous difference between effective sales copy that’s written to sell and copy that focuses on features, benefits and what the writer wants to say. Miss the subtleties in the point of your website and your copy will miss customers.

You can’t start planning what to write until you know the point of why you’re writing. It’ll miss sales, it’ll miss the PoFint.

From here we’re going to take a look at how to structure your copy in ‘Web copywriting for funnels and spiders‘.