An average human learns 34 gigabytes of data daily, or about 100,000 words of information, which is equal to reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit…every day. Now ask yourself why should a user allocate his time and resources to getting acquainted with your product and not something else? Because you can balance out the costs incurred with the benefits received:
- Cost: time spent, mental and physical efforts, missed opportunities etc.
- Benefit: knowledge gained, emotions experienced, needs fulfilled, and so on
Your prospect must not be punished but rewarded for dropping by your website, otherwise your competitors will enjoy one more lead. This way, you can build up an exemplary user experience (UX), which begins from the first impression of your website and facilitates the final sale. The UX consists of many subtle details, and we will start from the basics.
Rules of a good text
Aside from flashy images, your campaigns will most likely have a lot of text. Unless it is an eye-catching headline, all your texts must be legible, readable, and comprehensible.
Legibility refers to being able to see, distinguish, and recognize the text. To make your prospects realize that they look at the text, you have to ensure:
- Large fonts — neither elders nor youngsters enjoy peering into miniscule letters. Squeezing in more information using small fonts is a terrible idea, because it forces the reader to incur more costs without any benefit. Focus on fulfilling the customers’ needs without bragging about product features instead.
- Contrasting design — do not neglect text color and background. Plan ahead and pick the colors that will complement each other, using Itten’s color circle. If you insist on a fancy, vivid background, add shadow to your letters to make them stand out.
- Clean typeface — do not go for the fancy script-mimicking fonts because they can damage overall legibility. Keep your design plain and simple, unless you are a professional designer.
Readability is about keeping your words short and sentences simple. Whenever you fail to compose a readable piece of text, you’re going to suffer from complex sentences, intertwined in the most bizarre ways imaginable; as an added bonus, you will encounter a bunch of incomprehensible words, most of which might shock the reader and turn their attention elsewhere.
Comprehensibility happens when the text’s main points are easy to grasp. Securing legibility and readability usually makes text comprehensive as well. Keep in mind, though, that most of the users do not read texts…they scan. Therefore, make sure the whole text is concise and all the paramount spots are highlighted. Use bullet-points, bold fonts, and hypertext links like above, plus add some pictures to say much with few words.
Wordings to avoid
Some words are big turn-offs, because…life is not fair. Think thrice before using the following constructions:
- Utilize — which is a fancy way of saying “to use”. Keep everything simple and straightforward: …so we can
utilize - Enables (a.k.a. allows to) — take a parental tone over your prospects and lose most of the valuable leads:
our website enables you toget 20% discount - Very (extremely, quite, specially) — intensifiers rarely emphasize successfully and instead eat up the valuable space: we’ve got a
veryspecial deal for you - We understand that… — no you don’t, and your prospects can see through it:
we understand that you are busyhere is the price list - End user — has a sense of pride and can get offended; so use more user-centric term, because flattering one’s ego is the way to conversion: designers made this product with the
end userspainters in mind
Let’s get back to the topic of hyperlinks and call-to-action (CTA) buttons, because their importance cannot be overestimated. Since the users tend to scan the text at hand, it is crucial to make every key interactive elements of your funnel to stand out.
Why not “Get Started”
Generic redirects like Get Started, Learn More, or long forgotten Click Here can lead anywhere, except the destination point you meant. Wordings like these are way too ambiguous and don’t give the idea of what to expect next. In case some of your clients happen to be visually impaired, you make their life harder. Furthermore, if you have many unspecific links, the question arises whether they lead to a same page or not.
Next time, try to make each of your link more descriptive and informative. Every link you make should have 4 qualities:
- Specific — set the exact expectation, like a road sign does (not the one above)
- Sincere — be accurate and say what will be next, not something two steps ahead
- Substantial — your links have to be able to stand the test of text-scanning and stand out on their own
- Succinct — write just enough to cover the priorities above but never sacrifice them for the sake of being brief
Achieving all the points will make your links more accessible, persuasive, trustworthy, scannable, and SEO-friendly. Get Started CTA-button can drive more clicks, but those will mostly be misled.
Three alternatives to “Get Started”
One of the most common ways to fix the notorious hyperlink is to examine the destination page in-depth and write the keywords that describe it the best way. Make sure to put all the necessary keywords at the beginning, thus making it easier to scan the page, e.g., drive traffic like top affiliates do.
Alternatively, settle for an enhanced Learn More approach, where you simply elaborate afterwards on what to expect, e.g., learn more about our special offers. While the whole construction tends to be large and all the keywords are end-loaded, the sheer size of the hyperlink makes it easier to be targeted.
Occasionally, you don’t need a dedicated hyperlink at all, because the heading of the preceding paragraph already serves that purpose, especially in the case of Learn More. This is a perfect opportunity to save valuable space and remain to the point.
Conclusion
Once a user comes to your website — the sacrifice is made and the alternatives are neglected. Consequently, you must balance it out with a benefit that will make the user to stay or, better yet, turn him into a lead. Benefiting the prospect is not that hard — simply make a good text, which is legible, readable, and comprehensible.
On your journey towards flawless texts, you will encounter several pitfalls, like inauthentic phrases: utilize, enables, end user, etc. Simply resist the temptation of using them and look for other turn-offs.
Double-check if your hyperlinks include the principle of 4S, which is being specific, sincere, substantial, and succinct. And remember, there is a remedy to every generic hyperlink — make them exact. If you can’t, then learn more info, so you finally can.
If you want to reach new GEOs and audiences, maybe it is all waiting for you on Telegram? We’ve prepared some material about Telegram audiences. What are the messenger’s users like this year? How old they are, what they do, and what they are interested in!
