Think of all the websites that you close every day without taking any action. I bet that that at least 80% of the websites that you visit a day. Have you ever wondered why this happens?

I’m pretty sure that most of them were making one (or some) of the mistakes that I’m going to mention in this post. These mistakes are translated into lower conversion rates and high bounce rates. People just hate them.

Do you want to know if you’re making the same mistakes? Then let’s analyse these bad copywriting techniques.

1. Focus on yourself, and not on your audience

This is the most common mistake that I’ve noticed among my clients. It always reminds me to this situation:

When you’re in the waiting room of a dentist consultation feeling very nervous because you don’t know what the dentist is going to do and picturing the worst situations in your mind. (Does it sound familiar?)

And all you can see is a bunch of diplomas listing all the universities, certificates and awards that your dentist got 20 years ago.

Well, let me tell you something: that doesn’t work! And it won’t work on your website either.

You need to focus on your audience and answer the most important question that every visitor has in mind: “is there anything in this website for me?”

 

2. Focus on the features of your products

Another very common mistake is to focus on the features on your products. We tend to think that our audience has the same knowledge than us, so we describe our products as we we’re talking to ourselves.

Most of the times our audience doesn’t have a clue of the technical details of our products, they just want to know what this product can do for them and why it is better than another products out there.

For example, when I need to buy a new laptop and do some research to see which one I should go for, I always end up jotting down things that I don’t even know what they mean. I have no clue what a 7,200-rpm hard drive is, I just want to know what that can do for me.

 

3. Write too much text because it ‘looks better’

It’s not the first time I hear this sentence. The point here is that every text in your website must have a purpose. Sometimes when I ask a client why he’s written this or what’s the purpose of this paragraph they just say: it looks more professional, or just because this other text was too short and we had to compensate.

Well, this way of compensating is making you lose visitors. This is your homework now: go through your website and ask yourself why you wrote every text in your website. Do they all have a purpose? If not, you should work on it.

 

4. Your texts are too boring

Authenticity is key when we’re writing a website copy. Most people, when they write something important, such as the text for their website, tend to elevate the register of their message.

It happens all the time. When we are at work, for example, we change the way we speak because it’s a more serious situation. Fair enough.

However, do you really think that you’re going to connect with your audience with this corporate speech? It depends on each website, but I doubt it. We need to find the exact tone, right in the middle between the boring business tone and the tone that you’d use with your friends.

We don’t want our audience to get bored when they visit our website. That’s why you need to find the voice of your brand to connect with your audience.

 

4. Trying to sell from the very first moment

Have you ever seen this type of landing pages that look like a windows shop? Full with products and “buy” buttons. People aren’t going to click “buy” just because you added 5 buttons in your landing page.

The selling process takes its time. A landing page must connect and attract potential clients to explore the rest of our website. It’s the first impression that a first visitor is going to notice. If we want them to buy, we need to build trust first.

Imagine yourself in a flea market with loads of people yelling at you to buy this or that. It’s annoying, right? Now remember every time that you go to a specific shop because you know that you’re going to find what you’re looking for there. Now, which of this shopping experience do you want to offer to your visitors?

 

6. You’re not adding value with your copywriting techniques

Your website isn’t adding value, only sells stuff. But why should your audience visit your website if you’re not offering anything else. It’s fine that you’re offering your services or products, but your audience need to trust you first, that’s why you should offer something else, something that they really like to entice them first.

If your texts aren’t adding value, you’ve got work to do there. You should think about the needs of your audience and solve them through your texts and the content that you’re including in your website.

 

7. You don’t proofread your texts

Everyone can make typos when writing a text, even the most experts do. That’s why we have to proofread again and again our texts.

We should be even more careful when we’re writing the texts of our website as they’re going to be exposed for a while.

You should also finish writing your texts and then proofread them a couple of days later. You’ll see that there will be things that need to be changed.

 

Now that you know the most common bad copywriting techniques, what are you going to do to make them right?

 

Do you implement more copywriting techniques in your texts, leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you!

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