Common Copywriting Mistakes When Writing for the Web

I shop a lot online and, as such, am frequently exposed to landing pages and sales pitches of all sorts and designs. Being a copywriter myself, I notice many selling errors that writers commit all too frequently, each of which can affect your entire sales process.

Along with using a grammar software to ensure your copy's structural correctness, you'll need to be certain that its functionally in shape. Whether you're paying a professional writer or crafting the sales page yourself, make sure to watch out for these problems before unleashing your copy the world.

1. Forgetting the audience

The only thing you write for yourself is your diary and your journal. Everything else, for the most part, is written for an audience. A lot of amateur copywriters end up being self-indulgent in their copy, forgetting that the most important part is appealing to the reader, instead of looking clever. Always write with the audience in mind.

2. Not enough information

If your prospects already know about your product, they won't have to go through the trouble of reading about them. The reason they're paying your copy any attention is the hope that they will pick up more information that will help them make their choice. Be succinct, but don't be stingy.

3. Excessive focus on facts, instead of benefits

People, for the most part, don't want facts. Facts are boring and that's why few people read the specs sheets. What people want are benefits - the exact good that a product or a service can do for them. Instead of listing down facts, rework the copy into showing the benefits they can derive because of it.

4. Too much copy

There are audiences that respond well to short copy and there are those that respond to long ones. Knowing your audience and presenting your sales pitch in the manner that they prefer can go a long way into properly closing the deal. I've literally seen two-field page sign-ups that was preceded by a pitch of 5000 words. They lost me at 501st.

5. Making the action too difficult

Regardless of what you do with your copy, the final action that seals the deal must be simple and straightforward. Copies that present the prospect with ten things to do or five courses of action often end up confusing them.

Using jargon is tricky territory. On the one hand, reading it can feel trite. On the other, it might explain your idea best. So when is a good time to pull off the specialized language?

If you're writing for a general audience who come from various fields, leave the jargon out of your copy. Read by the unfamiliar, it can be confusing and can lead to severely misconstrued points. Similarly, when you're composing for an audience of non-native English speakers, even if they're from the same field, jargon should be dropped entirely. A common parlance in your industry may not be part of their vocabulary just yet - best not take the risk of alienating your audience.

Jargon, to put it simply, are hard to pull off. Anytime you use them, you put your copy at risk of looking like pretentious patter, no matter how well your grammar software has tuned it into shape. If you're writing on a subject that you are not a real expert in, much of your jargon use will likely be massive failures that can leave you red in the face.
As such, the only time you should even consider treading jargon territory is when:

1. You know the subject like the back of your hand

2. Your audience knows the same subject like the back of their respective hands

In this scenario, spelling out what should be common knowledge may just irritate your readers - keeping in the jargon should work well enough, and do the job for you.