Bob Osgoodby

Great Copy Brings Sales

If you have great copy for your ads, you are most likely doing a
respectable amount of business on the web. All great copy has
certain things in common.

First, and foremost it has no spelling or grammatical errors.
Nothing turns a prospect off faster than these types of mistakes.
In addition to running all your work through a good spelling and
grammar checker, having someone else carefully read what you have
written is also a good idea.

Use short ads of two or three sentences with meaningful headings.
Most people won't read lengthy online ads. In longer ads, such
as on a web site, the use of bulleted lists, which gives an
overview of key points is effective, and will make the copy more
readable.

If you are advertising on a web site, there are other conventions
you should follow. If it is an ad, it should also be short, and
follow the rules above. If however, someone who has read your
ad, is coming to your web site for more information, it should
not leave the person reading it with questions that are not
answered there.

Never, and that is a very long time, use images that take too
long to load. If you do, the odds are you have just lost a
customer. The text should be easy on the eyes and forget the
cute background and text combinations. Dark blue on a black
background is simply too difficult to read.

A white background with black text is still the best choice,
however dark text on a light background is also acceptable.
Using an image for a background is a mistake, and will take away
from the effectiveness of your presentation.

All caps, either in an ezine ad or on a web page, should be
avoided. They are very difficult to read and most people won't.
Also, forget the fancy fonts. Arial and Times Roman are both very
legible onscreen and if printed give a high quality copy. A
fixed-width font such as Courier is the preferred font for email
ads.

While many publications use indents to start each paragraph, a
blank line separating them is friendlier to the reader. Their
use quickly lets the reader jump from one to another. It is also
a good idea to have paragraph headings, which lead in to the next
paragraph. Many people scan these headings, and if they don't get
their attention, they skip to the next. Obviously then, the
paragraph headings are extremely important.

You might have great copy, but if the headlines are "blah" they
may just click away. The use of blank lines and headings between
the paragraphs simply makes it easier to read.

You should also be aware that there are many different line
lengths used in email and in publications. Many times if your
line length is too long, it will not wrap properly and you will
have long and short lines, giving a jerky look, instead of ones
which are uniform. Your best bet to avoid this is to use a line
length of 60 or 65 characters, as even older email readers can
read these lengths properly.

Most people read from left to right. It would therefore seem
logical that all the text in your ad is aligned to the left side
of the page. However - we are not talking about a lengthy
document here. If your lines are short, and consist of only 4 or
5 lines, it might make more sense to center them on the page.
This is a good idea if you are placing your ad in an ezine or
newsletter. The text in the publication is left justified, and
your use of a centered text ad will make it stand out.

While you might write great copy, you still might not make
significant sales. The primary reason is that people seldom buy
from a one-time ad. They will have to see your ad at least five
to seven times before you can expect them to take any kind of
action at all.

If you advertise in multiple places, use the same ad in all
places. People will soon start to identify with your ad, and
just might take the next step.

Have you checked your copy lately? If not, you should. Great copy
will bring sales.

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