You’re sitting at the kitchen table with your 16-year-old son. “Listen, Jamie,” you say. “I’m tired of the way your room is always a mess. And do you realise, you never help with the chores and you’re always rude and sulking around the house?”

STOP! Hold it there a second! Let’s try rewinding that type and changing the dialogue.

You’re still at the kitchen table but this time you say: “Jamie, I know you have a date on Saturday night. Here are the three things you have to do to persuade me to lend you the car....”

Now tell me: what scenario do you think is more likely to get Jason’s attention? Well, of course Jamie paid more attention the second time around because it wasn’t just another useless lecture.

Now you’re probably thinking good for Jamie but what does his story have to do with website copy?

Let us tell you that Jamie’s reaction illustrates the ‘what’s-in-it-for-me’ factor.  When you’re writing copy, you need to get out of the “here’s what I want tell you” attitude and into the “what does my reader want to hear?” mentality.

What readers want – in addition to the merchandise or service you have to offer – is to be engaged and entertained.

One of the very best ways to avoid boredom is to base your copywriting on a story, just as we just did. Of course, Jamie isn’t really my 16 year old son, but surely you have a story you can use?  With a little thought, stories can illustrate just about any business point you may want to make.

Something we also know about readers is that when it comes to content, people read web pages differently to print. They generally don’t read the pages but scan for certain terms that tell them they’re in the right place. And what are they looking for? Headings, link text, bold text and bulleted lists.

Comply with these demands and dramatically improve your conversion rate…

We bet that the next time you’re give your teenager a lecture, you’ll think of this track… You can harness that kind of power for your own website copy as well.