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The Mistakes You're Likely Making on 5 Common Web Pages · Talk Copy to Me | Content + Copywriting Podcast

• 0:00
  Erin Ollila: Is there a strategy behind every single page that you have on your website?
• 0:03
  Erin Ollila: Chances are, there's quite a few pages that you've created because you thought you needed them on your site. Or you've seen them on other people's site, and they felt easy to create. So you did. But why do you have them there? And more importantly, are they serving you in your business? In this episode of Talk copy to me, we're going to talk about five very common website pages that often need a lot of attention.
• 0:32
  Erin Ollila: Hey, friends, welcome to the Top coffee to me podcast. Here. We empower small business owners to step into the spotlight with their marketing and messaging.
• 0:48
  Erin Ollila: I'm your host, Erin Ollila.
• 0:48
  Erin Ollila: Let's get started and talk coffee. Okay, are you ready to turn some of these underperforming pages into some of your most helpful allies, I guess of your website, let's get started with one of the most common pages on all websites, an integral part of turning a website visitor into a lead into a customer into a potential referral source because they were so happy to have worked with you. We actually talked about it last week on the podcast. So I won't go into detail about how important it is and what what role it plays on your site. But I will help you start to think about how you can adjust this page to better serve you in your business. So that page is the contact page. It is your nice to meet you digital handshake, let's talk business page. The people who click the Contact page on your main navigation bar, are doing it with one goal in mind to connect with you. And that sounds self explanatory, but the real important part here is that the end user is making a conscious decision to move forward in the relationship that they're building with you. So you know, an average website viewer can click through your pages if they're doing research on you, let's say or on service providers in your industry that they maybe would like to work with. But until they press that button, fill out that form.
• 2:27
  Erin Ollila: They're just reviewing your site, when they click on the Contact page, they're ready to take an action. So what you want to do is to make the page as strategic as possible, so that it is the easiest action that they can take so that there is a seamless process. But what I see happening so very often on a contact page is that it is lacking some ways to encourage that relationship being built.
• 2:59
  Erin Ollila: So very often I see people's contact page, say something in the hero section like, let's connect or thanks for reaching out, maybe there's some additional copy that you know, encourages them to use the form in order to connect with them.
• 3:15
  Erin Ollila: On a slightly improved page, you'll have things like your email address, your physical location, your hours of operation, something to that effect. But that doesn't necessarily encourage like a two way conversation, right? It's instructions, but it's not very supportive. I want you to think about the top of the page for a second, how can you greet the person who is clicking onto your contact page, and also provide them information that they may need to ensure that they are there in the right place, and contacting you for the right reason. So very often with my clients, I encourage them to use an SEO keyword that is related to their industry. Their the end result that they give clients, their services that they offer, or their products that they offer an ad that way on the top of the page. So it's kind of reintroducing the idea of hey, you've landed here for this very reason. And I'm going to be able to provide answers to you on whatever questions you may ask on the contact form or requests that you may have. You don't want to overwrite in the top part of your contact page because what we want them to do is carry that momentum of taking action into actually completing the form. I could go on and on about forms on contact pages, but this is something I also see done kind of wrong very often.
• 4:46
  Erin Ollila: there is either no questions it says like name, email and message or there are far too many questions on a form that People have to complete before contacting you. This is because there's been so much advice in the online business world about qualifying leads to know if they are actually ideal leads. And that's fine. There's many reasons that you want to ask questions such about their particular needs on the form.
• 5:17
  Erin Ollila: But you don't want to ask them so many questions that they're turned off before they're willing to reach out with you.
• 5:24
  Erin Ollila: So I always try to remind my clients is what do you need to know, in order to have enough information about your lead? And what can you find out in the next phase, so for example, a discovery call, or even just an email or an application, whatever it is that you may send them after their initial touching base with you, where can you put those two separate things, we want to make the process of filling out that form to be as painless as possible.
• 5:57
  Erin Ollila: And we also want to make sure that we're regularly checking the form on our contact page. So many times I have test forms, while auditing websites, that the form either 404 or when I was following through to check the actual email automations, there was nothing ever sent to the person who completed the form, or the business owner did not receive the message because the form was broken somehow on the back end. So you want to check and make sure that your forms that you're putting on your contact page are working and put that on your calendar.
• 6:31
  Erin Ollila: So it's something that you do quarterly or even twice a year.
• 6:34
  Erin Ollila: So you don't have to worry about losing any potential leads. I lightly mentioned SEO before, and the contact pages are actually a great place to try out SEO best practices. Again, you have so few words on this page that it can be hard to use keywords, right, because we don't want to stuff the page with lots like paragraphs of text that make no difference for our contact page. We want them to take the action. And one thing that I have found that works excellently is including frequently asked questions on the contact page. And it's a great way to incorporate more SEO friendly terms, as well as actually answering questions people may have, if you can answer a question right there on the contact page that they don't even need to reach out for, they will be able to feel more confident that they have the information that they need. And they could then reach out when they are more qualified. Maybe that's right then because they you know, find themselves qualified by reading the questions. Or maybe that's later when something changes within their business or their life that they're finally ready to work with you. We were just talking about frequently asked questions. So I want to stay here for a second and talk about the Frequently Asked Questions page. So many of my clients will ask me or within a workshop I'm doing people will ask, Do I need a Frequently Asked Questions page? And the answer is both Yes. And no. You don't need a Frequently Asked Questions page.
• 8:07
  Erin Ollila: It's not going to be the most popular page on your website.
• 8:11
  Erin Ollila: But if you want one, there's really no reason that you shouldn't have one. In fact, Frequently Asked Questions page, frequently asked questions, pages have a potential SEO opportunity to get people back to your site. The other perk of having an FAQ page is that you're able to answer questions that don't naturally fit within the copy of the pages that you're writing. You know, so on my site, let's say I have a copy coaching web page where people can buy individual sessions with me or a month long coaching opportunity when it comes to writing their their copy and their content. Now on that page, I don't want to provide them every single detail in the world about what it would be like to work together because so much of that is custom. I want to provide just enough detail to get them to make a decision on whether or not I'm the right person to help them when it comes to their DIY copy coaching. Now, there may be things that I think of when I edit the copy on the page that I think, Oh, that's a good point, like someone may want to know that. I don't need it on the page itself. But it is a decent thing to address. You could put those things that you find like that just using that as an example, on an FAQ page so that the customers who are maybe not as ready to purchase or maybe they're just slower buyers, because they're the type of purchaser that really truly has to do their research before they commit to spending their money.
• 9:47
  Erin Ollila: Those are the people that will will go and read the questions on the FAQ page.
• 9:55
  Erin Ollila: So having one nurtures them a little bit better toward the sale. But again, what I see very often when I audit websites is that FAQ pages are long lists of questions and very descriptive, long answers. And guess what? No one is going to read that, you know, we've talked about this many times on the podcast is that sometimes on the website page, we are purposely using design techniques, such as paragraph breaks, or white space, in order to give people's brains a little bit of a break, as they process the information that we share with them. Your Frequently Asked Questions page, because it is legitimately always going to be a question and an answer also really needs design elements to keep people's attention, or allow them to find the answers that they're looking for IE more easily. What I generally say, in my advice, in a website audit for FAQ pages, is that you want to do the work ahead of time to segment your questions and group your questions based on you know, the categories kind of that they fall under. It's really as simple as a little design tweak, you know, so for example, it could be that the row of copy Coaching Questions has a white background, and the row of website questions has a light gray background. And that little visual indicator is something that allows the end users brain to say, Okay, we're going into a different topic, let me pay better attention now, as to what the topic is within this section. One great tool to use if your website is set up to be able to do this is a search function, you put that search function right on the top of your frequently asked questions page. And people can put in their own questions their own terms. So that way, if someone, for example, is searching for testimonials, and they put testimonial in there, it may bring up podcast episodes I've done on testimonials or my courses on testimonials. So they will be able to get immediate results based on their own individual needs. Whereas all the information for everything else still exist on the page, they just don't have to search through and find it. So if you can add a search function to your frequently asked questions page, that would be my biggest advice on how to correct the page and make it more strategic.
• 12:33
  Erin Ollila: If you can't, I would definitely segment the questions ahead of time before putting them on the page to make it easier for the end user to scroll through and decide what questions are beneficial to them. Now the thing I want to point out here is when it comes to service based businesses as an example, on your services page, you want very, very strategic FAQs, meaning you want the questions that they're actually asking in order to make a purchasing decision. On the FAQ page, you have the opportunity to include that and more. But you definitely can duplicate questions on your services pages, on to your FAQ pages. So don't feel like if it's in one area of your website, you cannot use it again, on the FAQ page, you can kind of think as your of your FAQ pages kind of the resource where they can get all of the questions. Alright, I've talked too long about FAQ pages, let's talk about the testimonial pages. And oddly enough, they kind of have the same problem as FAQs. What happens is people will just throw a ton of testimonials onto the page. So what will happen is you have a paragraph upon paragraph upon paragraph that the end user just scans because they're not going to read every single testimonial. So the page itself ends up being unimportant because it's not helping you make that sale. When in fact, social proof is one of the best ways to make a conversion on your website. So do you need a Testimonials page? That's just like FAQs? I get this question all the time? And the answer is both yes and no. No, you don't need a Testimonials page. Not as many people as you assume will even click over to a Testimonials page. However, if you have a ton of testimonials, it's not going to hurt you. And there are also potential SEO benefits that you can use on a Testimonials page. So if you do decide to get one, I want you to also consider the idea of design. How can you segment these testimonials using design elements. So people actually pay attention to the message that's being shared. You also want to have like a hierarchy on your testimonials. page where you put the best testimonials first, and the ones that are not as strong at the bottom. This is slightly different from the FAQs in that, you know, we're kind of prioritizing the way that we present the information. It is also helpful though if you offer multiple services or multiple products to group your testimonial. So again, you're you're pre creating these segments, and you're sharing them in a specific way. So the end user can see something that is more organized versus just regurgitated on the page. If you have a Testimonials page, I highly recommend keeping it current. So adding new testimonials in as you have them. And using different forms of media, such as videos and audio, if you have it, it's going to definitely help it won't hurt. The other thing I want to recommend is, if you are going to include most of your testimonials on this page, I want you to totally remove all of the testimonials that say something like, wow, what great service or I'm so happy we work together. If you're going to invest in the testimonials page, and you're going to use it on your website, you want all of the testimonials that you have to be working for you. So you want them to be specific. You don't want them to be vague. So if you have 100 Vague testimonials, and you asked me, Aaron, should I have a Testimonials page for these 100 Vague ones? I'm going to say absolutely not. However, if you have 10 specific testimonials, and you ask me should I have a Testimonials page, I may suggest that you go ahead and do that, just because those specific ones will nurture that type of buyer again, just like FAQs, who needs a little bit more encouragement who needs to build the connection a little bit more before they decide to purchase, they will go to something like a Testimonials page and read through other people's words.
• 17:01
  Erin Ollila: Again, FAQs and testimonials.
• 17:01
  Erin Ollila: They are not going to be your money making pages. But when I say things like use some SEO keywords on these pages, there are some ways that you can do that. When it comes to editing the content that you share. FAQs are easier because you're controlling the information, you're writing the question, you're writing the answer. So you could say something like, where are you located? And then your answer could be like, I am a wedding photographer in Napa Valley, California. So wedding photographer in Napa Valley, Cal California would be potentially a keyword phrase. And you're doing that yourself, you're choosing to incorporate the keyword phrases. A lot of people ask me well, how can you use SEO on a Testimonials page because the copy and the content that you're sharing was written by your clients and by your customers. And I always tell people, when it comes to the reviews that you get, you are allowed to edit the testimonials. However, I would never encourage you to edit and post, I would always recommend that you ask permission for the edits before you update them. So do not take someone's words, edit them around and then put them on your website without asking permission. But for example, if someone had a testimonial from from me, for example, that said, I loved working with you for my website, and I'm so grateful for whatever right? What I could do is say, Hey, can I edit your work your testimonial to say, it was so great working with you on new website copy. So it's a little more clear, not just the word website, it's a little more clear what we did together. So if you decide to have a Testimonials page, maybe look at those strong testimonials that you have and ask yourself, do they have keywords built in automatically? If they do not?
• 19:03
  Erin Ollila: Is there a natural place that I can replace a phrase? Like the word it for example, people love to use? You know, I loved working on it together? Well, can you replace it with what the actual thing was? If so, do it and send it for approval? And if you get that approval? Yes, you can use that on your testimonials page. I promise.
• 19:23
  Erin Ollila: There's just two more pages everyone you're not going to stay here for too much longer today. But the reason I actually wanted to have this entire episode was for the next page we're going to talk about and that is the social media landing page.
• 19:40
  Erin Ollila: And what I mean is like an Instagram links page. I recommend you direct people to your website because that's your domain that's under your control. You can put any design that you want and you can adjust this however you'd like at any time versus sending them to a tool. Like I think some of them are like link link, or I'm not even sure the names of them anymore. Now, if you are directing them to a page on your website, which is what I'm calling the social media landing page, what happens is I click on so many people's links, and they're not current at all, or they have so much information that it is very confusing what I'm even doing there. And I have to think, why did I click here?
• 20:24
  Erin Ollila: Like why? Like, you know, for example, if someone had a podcast and they say, oh, click the link in my bio, and then I click that link, and it brings me to a page with 18 different photos that all are linking to a different place on their website, I'm not going to put in the effort to keep clicking through to find the thing that I want, which is the podcast in the first place. Social media landing pages either tend to be too sparse and don't have enough information, or they tend to be over cluttered. So when you're considering creating one, or auditing the one that you have, let's say you want to make it work better for you by considering what is the call to action here. If you have something like a podcast that gets done weekly, have a buttons or an image where they can click to get the most recent podcast episode. If you don't have something that's as frequent or as consistent as a podcast, but you want to send them to a page so that you can better nurture your social media followers.
• 21:30
  Erin Ollila: Think to yourself what type of conversion would I like to make on this page? And there's a few that work really well. One is to join your email list. And you have to make it as enticing as possible. Because unlike the Contact page, where someone is like, Oh, heck yes, I want to reach out to these people, moving someone away from social media, and encouraging them to connect with you by sharing personal information, like their email is a little harder, right?
• 21:58
  Erin Ollila: Like there's a little bit more of a nurture that needs to happen. Because you're encouraging them to do these things, they're not necessarily making the decision on their own. So have an enticing reason to join your email list. Very often, that's things like lead magnets, free resources, or even very lower priced resources like a $9 offer, let's say, in addition to the resource list, your products and services also have a place. But here's where you have to be careful. If you have a whole bunch of products, you cannot list them all on your social media landing page, that page is not a shop page. But it is a way that you can direct them to your shop. Similarly, if you offer multiple services, listing them out, or explaining what those services are, is too much information for the person who just clicked over to be introduced to you. So I want you to think of your social media landing page, like a concierge, your concierge at a hotel, for example, is the individual that directs you on where to go. The concierge knows exactly what to do with you. So if your social media page is the, you know, Concierge page of your website, you want to have very clear options for directing your visitors on what they want to do and where they want to go.
• 23:27
  Erin Ollila: Another potential thing that may work for some businesses is a small about section. And when I say small about section, I mean small a paragraph tops that kind of reminds the person who clicked over who you are and why they really want to get more information from you. And that's it. Okay, final page. That's the Resources page. When we talk about your social media landing page as being like cluttered the resource page, where's the crown here. So the problem is, if you have a resources page, you likely have a lot of resources you want to share with your audience. And that's awesome, that really shows that you're caring that you're supportive, that you're focusing on giving them the best results possible before they even pay you or work with you in any way. So resources pages are definitely resourceful and good additions to websites. But I want you to remember my advice when it came to the FAQ and testimonials page. And that is you need to segment and group the resources that you're sharing.
• 24:35
  Erin Ollila: Specifically, do you have a ton of resources, like just throwing them on the page is too overwhelming to encourage people to click through and consume the resources you're sharing? So one example would be to think of each row that you have on the resources page as a category are you sharing books with your you know your website viewer? Maybe books that were really beneficial to your business or to the service that you offer.
• 25:02
  Erin Ollila: Great have a book row. If you are sharing freebies, list all your freebies in one section, or list the most relevant freebies, let's say, if you're sharing resources to courses that you may have, yes, you can include them. But remember, your resources page is a resource that you're sharing. It is not a shop page. And it is also not an everything page, what you're really doing is encouraging the end user to engage further. And again, if we think of conversions as what we want them to do, most often the resources that you share are either going to be affiliate links, or signups would like your email list. So think about what can I share that is going to benefit the end user? And how can I get a conversion based on the ways that I share, you don't need to put everything here. Again, if you have a lot of resources, you could send segment based on category or you could just self select and decide what the best resources are for that particular page. Another way to segment the resources that you have is by client type. So if you have a client who is a DI wire, but you also have a client who is hired as a service, you as a to do the service. But you also have a client that hires you to do the service, you could segment the resources by done for you or DIY. So think about how you're segmenting resources and make sure that you don't have too many resources on the page to lose people's interest.
• 26:46
  Erin Ollila: Because more is not necessarily better. And honestly, that's really it. I don't want to make this too long of an episode.
• 26:54
  Erin Ollila: Because I don't want you to feel like you have too many things that you need to adjust. But it is really important when we think of these pages that are so common on so many people's website to say, is there a strategy involved with these pages? Because if there is not, what you're doing is you're using prime real estate on your own website, where people may actually be checking them out before they make that final decision on whether or not they would convert as a client or a customer. But you lose them because you've either made it disorganized or didn't provide enough information or provided too much information. So take a peek at those five pages. And you know, do some of those late shifts in order to provide the information that they need at the right time. And you will be so much closer to being on your way to convert people who you don't even know those website viewers that are not leads yet into actually being leads and then interviewing customers and clients for your business. All right, friends. We will be back next week to talk a little bit more about websites before we close down this series on website copy. I'll see you then and until next week. Let's keep talking copy. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Top copy to me. If you enjoyed spending your time with me today. I would be so honored if you could subscribe to the show and leave a review. Want to continue the conversation. Head on over to Instagram and follow me at Erin Ollila. Until next time friends