Product knowledge can be an entrepreneur’s best friend - or worst enemy.

You love your product and know it so well – maybe too well. As a result your perspective can actually get in the way of website copy that sells. Are you so close to your fine product that you can’t see what really matters to your customers?

Try this.

Put your nose right on your computer screen. Now look at what’s on your screen. How’s the view? Can you see the big picture or are you getting lost in the pixels?

You just experienced pixelvision. In this exercise pixelvision can be a little disorienting; in business it can destroy you.

Pixelvision distorts things for even the smartest entrepreneur and ruins any chances for website copy that sells.

Pixelvision causes entrepreneurs to:

Pixelvision Blunts Customer Awareness

Everybody knows that website copy is all about the customer.

That means good copy promotes customer benefits not product features. Everybody claims to know that too. Unfortunately, pixelvison with its strong product orientation makes features masquerade as benefits.

Let’s say you have invented a brand new product the “Bud Bar” – an alcoholic chocolate bar for beer drinkers. No bottle. No fridge. No spills.

What do you think the benefits would be? Is “no bottle” a benefit? How about “no fridge”?

Here’s a technique I use to force myself to uncover true customer benefits. Use an “=” at least 3 times to reduce a feature to a benefit. For example, the feature “no bottle” = no returns = save time = more time to enjoy life. The final entry, “more time to enjoy life” becomes the benefit.

How is pixelvision affecting your website copy? Quickly now, what are the top three true customer benefits? Do they mean more to the customer than they do to you? Try the “=” system with your product. Did you see any change in your perspective?

Pixelvision Blurs the Details

I meet a lot of pixelvision people who lose their way in the maze of product detail. And they often create or approve detail-ridden website copy that doesn’t connect to customers. Only messages do that. The trick is to get far enough away from the details to see how they add up to a singular, resonant theme.

Remember the Bud Bar and its “No bottle, No fridge and No spills” features? The trick is to re-write this list with a “+” linking the parts to create a sum. This sum represents the value proposition or theme for your product.

No bottle + No fridge + No spills = the value proposition “The chewable refreshment that is so cool it doesn’t need a fridge.”

To make the parts of your message add up you often need to leave out some features. For example, our Bud Bar has anti-oxidant qualities that reduce free radicals. This point, however, doesn’t reinforce the cool product image so we leave it out of the website copy. Instead, this health information might appear in an FAQ section.

How well does your website copy add up? What features/benefits are you intentionally leaving out?

Pixelvision Blocks Objective Input

When pixelvision replaces vision, entrepreneurs lock into a singular view that locks out all others. Even when they hire an experienced copywriter, what they really want is a stenographer to simply put their pixelvision into words. This is where the “-” sign comes in. Can you subtract yourself from the picture long enough to openly consider meaningful input from other sources? What vision of your product should you reconsider? How would that alter your website copy?

Grade School Math Cures Pixelvision

Is there a chance your website copy suffers from pixelvison? Too few benefits? Too many details? Too little input?

Two things have to happen to make website copy that sells. Step up and acknowledge your vision deficit and then step back and put your grade school math to work….. =, +, and -.

Ending pixelvision is easy. Just do the math!

About the author:
Need a website copywriter who gets business? Check out Paul Matthews at http://www.therezon8or.com for website copy that sells. Ask for your FREE website copy analysis.

Source: High Quality Article Database - 365Articles.com

 Be Your Own Website Copywriter – Let “3 Blind Mice” Show You The Way
You know what it's like when you can't get a song out of your head. For some reason, “3 Blind Mice” paid me a visit. As I heard the 100th replay, it hit me – this is great copy. As a matter of fact, this simple little ditty contains 10 elements of excellent website copy that sells. In case you've forgotten, here's how it goes. 3 Blind Mice; 3 Blind Mice. See how they run; see how they run. They all ran up to the farmer's wife. She cut off their tails with a carving knife Have you ever seen such a sight in your....

 Be Your Own Website Copywriter - Does Your Personality Sabotage Your Website co
Your personality is all over it. Whether you mean to or not, your website copy reflects you in ways you might not notice: sometimes good, sometimes bad. While personality peccadilloes can be endearing in social situations, minor personality flaws can destroy your website. So before you get out your keyboard, get out a mirror. Why not see if any of these 3 personality traits are seeping into the design and copy of your web site: *Insecurity *Pride *Anxiety Insecure people create timid sites Most people are insecure in certain situations as they chameleon their image to gain the favour of others. Nothing kills a website faster....

 A Graceful Flowing Font
Summary – We can now write emails which are as beautiful as any artistic paper letter and do a lot that paper correspondence can't. We seem to keep our artistry for blogs and web pages Do you think anyone has declared moving type to be the end of civilization in the same way people said typewriters were killing letter writing, telephones were isolating people, and television and the Internet were isolating young folk from other people? Did anyone rouse the mob to drive out that wicked Johannes Gutenberg and....

 Dollars In The Details!
Dollars In The Details! by: Daniel Levis When it comes to your marketing message, the little things count. Trouble is, you'll never come to respect how much, until you make a commitment to science. Let me ask you something. Do you practice Kaizen? Kai what? Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning gradual and orderly, continuous improvement. Sound like you? Or do you just wake up one morning & decide that you need to re do your site? Do you keep a diary? Not the Anne Frank kind, a chronological record of the results revealed by your ongoing marketing experience. Documentation of exactly what happened last time....

 The Tips on Writing Effective Web Articles
Articles are the best free advertising for your site. The following tips will help you to create an effective article. If you are an experienced copywriter, most likely you are acquainted with these rules. So this piece of advice is targeted at the beginners. My article is for those who are making their first steps in their triumphal copywriting career. Not to flunk it with the first article, please mind these simple and obvious rules. ....

 Search Marketing Guide: How to Write a Landing Page That Converts
If you're paying for click-through's from Google or another search engine, you want to make sure your investment provides a return. You do that with a landing page. Searchers click-through to your page because your ad captures their attention and creates interest. Your landing page now needs to build on that interest, turn it into desire and, ultimately, get action. To be effective, your landing page needs to work like a sales letter. It needs to be designed around a very clear objective - the action you want - and it needs to employ all the motivating and....

 Reprint article headlines – the reader is secondary
A great headline can be the difference between having your free reprint article published once (on your own website...) and having it published hundreds, if not thousands, of times all over the Internet. Sure, the content has to be worthwhile; it has to be helpful, informative, and not just a sales spiel. And there's no denying that a well written article can be very compelling. But if your headline doesn't cut it, the article won't stand a chance. The best article in the world will never see the light of day without an effective headline. Now, more than ever, article....

 Your Website Could be Letting You Down.
Your Website Could be Letting You Down! A professionally presented business website is a powerful and essential marketing tool: it's the first thing prospective customers will look at before they decide to contact you. If the copy on your website is not written to an acceptable standard, it may be losing you customers. It's not enough just to have amazing graphics and imagery: you need the words to make it complete. Is the spelling correct? Are punctuation marks in place? Does the copy make sense? These are questions that....

 How To Avoid These Common Affiliate Mistakes.
Affiliate marketing can be really hard, especially when you are a newbie. Affiliate marketers are also human beings. They are liable to make mistakes once in a while. Every marketer makes mistakes and if they say they dont their lying to you.. Here are the most common mistakes that affiliate marketers make. Together with these mistakes are the lessons learned. 1. Most people spend way too much time on the computer. Networking online is great. However, it will never take the place of meeting face-to-face or having a conversation with someone over the phone. Sending emails are easy, but you should....

 How To Avoid The Three Most Common Budgeting Mistakes People Make When Planning a Web Initiative
As we all know, times have changed. Websites have become an absolutely fundamental component to nearly any business. But, while most companies set aside money for website development, they often overlook several key components. As a result, they either far exceed their initial budget or are unhappy with their Website's result. Many web firms purposely leave these crucial portions of the budgeting process out, so they can 'hook you' in the beginning, and then get more money as the process continues. Obviously, this makes creating a budget all the....

 10 Ways Web Site Text Can Impact Your Reader’s’ Buying Decisions
The appearance of your web site text can actually increase or decrease your sales. The size, font, style and colour of your text can easily affect your reader's buying decision. Below are ten points to consider when typing text on your web site. 1. Easy To Read - You want to make it easy for your visitors to read your text. You shouldn't use a light coloured text like yellow on a white background and you don't want to use dark blue text on a black back-ground. 2. Create A Mood - You want to use the colour of your text to....

 Reprint articles hijacked by text link ads - Great for authors!
We all know that online publishers earn revenue from our free reprint articles. They place pay-per-click ads on the web page that contains the article, and the advertiser pays them whenever someone clicks on the ad. Most use programs like Google AdSense which automatically identify the subject of the article and deliver an ad related to that subject. But did you know that publishers can do a similar thing within the article itself? They can turn any word within your article into an ad! They use programs like TextLinkAds to turn select target keywords into hyperlinks to the advertiser's website.....

 E-Commerce in a Nutshell
Are you new to the Internet and you're not quite sure what e-commerce is all about? You won't be left in the dark any longer! What is the use of paying hundreds of dollars per week on rent just to sell a few products through a storefront when you can sell everything easily and efficiently online? That is the question a....

 Write Website Copy That Sells - Try a Little Flesh with Your Flash
Your website looks great: solid words, easy navigation, graphics just so, and maybe even a bit of flash with some multimedia. But customers are not buying. You wonder if it's the writing. How can that be? You remembered the two key mantras for website content - “write for the search engines” and “write for the medium.” You used appropriate keywords to help search engines find you and traffic is up. Surely, customers enjoy reading your content because you laid it out with the internet in mind using short sentences, brief paragraphs, and bullets to list your key points. Customers might be....

 How to Know if Your Website is KILLING Your Business
Learn why your website might not be living up to its full potential... Just because you build it, and they come... doesn't mean they'll stay. So you've got Google adwords, banner ads, co-registration and joint venture deals, postcards, print ads, radio commercials, your mother-in-law and everyone else you can bribe, cajole and threaten, driving traffic to your website. Yes! You're an absolute genius at driving traffic to your website.  You're getting a gazillion hits and unique page impressions—every minute! You've got so much traffic, tying up so much bandwidth, that Al Gore is thinking of producing a new movie about....

Trackback URL for this post:
http://www.problogtips.com/be-your-own-website-copywriter-is-pixelvision-killing-your-copy/1637/trackback/

Posted by Jaron in the catagory of... General Interest