Okay, so in this video, I’m going to do a mini website copy audit and talk about a few basic web copy tweaks that are easy to implement that will help you get better results from your website.

So here we are on Dave Sansom’s site, and the first thing that happens is the email opt-in pops up. I love that the form itself is part of your USP or unique selling proposition because you photograph golf courses, fine art golf course photography. That’s awesome. One thing you might consider doing is changing the benefit…I mean, you do have a benefit-driven piece of copy here, “Join our mailing list and save 25% on your purchase today only.”

But you might want to change it to something like, “Save 25% on your first purchase.” Because there will be people who do want to sign up for you list but who aren’t ready to buy today, I’m guessing. And this way, they’ll be more compelled to sign up for your list because they know when they are ready to buy, they’ll get that 25% off.

You could limit the time and say “within the next 30 days” or something like that. So that’s one suggestion. And then, you could also do something like say, “Enter your email below to receive 25% off of your first purchase, plus the latest news about openings, gallery shows, and exclusive specials I only share with my subscribers.” Because basically, the key is to convey benefits of signing up for the newsletter as much as you can so they’re compelling enough to get people to part with their email address. So let’s get out of there.

The next thing I see… Well, you have a good tag line here. I notice that a lot of websites, especially art websites, don’t have a tagline. And that is not good because you want people when they come to your site to immediately know what you’re about and what you have to offer them. So a tag line can help you achieve that goal, and you have “the fine art of golf course photography.” So that’s good.

So that sort of reaches out to your target audience, but one thing you could consider doing, I mean the simplest way to create a tag line is what you do and who you do it for. So you’ve got, “The fine art of golf course photography.” If you added a short phrase in there about who your ideal clients are, who this is for, that again can help.

Because people typically spend between two and seven seconds deciding if a website is right for them, if they’re going to explore more of the website, and your tag line helps convey the benefits so that if your right people, your ideal clients come to your site, they read your tag line, they say, “Oh, this is for me.” Then they’ll spend more time exploring your site, which is what you want, right? So that would be my suggestion for a tag line.

You could add an additional phrase, who it’s for, but you have one and I think it’s good. I think it works, so that’s a good thing. The next thing I would do…let’s see here. Are we here on your…this is your home page, right? Oh, no. We’re on the shop for prints page. Okay, sorry. Let’s go back to the home page. Okay, here we are on the home page. Now, for the headline on your homepage, you have, “Welcome to the best in fine art golf course photography from Dave Sansom.” Sansom, I can’t say that for some reason.

You know, the thing with headlines, you should have a headline for each page of your website. Because it helps guide people, again, to what you have to offer, to let them know they’re in the right place, to sort of orient them to who you are and what you do, and it helps them move through your website in a logical way. So a headline for each page. That’s one thing. So you do have a headline here. And you want your headlines to speak directly to your ideal client, customer, collector, whatever you call them, and what they desire. So that will come from any kind of target audience research you’ve done, or you can ask people who bought your work in the past why they bought it, what spoke to them about it, etc.

Another thing that headlines do if they’re done correctly is they express your USP or your unique selling proposition, your key differentiator. Or what I call your meaningful difference. So you’ve got fine art golf course photography, and I’m guessing there aren’t a whole, whole lot of people that do this. Maybe there are. So I think you’re on the right track here.

But basically, your headline needs to grab your ideal clients, the people that you want to work with by the eyeballs, by saying something compelling, useful, interesting, that’s geared to their needs, wants, and desires. And again, what this needs to say is going to be based on your ideal clients and what they’re looking for related to the kind of work that you create.

One thing you could do on this page is you could grab a short, compelling testimonial from a happy client. I see you have a lot of really great testimonials, and you could put it there where your current headline is. Either replace the current headline, or put the short, snappy, compelling testimonial just under the current headline, so it just serves to explain more about what you do and what the benefits are of working with you.

So if your ideal clients are golf course architects or superintendents, or maybe they’re managers of golf course resorts, you want a headline that calls them out, so to speak, that speaks directly to them. So what are these people, your ideal clients, what are they looking for in a fine art golf course photographer?

Somewhere on your website, I saw the phrase, “Great photographs that other photographers miss.” So that’s one idea for your headline. It’s not the best, but I think I saw on your hire me page, something…it said, “One of a kind golf course images to help you share your club’s story.” I think that would be the ideal headline here because it’s benefit-driven, and it’s oriented to your ideal clients.

So again, that was, “One of a kind golf course images to help you share your club’s story.” Then the other thing on your homepage, you want to have a call to action. I don’t really see any here. So you’ve got your contact information there.

Oops, sorry about that. That’s good. Let’s see. Call to action. You know you want to be directing people what you want them to do next. So if they’re scrolling through this, and they’re interested, of course they can click on any of those links and go learn more about that collection or that image. But you just want to be sure to have a clear call to action on each page that directs people what you want them to do next.

So the key to that is figuring out what is the goal for each of your web pages, and then make the call to action based on that. So if from the home page you would like people to check out your shop for prints page, then say that. Say…even though it may be obvious to you that they can do that, it’s just to make it clear. The way things work online, you want to direct people through that logical navigation process.

So on the home page, having somewhere big enough so that it’s unmissable, say, “Click here to shop for prints,” or “Learn more about my work here.” So a clear call to action on the home page.

Let’s see. Basically, each page should motivate the visitor to take a specific action, and again, that’s what your call to action is going to be based on. So let’s see, let me look at, let’s see what you’ve got up here. Hire me. Okay, so on the hire me page, I read through this here before I actually fired up the recorder, so I think it’s pretty good. You want to be sure in all of the copy on your entire website, every page is client- and customer-focused, so you’re speaking to them based on their needs.

I know you see a lot of websites that say, “We do this, and we specialize in that, and we have won these awards,” and so on and so forth. And there’s a place for that, but the core of your copy needs to be about your clients, right. They need to feel like when they land on your site, “Oh, this is the place for me. This person is speaking directly to me.” So using language that reflects what they want and what they need. So client-focused language, customer-centric language is what you want to use.

At the end of the day, you want it to be super clear that you understand your target audience. So in terms of language to write to one person, use conversational, one-to-one language. And let’s go, let’s see. Let’s go to the contact page. That’s an important one. Because people are interested in working with you, obviously, that’s going to be one of the pages they are searching for.

On your contact page, you know what I would do is I would take this here, this line, and make it a question, and then make that your headline. As I was saying previously, you should have a headline on each page. So you could put it, you could take that, and you could put it above this thing that says contact, and it would be in the form of a question, so it would say, “Have a comment or question about this website, a problem with an order, or just want to talk about photography?” And then the rest of what you have there.

So that would be the headline for your contact page. And then in the language here, I would change it to…a lot of people do this, I know, but unless you’re a huge corporation or company, it’s best to have language in the first person. Because there’s always a barrier when someone comes to your website, and part of reducing that barrier and getting them to know, like, and trust you so they will buy from you is to make them feel warm and welcome and use conversational language.

So here, I would say something like, “I’m always interested in what you have to say. You can call me at…” and then the number. “Either way, I look forward to hearing from you.” So that’s what I would do there. This just makes it more warm and personable and alleviates some of that natural barrier that happens when someone comes to a website.

Now, a lot of that is going to be depending on whether the person knows you because probably some of your previous clients, or maybe referral clients are going to come here and that’s not necessarily going to be the case. But in general, most of your website visitors are new people who do not know anything about you, so you just want to keep that in mind.

The other thing that I’d do on the contact page is let people know when they can expect to hear back from you. For example, “Fill out the form below and you’ll hear back from me within 48 hours during normal business hours,” or whatever is the case for you. Because people like to know, “I’m going to fill out this form. Am I ever going to hear back from this person?”

It goes again to developing that trust. Let’s see what else. I noticed, well you have a lot of great testimonials. I was going to say, that’s fantastic. I read through some of them, and again, you could go through your testimonials and pull some of the things that people have said about you and your work to use for your headlines on your various pages throughout your site.

I noticed you didn’t have a bio. I don’t think you had a bio here anywhere. I would add something about you personally. Because again, you want to seem warm and welcoming and approachable, so having a bio will help with that. Maybe you’re planning on adding that in later on, but I would definitely add a bio section to this about section, somewhere in here. I think that’s important.

Let’s see, what else. We talked about your tag line. We talked about having a call to action on each page, using client customer-focused language. We talked about your contact page, your email opt-in form… Yeah, I think you’re doing a lot of things right. It’s obvious, one of the important things is to convey your meaningful difference or your uniqueness, and again, you’re a golf course photographer who does fine art golf course photography. So that’s pretty evident, which is good. So people are looking for that when they come here, they’re going to go, “Okay, I want to explore this site.”

So to wrap up, basically check your tag line, have a headline on each page that speaks to your ideal customer or client. Have a strong call to action on each page that directs people what to do next. Use customer-centric, one-on-one, informal language. And that’s it for this one, so I will see you all next time.